As everyone has noticed during the "making Haskell more open" discussion, MediaWiki was suggested as a better wiki technology for haskell.org. Ashley Yakeley has generously installed MediaWiki and we would like to migrate the main pages of haskell.org into this wiki. The migration is not complete - only the front page is finished - but I'd like to make this public now so that there's time for comments. In the end, this will allow anyone to come in and fix up the main haskell.org pages - the people, the projects, the help for beginners, whatever you want. Olaf and I will then step back and let the community work directly on the entire site without having to bother us (a big advantage!). This will also impact the old Haskell wiki. Rather than try to automatically convert the old wiki to the new one, we're going to ask the community to come in and do this for us. In particular, the new wiki is under the GNU FDL so the licenses are not necessarily compatible. We will keep the two wikis going "side by side" for a while but in the long term I hope all content migrates to MediaWiki (we won't be deprecating the Trac stuff - this will stay as is). I believe that MediaWiki is more professional looking and has a nice separation of documentation and discussion that MoinMoin lacks. I hope that this will result in better wiki content and a more organized site. Moving content by hand will give us all a chance to spruce up the existing content as it moves (and get rid of all the ugly CamelCase page names!). I expect that it will take another week or so for the rest of the haskell.org pages to move into the new wiki - at that point we'll "flip the switch" and take down the old pages (but not the old wiki yet) and change the main page to point into the MediaWiki. Content that isn't being maintained by Olaf and I will stay as before although I hope that more and more pages will move into the wiki and we won't have to give out accounts to people on haskell.org just to host projects. The new wiki isn't yet visible from the front page but you can find it at http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell For you style sheet gurus, the style sheet itself is also in the wiki at http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/MediaWiki:Quiet.css If anyone wants to help move the main pages over, drop me an email and I'll coordinate things. Feel free to start adding stuff to the new wiki. It won't be visible to the outside world immediately but you can get it ready for the switch over. This isn't a completely "done deal" - there is still time to object to the whole thing or make suggestions. Nothing will be visible to the outside world until we make the switch later. But I believe this will result in a much better site and also make life a lot easier for Olaf and I. (And I apologize to everyone that's asked for updates to haskell.org recently - I've been avoiding them to concentrate on this!). I'm sure some of the MediaWiki settings still need to be tweaked. Send me mail if something in the configuration of MediaWiki needs to be changed. A big thanks again to Ashley! John
wiki is under the GNU FDL so the licenses are not necessarily compatible.
As far as I understand, this means that if I see a sample of code on the haskell wiki, and just want to "steal" it for my project, I'm not allowed to, unless I also release my code under the GNU FDL? And another point, will this wiki be backed up? I am lead to believe that the existing hawiki isn't, so I keep backups of sections I'm involved with. Thanks Neil
wiki is under the GNU FDL so the licenses are not necessarily compatible.
As far as I understand, this means that if I see a sample of code on the haskell wiki, and just want to "steal" it for my project, I'm not allowed to, unless I also release my code under the GNU FDL?
This is something worth debating. Certainly you can ask the author of the code for permission to use it but this is an extra burden. Would be nice to have a special wiki construct to mark content as posessing an "extra" license. The whole license debate should take place as soon as possible before we get a lot of content in there. I'm not wedded to the FDL.
And another point, will this wiki be backed up? I am lead to believe that the existing hawiki isn't, so I keep backups of sections I'm involved with.
We back up all of haskell.org except some of the old ghc releases. That shouldn't be a problem.
This is something worth debating. Certainly you can ask the author of the code for permission to use it but this is an extra burden. Would be nice to have a special wiki construct to mark content as posessing an "extra" license. The whole license debate should take place as soon as possible before we get a lot of content in there. I'm not wedded to the FDL.
Is there any reason for not putting the content under a "do whatever you want with it" license (i.e. Public Domain or BSD), and then (if necessary) allowing people to mark certain contributions with additional restrictions? Especially given GHC is released under the BSD. I can't imagine anything anyone would be able to do with the content, which would be "bad" and would be stopped by something like the FDL. Thanks Neil
I believe the scenario that the FDL addresses is that someone (probably Paul Hudak!) "borrows" massive amounts of stuff from the wiki, adds his own good stuff, and then publishes a nice book or something without having to share his additional contribution. Some people would like to be sure that their contributions can't be exploited in this manner. I'm no license lawyer - the BSD license would work just fine for me personally but we need to generate some overall agreement on this issue since everyone who contributes is potentially affected. John
On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 09:31:16PM -0500, John Peterson wrote:
I believe the scenario that the FDL addresses is that someone (probably Paul Hudak!) "borrows" massive amounts of stuff from the wiki, adds his own good stuff, and then publishes a nice book or something without having to share his additional contribution. Some people would like to be sure that their contributions can't be exploited in this manner.
