Wiki submission license, credits, and policy.

[Jamie Jones]

G'day list,

I hope you can clarify something for me and put in into a formal policy.
The IRC conversation that prompted this email is pasted into the end of
this email.

When looking into why my and other authors, authorship credits were
removed from a document, I was told that it isn't appropriate to put
authorship credits on the documents. Having not been aware of this, I'd
contributed documents on the understanding that the wiki in question
(edubuntu) was governed by
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ as listed at the bottom
here http://wiki.edubuntu.org/EdubuntuWiki . My understanding of the
linked license was that it was by attribution, which to me means leaving
the authorship credits intact unless substantial changes to the content
have been made.

Now who did what and when isn't the issue, as I could simply revert the
change. What I would like is for a formal clear policy to be easily
available to describe exactly under what terms and conditions a
submission is made. Under my reading of the license, it was broken
(seemingly unintentionally, by reading the comments, they wanted to make
it a community document, which I felt it was. Obviously it was not
changed out of malice, and I'm happy they made it look nicer.) by the
removal of the credits.

Now, I'd like to add more stuff to the wiki, but I'll hold off on that
until we have a nice policy I can follow that won't lead to confusion
like that I have now.

Thoughts and Comments ?

Regards,

Jamie

(Yagisan on IRC)


#edubuntu
(02:20:35) Yagisan: hmm, that reminds me, I need to ask mhz about restoring authorship credits on the wiki
(02:21:54) Burgundavia: Yagisan, what do you mean restore?
(02:22:43) Burgundavia: bluefrog-10, the wiki is currently under an ambigous license, but is most likely the doc team ones. They are GFDL and CC-by-sa 2.0
(02:24:39) Yagisan: Burgundavia: Simply, I wrote a document with my authorship, added stuff from another author that privately mailed me, edited it and fixed some mistakes
(02:25:21) Yagisan: Burgundavia: and stuck it on the wiki, while cleaning up the formating, mhz removed the authorship in favour of a community doc
(02:25:47) Burgundavia: Yagisan, hmm...
(02:25:49) Yagisan: Burgundavia: I wish to speak to him first, then revert the removals (and keep the cleanups)
(02:26:11) Burgundavia: Yagisan, if you mean a page that lists what you have written, your Homepages is great for that
(02:26:34) Burgundavia: any other place is not good
(02:26:57) Yagisan: Burgundavia: No, check history on http://wiki.edubuntu.org/EdubuntuDocumentation/BootingClientsWithoutPxe
(02:27:23) Burgundavia: Yagisan, we don't put any credits on the wiki
(02:27:35) Burgundavia: so I would have removed them as well
(02:28:01) Yagisan: Burgundavia: hmm, can you point me to policy on that
(02:28:26) Burgundavia: hmm, don't know if we ever wrote it down
(02:28:32) Burgundavia: likely the style guide might mention it
(02:29:15) Yagisan: Burgundavia: I never saw it anywhere, and I would have taken it into consideration
(02:29:51) Burgundavia: the pratical reason we don't do it that a lot of docs have a number of authors
(02:30:04) Burgundavia: plus we avoid the whole "thats my doc" thing
(02:31:21) Yagisan: Burgundavia: Then you have a bad license for the docs.
(02:31:38) Burgundavia: why do you say?
(02:31:51) Burgundavia: the attribution part of CC and the GFDL?
(02:32:00) Burgundavia: it is there, look in the history
(02:32:24) Burgundavia: the license doesn't say you have to identify in the main doc who wrote what, you just have to be able to tell
(02:32:40) Yagisan: Burgundavia: the attribution part can cause confusion. confusion is bad
(02:33:03) Burgundavia: regardless, those are the licenses we release it under
(02:33:08) Yagisan: Burgundavia: I'd rather had been commented out then deleted
(02:33:24) Burgundavia: that just means that editors get to read it, yay
(02:33:38) Burgundavia: Yagisan, I understand where you are coming from but I have to say I don't agree with you
(02:34:19) Yagisan: Burgundavia: That's fine. I just want to discuss the whys, and get it into a formal policy
(02:34:33) Burgundavia: sure, join #ubuntu-dco
(02:34:35) Burgundavia: doc
(02:34:49) Burgundavia: better actually is to write an email to the ubuntu-doc list
(02:35:07) Burgundavia: because I am about to leave for work, so will not able to continue this
(02:35:10) Yagisan: Burgundavia: because, under my understanding of the license, it was broken by deleting the authorship creditsm without substantial changes in content
(02:35:26) Yagisan: Burgundavia: 2:30am here, I'll be in bed soon
(02:35:33) Burgundavia: fire that email and we can talk

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