Proposal talk:Care to prevent Wikipedia privatization

   * "Understand the Commons "share alike" and GFDL maybe protects Wikipedia from serious attempts to take over content as content under such licenses is not commercially so attractive." 

Well yes and no. There are already businesses exploiting WP content while complying with the license and, in my opinion, this is a good thing as they are helping us spread the knowledge and sharing their innovations with us. I think it would be a good idea to convince more businesses of the commercial opportunities within the share-alike licenses.

   * "Set very reluctant rules on the license switching, and have this rules official. Put the "share alike" as mandatory condition for all possible alternative licenses in the future (who wants, can additionally license differently; this is not a problem as long as amount of material under PD-like licenses does not make the major part)." 

Every contributor to wikipedia retains ownership of the copyright to their contribution. We have merely licensed the contribution to the Wikimedia foundadtion. If they want to change the license then they need our consent - all of us - unless the change is to a 'later version'. Perhaps this should be made more explicit. The change from GFDL to GFDL orCC-BY-SA was only possible because GFDL or CC-BY-SA was declared to be a 'later version' of GFDL.

   * "Set the rule that at least two years of discussion are required to before any changes of the license." 

For me this seems overly restrictive. I think the recent license change was the right way. Extensive discussion of alternatives; someone had a clever idea; leaders at the FSF and at WP and CC looked hard at the proposal and agreed it looked like the way to go; FSF formally proposes the change and after consultation, adopts it; WM foundation formally considers the proposal and reccommends it to the members; WP editors vote on the change.

   * "Officially drop the famous under this version of the license or any later version clause from Wikipedia licenses. This 'later version"' may turn out to be public domain." 

To create a 'later version' which changed CC-BY-SA license to a PD license would first need the consent of Creative Commons. Personally I do not believe that this would be that easy to achieve. Once Creative Commons had been subverted the court cases would begin as folks whose content had been licensed under CC-BY-SA sued CC for dereliction of duty in that the were trying to pass off a PD license as a share-alike license. There would be no shortage of lawyers in the US to bring such an action. I believe these are sufficient protections given the benefit we gain from having the option of updating the license should some business find a legal loophole in the language of the current license.

More likely is some sort of gross legislative challenge to the license - where business in some country persuades congress or parliament to pass a law declaring share-alike to be the same as PD. The best protection against this is to make sure the public understand the difference so that such a change cannot sneak through without a fight.Filceolaire 14:27, 25 October 2009 (UTC)