Why not use the GPL, then? FWIW, the GFDL is considered non-free by Debian[1], so that would mean any documentation or anything derived from the wiki couldn't be packaged for Debian. Apart from the issue of code itself on the wiki, that other people have already mentioned, presumably you'd also have licence fun if you try to take surrounding explanatory text to use as haddock docs etc. Thanks Ian [1] http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html
In article <20060109030328.GA4611@matrix.matrix.chaos.earth.li>, Ian Lynagh <igloo@earth.li> wrote:
Why not use the GPL, then?
FWIW, the GFDL is considered non-free by Debian[1], so that would mean any documentation or anything derived from the wiki couldn't be packaged for Debian.
Apart from the issue of code itself on the wiki, that other people have already mentioned, presumably you'd also have licence fun if you try to take surrounding explanatory text to use as haddock docs etc.
Let's discuss it on the wiki: <http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HaskellWiki:Community_Portal> -- Ashley Yakeley, Seattle WA
On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 10:16:45PM -0800, Ashley Yakeley wrote:
In article <20060109030328.GA4611@matrix.matrix.chaos.earth.li>, Ian Lynagh <igloo@earth.li> wrote:
Why not use the GPL, then?
FWIW, the GFDL is considered non-free by Debian[1], so that would mean any documentation or anything derived from the wiki couldn't be packaged for Debian.
Apart from the issue of code itself on the wiki, that other people have already mentioned, presumably you'd also have licence fun if you try to take surrounding explanatory text to use as haddock docs etc.
Let's discuss it on the wiki: <http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HaskellWiki:Community_Portal>
I don't know if there was a reason you chose my message in particular to reply to, but I have no intention of discussing this, or anything else, on a wiki. Incidentally, if anyone's collecting votes/opinions, I'd vote "yes" for any of GPL, BSD, PD, and "no" for any other licence I can think of. (I am unlikely to directly contribute anything to the wiki ATM, though). Thanks Ian
We could also use multi licensing. A possibility is to have, by default, everything licensed at the same time under BSD, CC, FDL and GPL. (For those who wonder, this suggestion is serious /and/ sarcastic at the same time) Cheers, JP. On 1/9/06, Ian Lynagh <igloo@earth.li> wrote:
On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 10:16:45PM -0800, Ashley Yakeley wrote:
In article <20060109030328.GA4611@matrix.matrix.chaos.earth.li>, Ian Lynagh <igloo@earth.li> wrote:
Why not use the GPL, then?
FWIW, the GFDL is considered non-free by Debian[1], so that would mean any documentation or anything derived from the wiki couldn't be packaged for Debian.
Apart from the issue of code itself on the wiki, that other people have already mentioned, presumably you'd also have licence fun if you try to take surrounding explanatory text to use as haddock docs etc.
Let's discuss it on the wiki: <http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HaskellWiki:Community_Portal>
I don't know if there was a reason you chose my message in particular to reply to, but I have no intention of discussing this, or anything else, on a wiki.
Incidentally, if anyone's collecting votes/opinions, I'd vote "yes" for any of GPL, BSD, PD, and "no" for any other licence I can think of.
(I am unlikely to directly contribute anything to the wiki ATM, though).
Thanks Ian
_______________________________________________ Haskell mailing list Haskell@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell
I have appended the relevant conclusion Ian Lynagh wrote:
On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 09:31:16PM -0500, John Peterson wrote:
I believe the scenario that the FDL addresses is that someone (probably Paul Hudak!) "borrows" massive amounts of stuff from the wiki, adds his own good stuff, and then publishes a nice book or something without having to share his additional contribution. Some people would like to be sure that their contributions can't be exploited in this manner.
Why not use the GPL, then?
FWIW, the GFDL is considered non-free by Debian[1], so that would mean any documentation or anything derived from the wiki couldn't be packaged for Debian.
Apart from the issue of code itself on the wiki, that other people have already mentioned, presumably you'd also have licence fun if you try to take surrounding explanatory text to use as haddock docs etc.
