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Licensing update
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LU/R
The
Wikimedia Foundation
(WMF) has proposed that the copyright licensing terms on the wikis operated by the WMF — including Wikipedia — be changed to include the
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
(CC-BY-SA) license in addition to the current
GNU Free Documentation License
(GFDL). This will affect all text and rich media (images, sound, video, etc.) currently licensed under "GFDL 1.2 or later versions". This change is meant to advance the WMF's mission by increasing the compatibility and availability of
free content
. Further details and motivation for this change are explained in the
licensing update proposal
and the
associated FAQ
To gauge community support for adopting this change, a Wikimedia-wide vote was conducted between April 12 and May 3, 2009. The vote was managed by volunteers associated with the
licensing update committee
and conducted on servers controlled by the independent non-profit
SPI
Concise result
Licensing Update Poll Result
"Yes, I am in favor of this change"
13242
75.8%
"No, I am opposed to this change"
1829
10.5%
"I do not have an opinion on this change"
2391
13.7%
Total votes cast and certified
17462
If "no opinion" votes are not included, the Yes/No percentage becomes 87.9%/12.1% (15071 votes).
Next steps
As per prior agreement, the licensing update committee shared this result with WMF
Board of Trustees
a few days prior to the public release. The Board is responsible for giving final approval before any change to Wikimedia licensing is made.
Michael Snow
, Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees,
provided the following comment:
The volunteers who work on Wikimedia projects have very strongly supported making their contributions available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License (CC-BY-SA) in addition to the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). Updating our license terms will support Wikimedia's charitable mission, by making our projects legally compatible with others that have chosen the CC-BY-SA license. Our free information and educational content can be shared more readily and will be easier for everyone to use.
The full Board of Trustees passed the following
Licensing update approval resolution
on May 21, 2009:
Resolved that:
Whereas the Wikimedia community, in a project-wide vote, has expressed very strong support for changing the licensing terms of Wikimedia sites, and whereas the Board of Trustees has previously adopted a
license update resolution
requesting that such a change be made possible, the Board hereby declares its intent to implement these changes. Accordingly, the Wikimedia Foundation exercises its option under Version 1.3 of the GNU Free Documentation License to relicense the Wikimedia sites as Massive Multiauthor Collaborations under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license, effective June 15, 2009. The Board of Trustees hereby instructs the Executive Director to have all Wikimedia licensing terms updated and terms of use implemented consistent with the proposal at
Licensing update
To implement the change, the following events are expected:
Date
Event
Start of June
Any final revisions to the
proposed terms of use
are posted for comment. Proposed procedures for dealing with external content are released. A strategy for updating templates on affected media files is announced.
June 15 and thereafter
After any final modifications, site-wide copyright statements and terms of use are updated on all English language wikis. Translation guidelines are issued and translations are begun for all non-English wikis. Affected media files are migrated as per above.
Vote details
The licensing update poll was conducted for three weeks (from April 12 to May 3, 2009) in 32 languages, and was announced via a site notice displayed to all logged-in editors. The poll was open to any individual who had a registered account on a WMF project with at least 25 edits prior to March 15, 2009, and who was neither blocked at that account nor flagged as a bot. Individuals not meeting these criteria were automatically prevented from submitting a ballot.
Proposal summary provided to voters
Options provided to voters
Site notice announcing the vote
Certification
History of votes cast during the three week voting period.
A total of 18692 ballots were submitted. After review, the licensing update committee certified 17462 of these as valid. Nearly all of the rejected ballots were due to individuals attempting to vote multiple times. In the case of a single individual voting multiple times, their most recent ballot is considered valid and any earlier ballots are rejected. This included 930 cases where a single account at a particular wiki was used to cast multiple votes. A further 256 votes were discounted due to individuals voting multiple times under the same account name from different wikis (confirmed as linked accounts via
single user login
or other technical evidence). The final 44 rejected ballots were eliminated for other reasons, including abusive
sockpuppetry
All vote review was conducted solely based on the voter's account identity and associated technical evidence. Ballot choices were encrypted and not released until after the collection of valid votes was certified. Rejected ballots were never opened.
Demographics
193
Wikimedia projects
were represented by at least one vote.
Votes
Percent
Group
16785
96.1%
102
Wikipedias
397
2.3%
8 "Special" projects (includes
Commons
Meta
Wikispecies
, etc.)
78
0.4%
22
Wiktionaries
72
0.4%
18
Wikibooks
projects
60
0.3%
17
Wikisource
projects
30
0.2%
11
Wikinews
projects
24
0.1%
Wikiversity
projects
15
0.1%
Wikiquote
projects
Top 20 voting projects
Votes
Percent
Project
7528
43.1%
English Wikipedia
3104
17.8%
German Wikipedia
955
5.5%
French Wikipedia
778
4.5%
Russian Wikipedia
738
4.2%
Spanish Wikipedia
507
2.9%
Polish Wikipedia
454
2.6%
Italian Wikipedia
315
1.8%
Chinese Wikipedia
274
1.6%
Commons
274
1.6%
Japanese Wikipedia
235
1.3%
Dutch Wikipedia
210
1.2%
Portuguese Wikipedia
158
0.9%
Swedish Wikipedia
125
0.7%
Hebrew Wikipedia
125
0.7%
Hungarian Wikipedia
117
0.7%
Finnish Wikipedia
111
0.6%
Czech Wikipedia
105
0.6%
Turkish Wikipedia
98
0.6%
Meta
78
0.6%
Danish Wikipedia
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