HaskellWiki:Community

Some useful pages: haskell.org, All Pages, External style sheet

Please copy stuff over from hawiki only if you own the copyright to it or it's licensed under the GNU FDL. Actually, don't at all until we've settled on a license. —Ashley Y 01:14, 9 January 2006 (EST)

Which license?

• GFDL 1.2?
• Creative Commons?
• GPL?
• OPL?
• BSD?
• Public Domain?

GFDL is more convenient if we wish to import material from Wikipedia. Most Haskell library code is available under BSD. Opinions? —Ashley Y 01:14, 9 January 2006 (EST)

I think the content has to be such that it is easy to add things to Haskell implementations and libraries. As fptools and GHC are under the BSD3 license having the wiki with a more restrictive license can create problems. --EinarKarttunen 03:12, 9 January 2006 (EST)

There's a quick discussion of the various licenses at LWN.

I'll just note that if we start with a very liberal license, it can be tightened later. If we start with a restrictive license, there is no such option (short of contacting every author (or their heirs), and having them agree to it).

I don't care much for the FDL, it is too complex, and it's hard to grok how to deal with invariant sections, authorship (you are required to list at least five for derived works) etc.

I notice it is possible to interpret the wiki as a collection of independent works (see Udo Stenzel's recent post on the haskell list) - which wreaks havoc on any scheme requiring attribution. If so, I agree PD is probably less hassle.

(Of course, this assumes we are in a jurisdiction where PD is a meaningful concept - this excludes at least some European countries. I can't imagine this being a problem in reality, but perhaps there should be a textual note with a bit more detail?)

--User:Ketil

I've never heard of OPL, but have heard of the others, so perhaps OPL is too obscure. I would go for either public domain or BSD.

--NeilMitchell 07:06, 9 January 2006 (EST)

People have started contributing huge amounts of text. It may be too late... —Ashley Y 12:52, 9 January 2006 (EST)

I vote for public domain. I'm no license expert but I basically think that code in public manuals and the like should be completely free of any type of restrictions. You want to include it in your open-source app? Fine! You want to include it in your comercial multi-million dollar application? Fine! It's not like a wiki page will include large quantities of truly valuable intellectual property anyways, so less probably is more here. Why make it more complicated than it needs to be when it's likely it will have little or no practical consequences? Like someone said, if something is more restrictive then it can be flagged as such, or linked from the wiki to some other location. --SebastianSylvan 13:02, 9 January 2006 (EST)

Public Domain straw poll

Should we switch the license to public domain?

• Yes, or BSD —Ashley Y 15:17, 9 January 2006 (EST)
• Yes --NeilMitchell 13:28, 9 January 2006 (EST)
• Yes, or BSD/CC-AT —Twanvl 13:30, 9 January 2006 (EST)
• Yes, or BSD —CaleGibbard 13:45, 9 January 2006 (EST)
• Yes, or BSD --EinarKarttunen 13:47, 9 January 2006 (EST)
• Yes --SebastianSylvan 15:57, 9 January 2006 (EST)
• Yes, or anything GFDL-compatible -- EricKow 16:49, 9 January 2006 (EST)

Just to clarify, this would mean by contributing, you agree to release everything to public domain with no option to reserve any rights. —Ashley Y 14:18, 9 January 2006 (EST)

Wouldn't that forbid contributions by anyone who can't put things in the public domain? It's not clear that you can do so in the USA, for example. Further, it would mean we couldn't use code from more strictly licensed sources, such as the Haskell 98 Report or the GHC documentation. Neither could we post snippets of the common Haskell libraries as material for discussion. —Brian Sniffen

What licenses do the Haskell 98 report and the GHC documentation use? —Ashley Y 15:52, 9 January 2006 (EST)

Couldn't the copyright notice say "All content is considered to be in the public domain unless stated otherwise" or something like that? So if someone posts something which is BSD, they just say "The following code is made available under the BSD license". --SebastianSylvan 16:02, 9 January 2006 (EST)

And then you'll have little bits of the wiki available under different licenses. Someone might take my little snippet of code, modify it, turn it into GPL, and then I can't use my original snippet.--NeilMitchell 16:45, 9 January 2006 (EST)