Thanks Ian
[1] http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html
============== Conclusion It is not possible to borrow text from a GFDL'd manual and incorporate it in any free software program whatsoever. This is not a mere license incompatibility. It's not just that the GFDL is incompatible with this or that free software license: it's that it is fundamentally incompatible with any free software license whatsoever. So if you write a new program, and you have no commitments at all about what license you want to use, saving only that it be a free license, you cannot include GFDL'd text. The GNU FDL, as it stands today, does not meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines. There are significant problems with the license, as detailed above; and, as such, we cannot accept works licensed unde the GNU FDL into our distribution. ============== Thus defaulting the FDL for all wiki content, including code, is a very bad idea. -- Chris
Chris Kuklewicz wrote:
============== Conclusion
It is not possible to borrow text from a GFDL'd manual and incorporate it in any free software program whatsoever. This is not a mere license incompatibility. It's not just that the GFDL is incompatible with this or that free software license: it's that it is fundamentally incompatible with any free software license whatsoever. So if you write a new program, and you have no commitments at all about what license you want to use, saving only that it be a free license, you cannot include GFDL'd text.
The GNU FDL, as it stands today, does not meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines. There are significant problems with the license, as detailed above; and, as such, we cannot accept works licensed unde the GNU FDL into our distribution. ==============
Thus defaulting the FDL for all wiki content, including code, is a very bad idea.
I agree - can we please use BSD or public domain? Cheers, Simon
Simon Marlow <simonmar@microsoft.com> writes:
Thus defaulting the FDL for all wiki content, including code, is a very bad idea.
I agree - can we please use BSD or public domain?
Another option is the Open Publication License, which requires acknowledgement (but little else). Anyway, I think a point that should be taken into consideration is that you can usually tighten the licensing later on, while making it more liberal can be difficult. -k -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants
Ketil Malde wrote:
Another option is the Open Publication License, which requires acknowledgement (but little else).
...which would mean that whenever you rearrange something inside the wiki, you'd have to drag signatures around (and god forbid you accidentally drop a single one). The only way out would be to assign copyright of contributions to some central entity, so the attribution would always be "(C) The Haskell Wiki Foundation" or something. Anyone willing to found or find a suitable non-profit organisation? Sounds like a stupid idea? Thought so. A wiki should be public domain, plain and simple. (Put contributions with a different license somewhere else and link to them. No big deal.) Udo. -- People with great minds talk about ideas. People with ordinary minds talk about things. People with small minds talk about other people. -- Eleanor Roosevelt
In article <20060109131258.GI3779@web.de>, Udo Stenzel <u.stenzel@web.de> wrote:
Sounds like a stupid idea? Thought so. A wiki should be public domain, plain and simple. (Put contributions with a different license somewhere else and link to them. No big deal.)
There seems to be a consensus for public domain both here and on the wiki page. <http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HaskellWiki:Community_Portal> Does anyone have any objections to putting everything in the public domain? -- Ashley Yakeley, Seattle WA
On 09/01/06, Ashley Yakeley <ashley@semantic.org> wrote:
In article <20060109131258.GI3779@web.de>, Udo Stenzel <u.stenzel@web.de> wrote:
Sounds like a stupid idea? Thought so. A wiki should be public domain, plain and simple. (Put contributions with a different license somewhere else and link to them. No big deal.)
There seems to be a consensus for public domain both here and on the wiki page. <http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HaskellWiki:Community_Portal>
Does anyone have any objections to putting everything in the public domain?
As long as that's just the default and not required of course. It might be nice to at least include some disclaimers of warranty. - Cale
Whatever the Haskell community end up deciding, I would like to point out that the Wikibooks project uses the GFDL. What would greatly simplify us wikibookians using content from the Haskell wiki are GFDL-friendly terms, that is, one of: public domain GFDL creative commons [by][sa] - that's up to 4 CC licenses to choose from (*) If anybody suddenly feels inspired to go contribute, please see http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Programming:Haskell --eric (*) the share-alike situtation may be less clear, it seems CC are proposing a one-way compatibility with GFDL, but not sure what the news on that is) On 9 janv. 06, at 21:11, Ashley Yakeley wrote:
As long as that's just the default and not required of course.
No, all contributions would be in the public domain.
-- Eric Kow http://www.loria.fr/~kow PGP Key ID: 08AC04F9 Merci de corriger mon français.
Ashley Yakeley wrote:
Sounds like a stupid idea? Thought so. A wiki should be public domain, plain and simple. (Put contributions with a different license somewhere else and link to them. No big deal.)
