[martin at swift.is: Re: [Uim] Improvement of documentation]

[Martin Swift]

YamaKen just alerted me to the fact that I accidentally sent the
following only as a reply to him, rather than a list-reply.

----- Forwarded message from Martin Swift <martin at swift.is> -----

From: Martin Swift <martin at swift.is>
Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 13:04:15 +0000
Subject: Re: [Uim] Improvement of documentation
To: YAMAMOTO Kengo / YamaKen <yamaken at bp.iij4u.or.jp>

Hi all,

On Sun, Nov 19, 2006 at 11:26:36PM +0900, YAMAMOTO Kengo / YamaKen wrote:
> I would like to contribute general input method -related topics
> to Wikipedia once any page of uim Wiki get appropriate for
> it.

On that note, I was just browsing WP for information about IMs for my
documentation outline suggestion (coming soon) and, seeing there
wasn't an article already, added one myself:
  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UIM>
If you have the time, please look it over, fix errors and add
interesting things.

By the way, Are you guys very intent on writing it lower-case, or is
the upper case acceptible as well? In English, acronyms are generally
upper case (UIM comes from Universal Input Method, right?).

> For example, the terms "preedit", "surrounding text", "XIM",
> "on the spot", and so on should be explained well for uim users,
> and then everyone.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the details of what you mean. Perhaps you
can explain this furhter?

I'd be rather hesitant of duplicating considerable portions of the
documentation in Wikipedia. Linking to the uim docs from these pages
provides such a definition of terms for those that need it (defining
words, by the way, isn't within the scope of Wikipedia) and reduces
the danger of becoming out of date.

> Although contributing such documents to Wikipedia does not
> require that they are written with GFDL, importing a document
> fragment from Wikipedia into an uim document requires the
> document GFDL. So to avoid bothering license handling on such
> import, I want to make all uim Wiki documents GFDL at first.
 ...
> How do you think about it?

I don't see how importing a document is allowed simply by virtue of
the shared license.

From
  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights#Reusers.27_rights_and_obligations>:

  If you create a derivative version by changing or adding content,
  this entails the following:

    * your materials in turn have to be licensed under GFDL,
    * you must acknowledge the authorship of the article (section 4B),
      and
    * you must provide access to the "transparent copy" of the
      material (section 4J). (The "transparent copy" of a Wikipedia
      article is any of a number of formats available from us,
      including the wiki text, the html web pages, xml feed, etc.)

This means that simply having GFDL isn't sufficient, you still have to
list the prior authors (at least up to five of the principle ones)
unless they release you from this requirement.

We are also not allowed to publish the content unless the wikitext is
available somewhere. So if the wiki goes down or we stop using it, any
derived work that doesn't publish wikitext (such as PDF or text only)
will be illegal.

Unsurmountable? No. Annoying? Yes. Any solutions? Let's see:

None of these restrictions apply if you write the content first in a
PD document and then in the GFDL one.

If you are the author yourself, you are free to relicense your
creation under a different license (the copyrighted work belongs to
you, now Wikipedia). I've seen WP editors who, on their WP user pages,
state that they release all their work to the public domain. Their
work, you can use as you want.

> > On Sun, Nov 19, 2006 at 05:35:45AM +0900, YAMAMOTO Kengo / YamaKen wrote:
> Since I'm not confident of service availability of elwiki.com,
> and we may re-migrate the wiki site to another place if
> something good or bad has been happened

My concerns for the license was precisely for similar reasons. Posting
the content in the public domain will make any copying/migrating/
moving simple.

Essentially, we just need a place for developing the docs, right? How
about doing so at Wikibooks under a PD license? That way we can take
it elsewhere, redistribute it in a different form, post it on the
Google Code page, base man pages on it etc.

As for other wiki farms, have you checked out
  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_farms> and
  <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wiki_Science:How_to_start_a_Wiki#Free_wiki_hosting>
for alternatives to elwiki? All of
  <http://www.bluwiki.org/go/Main_Page>
  <http://www.editthis.info/>
  <http://www.wiki-site.com/>
  <http://www.wikidot.com/>
also look fine.

In summary:

 * GFDL is restrictive in terms of modifications and redistribution,
  even to other GFDL documents.
 * PD will allow us to redistribute the content in any form we see fit
  (verbatim or modified) without any licensing (this would include man
  pages).
 * Anyone can republish their own works under different licenses.

Cheers,
Martin

-- 
\u270C

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
\u270C