Extensions with no license
Should we be actively archiving extensions with no license provided? Does it present a copyright problem similar to the ones faced by Wikimedia Commons?
I'd hesitate to extend Wikimedia Commons restrictions on licensing to other projects; do keep in mind that even material which is perfectly valid in Wikipedia itself (such as the logo of a company appearing on the encyclopaedia page about that company, proprietary but fair use) is banned from Commons.
There are a few cases in which what appears to be an extension is merely a MediaWiki-like wrapper placed around some existing third-party API. This is true of extensions to check Akismet (a Wordpress spambot blacklist) or other lists to check spambots. The externally-supplied API isn't ours to force some arbitrary license onto, however much some contributors here seem to swear by commercial versions of licences like GPL, GFDL, CC-BY-SA which serve to feed your free content to every scraper site on the planet to be mangled and plastered with ads.
This already raises an issue with the current {{extension code in wiki}} crusade in that we cannot check the whole package (extension wrapper + third-party base API) into Git/SVN/whatever as the API isn't ours to re-license. We have every right to call the API from our open-source code (that's what it's there for) but it might not explicitly specify any license terms beyond that. Either we check in just a wrapper (which is problematic if the originating site stops distributing the API later, leaving just a hollow shell in the Git repository) or we keep these out of the version control system entirely.
Nonetheless, I don't agree that they deserve to be pulled from the site. We are using the third-party API as its authors intended by calling it from our code; most often, that site will link back to us in their FAQ to indicate "this is what you do to get this working on MediaWiki".
If the vague licensing terms (here's a third-party API, possibly as source code, and whomever created it invites you to wrap your code around it but specifies no specific license beyond that) upset you, perhaps the third-party site could be approached about distributing the MediaWiki extension "wrapper" with the API instead of it being hosted here.
Killing good code just because Wikimedia Commons is CC-BY-SA and thinks that specific license should be forced onto every website on the planet is a bit much, though.
I'm not suggesting the two sites are similar or related. I'm asking, from a legal perspective, are the concerns faced by other WMF projects in regards to hosting content with no licensing. Commons is the example that first came to mind, but in general I'm speaking of the issue faced by all the projects WMF hosts - including MW.org.
Not even getting into the topic of should we house it - I'm asking - technically (legally) - are we really able to at all anyway?
Also, I'm not sure what your dig is on the extension in code template. There's no crusade either, lol. This is starting to sound like cabal talk. There are 2-3 new templates being placed in several places. Efforts to help communication with sysadmins I suppose could be seen as a crusade...but I'm still at a lose for why it should be discouraged. :/
Legally? If the source code was posted by the author to the wiki, it can remain on the wiki under whatever licence (GFDL or CC-BY-SA) was in use at the time it was posted.
If you want to move the code elsewhere, then the original license and attribution must be retained. That may mean we have (if not otherwise indicated) bits of programme code under what was intended to be a documentation license - but that's not the same as unlicensed code.
I think the WMF needs to take ownership of anything submitted, and should consider rejecting anything not released that way.
Specifically, anything donated to the WMF should become property of the WMF to release however it chooses. Then, the donator can specify some license they prefer, or inform the WMF that the donation is already infected with a self-propagating license. In the case of license preferences, the WMF can re-release under GPL, BSD, MIT, CC, Public Domain, or all of those, depending on the non-binding wishes of the donator. For things with a self-propagating license, the list of acceptable licenses should be restricted to the ones already widely accepted and understood.
Having license control means the WMF can release according to the maximum public benefit, and it helps to prevent license proliferation. In addition, it allows the WMF to change licenses if some legal issue is imposed that requires it.
I agree with WMF taking ownership of content posted. So by that - could we then just assign GPL to any extensions that don't currently list a license?
I'm not too opposed to GPL licensing, since it's so well understood and widely accepted, but I think it might be better to make it public domain, like we're already doing for Help:Contents documentation that is meant to be planted into every MediaWiki install (if desired). Making unspecified contributions public domain by default:
- Assumes nothing.
- Imposes nothing.
- Can be changed later, if needed.
In short, if a contribution does not come with any specific licensing restrictions, there's no reason impose any. But, with that said, I think just choosing SOMETHING is better than just leaving it an orphan that everyone is afraid to use because it might turn into an intellectual property minefield.