There seems to be a consensus for public domain both here and on the wiki page. <http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HaskellWiki:Community_Portal>
Does anyone have any objections to putting everything in the public domain?
Insisting that everything is in the public domain prevents the inclusion of third-party content, unless either: a) that content is also in the public domain (which is unusual; even content which is "freely" redistributable usually has some kind of restriction, even if it's only an acknowledgement requirement), or b) you can obtain a specific exemption from its author (assuming that you can actually identify and locate the author, which isn't always easy for projects with a long history and many contributors). -- Glynn Clements <glynn@gclements.plus.com>
G'day all. Quoting Ashley Yakeley <ashley@semantic.org>:
Does anyone have any objections to putting everything in the public domain?
No, with the proviso that individual page authors can override that on the page itself. There is a disincentive for authors to do this, because their material may be deleted instead of refactored. On the other hand, I can think of some scenarios where this may be necessary, such as an author republishing material from one of their scientific papers where the publisher holds an odd copyright. While I'd prefer public domain, obviously (it's more useful), I don't think that retaining attribution is an unreasonable request if an author wants it for whatever reason. The MediaWiki Way(tm) to do attribution is not the same as the C2 Way(tm). It would not involve dragging signatures unless it's specifically a discussion page. Would it be possible to manage attribution automatically? Cheers, Andrew Bromage
Am Montag, 9. Januar 2006 19:19 schrieb Ashley Yakeley:
[...]
Does anyone have any objections to putting everything in the public domain?
There is already one important objection written on the wiki: You cannot put your work into the public domain in every country. For example, I live in Germany where the concept of putting something into the public domain just doesn't exist. Does this mean that I won't be able to contribute to haskell.org? Does I have to use annotations to say that my work is licensed under, say, a BSD-style license, while most of the other contributions are in the public domain? We should really find an answer to these questions before putting a lot of effort into the wiki. Best wishes, Wolfgang
Wolfgang Jeltsch wrote:
There is already one important objection written on the wiki: You cannot put your work into the public domain in every country.
So instead you license it under the conditions of "Do whatever you please with it, but don't bug me", which is what is commonly understood as public domain anyway and is damn well possible in Germany. Can we please settle on a "This work may be used freely for any purpose and comes without any expressed or implied warranty" and just _link_ to existing works that don't fit in? Thinking about the subject matter is hard enough, thinking about creating licensing pitfalls is best left to lawyers and other parasi^W specialists. Udo. -- "Never attribute to benevolence that which is adequately explained by stupidity." -- McCaughans Razor
Udo Stenzel wrote:
Can we please settle on a "This work may be used freely for any purpose and comes without any expressed or implied warranty" and just _link_ to existing works that don't fit in? Thinking about the subject matter is hard enough, thinking about creating licensing pitfalls is best left to lawyers and other parasi^W specialists.
Should we make public domain mandatory or should we allow people to add notices to pages for other licenses? <http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HaskellWiki:Community_Portal> -- Ashley Yakeley
On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 01:52:51PM -0800, Ashley Yakeley wrote:
Udo Stenzel wrote:
Can we please settle on a "This work may be used freely for any purpose and comes without any expressed or implied warranty" and just _link_ to existing works that don't fit in? Thinking about the subject matter is hard enough, thinking about creating licensing pitfalls is best left to lawyers and other parasi^W specialists.
Should we make public domain mandatory or should we allow people to add notices to pages for other licenses? <http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HaskellWiki:Community_Portal>
I would say something like 'contributions and any derivations must be usable for any purpose by anyone in perpetuity without restriction' so that public domain, BSD, or the GHC license are all fine. this would also get around any issues with 'public domain' not being a well defined term in some places and more clearly expresses the intent. John -- John Meacham - ⑆repetae.net⑆john⑈
Am Dienstag, 10. Januar 2006 23:03 schrieb John Meacham:
[...]
I would say something like 'contributions and any derivations must be usable for any purpose by anyone in perpetuity without restriction' so that public domain, BSD, or the GHC license are all fine.
First, the GHC license is a BSD-style license as far as I know. Second, BSD-style licenses have restrictions. The restriction I remember is that derivative works have to include the original copyright notice, the disclaimer, etc. If we do as you propose, different licenses could be chosen and the "user" wouldn't know what the exact licensing terms of this or that article are. I think, it is better to choose one permissive license for all the content.
[...]
John
Best wishes, Wolfgang
On 1/10/06, Ashley Yakeley <ashley@semantic.org> wrote:
Udo Stenzel wrote:
Can we please settle on a "This work may be used freely for any purpose and comes without any expressed or implied warranty" and just _link_ to existing works that don't fit in? Thinking about the subject matter is hard enough, thinking about creating licensing pitfalls is best left to lawyers and other parasi^W specialists.
Should we make public domain mandatory or should we allow people to add notices to pages for other licenses? <http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HaskellWiki:Community_Portal>
I think it's best to have "public domain" (or "I don't care what you do with this, just don't bug me!") as the default, but allow people to use different licenses if they want. I really don't expect many people to take advantage of this possibility though, but in the rare cases where someone wants to publish something under a different license, it should be allowed. Or we could just link it... /S -- Sebastian Sylvan +46(0)736-818655 UIN: 44640862
Am Dienstag, 10. Januar 2006 22:52 schrieb Ashley Yakeley:
Udo Stenzel wrote:
Can we please settle on a "This work may be used freely for any purpose and comes without any expressed or implied warranty" and just _link_ to existing works that don't fit in? Thinking about the subject matter is hard enough, thinking about creating licensing pitfalls is best left to lawyers and other parasi^W specialists.
Should we make public domain mandatory
No, we shouldn't, since putting a work into the public domain isn't possible in all countries. What Udo proposed is not to put the work into the public domain (saying: "I pass on all my rights.") but to license the work under a very permissive license.
or should we allow people to add notices to pages for other licenses?
Maybe we should start with forcing everything on the wiki to be licensed under a permissive license. We could use the one Udo proposed. Or we could use a BSD-style license so that we can incorporate parts of already existing BSD-style-licensed material. BSD is also rather permissive. If we discover that this solution is not nice we can still introduce license annotations later.
<http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HaskellWiki:Community_Portal>
Best wishes, Wolfgang
Wolfgang Jeltsch writes:
Maybe we should start with forcing everything on the wiki to be licensed under a permissive license. We could use the one Udo proposed. Or we could use a BSD-style license so that we can incorporate parts of already existing BSD-style-licensed material. BSD is also rather permissive.
How well would BSD work with wiki content? If I see a useful bit of code on the wiki and I want to use it, BSD requires me to acknowledge the author's copyright, but who is the author? As a concrete example, the old wiki has an implementation of Ralf Hinze's nondeterminism monad. If I use that in a project, do I need to credit Ralf? The person who typed it into the wiki? Anyone who modified it? The wiki itself? How much code do you need to borrow from the wiki before you need to provide an acknowledgement? -- David Menendez <zednenem@psualum.com> | "In this house, we obey the laws <http://www.eyrie.org/~zednenem> | of thermodynamics!"
I'm not sure how things work legally, but the wiki itself has all of the authorship information in it. Simply acknowledging that something came from the Haskell wiki would allow anyone to identify the underlying source given the ability to crawl around in page histories. I wouldn't want to have to acknowledge in any finer detail than that myself. I'm not sure if that is something that has to be addressed in the license itself or not though. John PS - please forgive my earlier attempt at lame humor when discussing the wiki. When talking about copying from the wiki I mentioned Paul Hudak and forgot a much needed smiley after his name. Paul is most definitely a writer of highly original content in the Haskell world and has absolutely no need to do anything untoward with the contents of haskell.org. Furthermore, the community should know that it is Paul that has to pay for haskell.org itself - something we should all be grateful for.
Wolfgang Jeltsch <wolfgang@jeltsch.net> writes:
Thinking about the subject matter is hard enough, thinking about creating licensing pitfalls is best left to lawyers and other parasi^W specialists.
The problem is that lawyers are thinking about pitfalls for you to fall into. Discussing licensing for a community effort like a wiki may seem a pedantic excercise bordering on the absurd, but it might avoid trouble later.
or should we allow people to add notices to pages for other licenses?
Maybe we should start with forcing everything on the wiki to be licensed under a permissive license.
The problem with allowing multiple licensing is that it can quickly get muddled as things get copied around. I would prefer a single (very permissive) license covering the whole wiki, and linking out to a different site for differently licensed material. (The license should encourage, and possibly require, attribution to the wiki rather than individual authors - I think it is important to de-emphasize individual ownership as much as possible - cf. previous discussions) -k -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants
G'day all. Quoting Simon Marlow <simonmar@microsoft.com>:
I agree - can we please use BSD or public domain?
Creative Commons "by" might be an appropriate alternative: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/ Cheers, Andrew Bromage
On Jan 9, 2006, at 7:19 AM, Simon Marlow wrote:
Chris Kuklewicz wrote:
============== Conclusion It is not possible to borrow text from a GFDL'd manual and incorporate it in any free software program whatsoever. This is not a mere license incompatibility. It's not just that the GFDL is incompatible with this or that free software license: it's that it is fundamentally incompatible with any free software license whatsoever. So if you write a new program, and you have no commitments at all about what license you want to use, saving only that it be a free license, you cannot include GFDL'd text. The GNU FDL, as it stands today, does not meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines. There are significant problems with the license, as detailed above; and, as such, we cannot accept works licensed unde the GNU FDL into our distribution. ============== Thus defaulting the FDL for all wiki content, including code, is a very bad idea.
I agree - can we please use BSD or public domain?
I concur. If you work at a largish company, the IP contamination worries can be really irritating. Putting it all in the public domain ensures that people like me can read and contribute without trouble. -Jan-Willem Maessen
Cheers, Simon
_______________________________________________ Haskell mailing list Haskell@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell
sön 2006-01-08 klockan 21:12 -0500 skrev John Peterson:
wiki is under the GNU FDL so the licenses are not necessarily compatible.
As far as I understand, this means that if I see a sample of code on the haskell wiki, and just want to "steal" it for my project, I'm not allowed to, unless I also release my code under the GNU FDL?
This is something worth debating. Certainly you can ask the author of the code for permission to use it but this is an extra burden. Would be nice to have a special wiki construct to mark content as posessing an "extra" license. The whole license debate should take place as soon as possible before we get a lot of content in there. I'm not wedded to the FDL.
Hmm, here's a quick suggestion. The wiki currently says: "Content is available under GNU Free Documentation License 1.2." We change this to: "All Haskell source code on this page is released into the public domain. All other content is available under GNU Free Documentation License 1.2." "Haskell source code" could also be a link to an exact definition of what is and what is not to be regarded as Haskell source code, but I think that seems a bit over the top. It might even be reasonable to release everything into the public domain. If nothing else, it means we can change the license later if it ends up being abused (which I personally believe is a rather low risk scenario). Regards, Anders
On 1/9/06, Anders Höckersten <chucky@dtek.chalmers.se> wrote:
sön 2006-01-08 klockan 21:12 -0500 skrev John Peterson:
wiki is under the GNU FDL so the licenses are not necessarily compatible.
As far as I understand, this means that if I see a sample of code on the haskell wiki, and just want to "steal" it for my project, I'm not allowed to, unless I also release my code under the GNU FDL?
This is something worth debating. Certainly you can ask the author of the code for permission to use it but this is an extra burden. Would be nice to have a special wiki construct to mark content as posessing an "extra" license. The whole license debate should take place as soon as possible before we get a lot of content in there. I'm not wedded to the FDL.
Hmm, here's a quick suggestion. The wiki currently says: "Content is available under GNU Free Documentation License 1.2." We change this to: "All Haskell source code on this page is released into the public domain. All other content is available under GNU Free Documentation License 1.2." "Haskell source code" could also be a link to an exact definition of what is and what is not to be regarded as Haskell source code, but I think that seems a bit over the top.
It might even be reasonable to release everything into the public domain. If nothing else, it means we can change the license later if it ends up being abused (which I personally believe is a rather low risk scenario).
Agreed. I don't see a point in having a restrictive license on source code. Are there any HCI specialists around? I think the web site could do with some refactoring. I.e. have fewer and more aptly named sections linked from the front page (do we need both "books and tutorials" as well as "learning Haskell"?), but I'm not sure exactly how to do it. If we're making changes anyway, this would be a good time for significant changes to be implemented. Since the wiki isn't "live" yet maybe people will feel less "afraid" to make big changes to the front page without going through a big voting procedure first (it can always be changed back, and it's not visible from the front page just yet - so if people don't like it, there's no harm done). /S -- Sebastian Sylvan +46(0)736-818655 UIN: 44640862
On Sun, 2006-01-08 at 21:12 -0500, John Peterson wrote:
wiki is under the GNU FDL so the licenses are not necessarily compatible.
As far as I understand, this means that if I see a sample of code on the haskell wiki, and just want to "steal" it for my project, I'm not allowed to, unless I also release my code under the GNU FDL?
This is something worth debating. Certainly you can ask the author of the code for permission to use it but this is an extra burden. Would be nice to have a special wiki construct to mark content as posessing an "extra" license. The whole license debate should take place as soon as possible before we get a lot of content in there. I'm not wedded to the FDL.
I get the impression that media wiki has some support for marking things with Creative Commons licenses (and perhaps others) os maybe that'd help (you often see this for images on Wikipedia). If people were posting snippets from a GPL program then they could be marked as such. This is somewhat different from what the default should be for small snippets. Duncan
On 1/9/06, John Peterson <peterson-john@cs.yale.edu> wrote:
As everyone has noticed during the "making Haskell more open" discussion, MediaWiki was suggested as a better wiki technology for haskell.org. Ashley Yakeley has generously installed MediaWiki and we would like to migrate the main pages of haskell.org into this wiki. The migration is not complete - only the front page is finished - but I'd like to make this public now so that there's time for comments. In the end, this will allow anyone to come in and fix up the main haskell.org pages - the people, the projects, the help for beginners, whatever you want. Olaf and I will then step back and let the community work directly on the entire site without having to bother us (a big advantage!).
This will also impact the old Haskell wiki. Rather than try to automatically convert the old wiki to the new one, we're going to ask the community to come in and do this for us. In particular, the new wiki is under the GNU FDL so the licenses are not necessarily compatible. We will keep the two wikis going "side by side" for a while but in the long term I hope all content migrates to MediaWiki (we won't be deprecating the Trac stuff - this will stay as is). I believe that MediaWiki is more professional looking and has a nice separation of documentation and discussion that MoinMoin lacks. I hope that this will result in better wiki content and a more organized site. Moving content by hand will give us all a chance to spruce up the existing content as it moves (and get rid of all the ugly CamelCase page names!).
I expect that it will take another week or so for the rest of the haskell.org pages to move into the new wiki - at that point we'll "flip the switch" and take down the old pages (but not the old wiki yet) and change the main page to point into the MediaWiki. Content that isn't being maintained by Olaf and I will stay as before although I hope that more and more pages will move into the wiki and we won't have to give out accounts to people on haskell.org just to host projects.
The new wiki isn't yet visible from the front page but you can find it at http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell
For you style sheet gurus, the style sheet itself is also in the wiki at
http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/MediaWiki:Quiet.css
If anyone wants to help move the main pages over, drop me an email and I'll coordinate things.
Feel free to start adding stuff to the new wiki. It won't be visible to the outside world immediately but you can get it ready for the switch over.
This isn't a completely "done deal" - there is still time to object to the whole thing or make suggestions. Nothing will be visible to the outside world until we make the switch later. But I believe this will result in a much better site and also make life a lot easier for Olaf and I. (And I apologize to everyone that's asked for updates to haskell.org recently - I've been avoiding them to concentrate on this!).
I'm sure some of the MediaWiki settings still need to be tweaked. Send me mail if something in the configuration of MediaWiki needs to be changed.
A big thanks again to Ashley!
Is there a way to typeset Haskell syntax yet? /S -- Sebastian Sylvan +46(0)736-818655 UIN: 44640862
Sebastian Sylvan wrote:
Is there a way to typeset Haskell syntax yet?
Not yet, but someone could write an extension to do that... <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Extending_wiki_markup> -- Ashley Yakeley
Is there a way to typeset Haskell syntax yet?
Not yet, but someone could write an extension to do that... <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Extending_wiki_markup>
Looks like it would be easy to call out to hscolour: http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/fp/darcs/hscolour provided only that there is some way to call an external (Haskell) program from within PHP? Regards, Malcolm
On Sun, 2006-01-08 at 19:52 -0500, John Peterson wrote:
This isn't a completely "done deal" - there is still time to object to the whole thing or make suggestions. Nothing will be visible to the outside world until we make the switch later. But I believe this will result in a much better site and also make life a lot easier for Olaf and I. (And I apologize to everyone that's asked for updates to haskell.org recently - I've been avoiding them to concentrate on this!).
As far as I understand Simon's proposal, it was not only about 'better' wiki system and that's why I proposed something like Drupal which offers more than a wiki (forums, Collaborative Book, Blogger API support, Content syndication,Web based administration... see http://drupal.org/features), so I wonder what's wrong with Drupal (or some other CMS) and/or if having just a wiki is enough? Sincerely, Gour
The reason that MediaWiki was installed on haskell.org is that people that know how to install and use MediaWiki (Ashley and others) volunteered to do all the work. If we want to move up to Drupal we need someone that is willing to install, maintain, and transfer content. If this is something you want to do let me know. MediaWiki addresses many of the issues we've had with haskell.org but it isn't meant to be the only possible way forward. John
On Mon, 2006-01-09 at 12:51 -0500, John Peterson wrote:
The reason that MediaWiki was installed on haskell.org is that people that know how to install and use MediaWiki (Ashley and others) volunteered to do all the work.
That's fair.
If we want to move up to Drupal we need someone that is willing to install, maintain, and transfer content. If this is something you want to do let me know.
Well, I consider more important to first decide resolve about "why" rather than "how" ("When there is a will, there is a way." :-) i.e. do we need/want CMS like Drupal or not. Then, I'm sure we can sort out how to install it. I personally install some older Drupal on my localhost, but I'm ready to help (both wiki & CMS has to be maintained). By looking at Drupal's site I've noticed that DocBook export module will be in 4.7 (atm in beta3.) and if you check http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/book it sounds interesting (there was lot of talk to e.g. keep DocBook format for GHC). And, as I wrote earlier, CMS brings forums and some other features, it's not just more powered-wiki, so let's decide if we want it...
MediaWiki addresses many of the issues we've had with haskell.org but it isn't meant to be the only possible way forward.
I'm just sorry seeing that lot of time is already invested in transferring the content... Sincerely, Gour
Gour wrote:
Well, I consider more important to first decide resolve about "why" rather than "how" ("When there is a will, there is a way." :-) i.e. do we need/want CMS like Drupal or not. Then, I'm sure we can sort out how to install it. I personally install some older Drupal on my localhost, but I'm ready to help (both wiki & CMS has to be maintained).
Personally I quite like the idea of using a CMS for haskell.org, but there needs to be enough effort available to make it fly and keep it flying, and I just don't see that yet.
By looking at Drupal's site I've noticed that DocBook export module will be in 4.7 (atm in beta3.) and if you check http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/book it sounds interesting (there was lot of talk to e.g. keep DocBook format for GHC).
And, as I wrote earlier, CMS brings forums and some other features, it's not just more powered-wiki, so let's decide if we want it...
I really hate forums. I don't think I'd keep up with forums if we had them. It takes 10 times longer to read a forum than a newsgroup, and since our mailing lists are gated to newsgroups on www.gmane.org, there doesn't seem to be a need for forums too. You can even read & post using a web browser (though it's a bit primitive, I grant you). Windows users have no trouble with newsgroups, because you get a newsreader installed by default with Windows XP (Outlook Express). We should provide instructions for accessing the mailing lists using a newsreader somewhere. Cheers, Simon
On Tue, 2006-01-10 at 17:09 +0000, Simon Marlow wrote:
Personally I quite like the idea of using a CMS for haskell.org, but there needs to be enough effort available to make it fly and keep it flying, and I just don't see that yet.
That is very true, so let's stop taxing our brain with it ;)
I really hate forums. I don't think I'd keep up with forums if we had them. It takes 10 times longer to read a forum than a newsgroup, and since our mailing lists are gated to newsgroups on www.gmane.org, there doesn't seem to be a need for forums too.
My (positive) experience with the forums is that e.g. I can quickly find solution to the problem by searching Gentoo forums, while, otoh, I unsubscribed long ago from Gentoo mailing lists (having too much traffic), so I'm not keeping up with the forums either, but they provide a nice archives for a faq & answers for common problems (e.g. sticky posts etc.)
You can even read & post using a web browser (though it's a bit primitive, I grant you). Windows users have no trouble with newsgroups, because you get a newsreader installed by default with Windows XP (Outlook Express). We should provide instructions for accessing the mailing lists using a newsreader somewhere.
That's a good idea (although, personally, i switched off my newsgroups completely). Sincerely, Gour
participants (22)
-
ajb＠spamcop.net -
Anders Höckersten -
Ashley Yakeley -
Cale Gibbard -
Chris Kuklewicz -
David Menendez -
Duncan Coutts -
Eric Kow -
Glynn Clements -
Gour -
Ian Lynagh -
Jan-Willem Maessen -
Jean-Philippe Bernardy -
John Meacham -
John Peterson -
Ketil Malde -
Malcolm Wallace -
Neil Mitchell -
Sebastian Sylvan -
Simon Marlow -
Udo Stenzel -
Wolfgang Jeltsch