Copyright of MediaWiki screenshots

''This whole document and every sentence of it do not constitute legal advice and contain no claim about expertise in legal affaits. It is specifically declared that any opinions about legal matters contained here is most probably totally incorrect either because it was not written by experts or because it was a volunteering effort with no real attempt to produce any kind of useful advice, and therefore anything contained in this page is provided "as is" and you use it at your own risk.''

This page is a collaborative essay. It was written by a single author, but you are welcome to contribute to it, so don't be afraid to be bold and give us your thoughts as well (this doesn't mean that the original author necessarily agrees with your modifications).

Recently it came to the original author of this page's attention that it is possible that a software screenshot can be considered a copyrighted work. If that's true then it would be a good idea to think about what this means for screenshots of MediaWiki wikis. The purpose of this page, therefore, is to examine questions regarding the copyright of screenshots showing MediaWiki's user interface.

The notion of copyrightability of screenshots is not totally foreign, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenshot#Copyright_issues and http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/pdfs/screenshotscopyright.rtf

MediaWiki is covered by the GPL version 2 or later version licence, which says:
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Of course, in practice, some people probably just follow the spirit of the GPL and free software rather than the letter of it or one's own interpretations of it, and trust that we are a community of people believing that information must be free and that the GPL is just an instrument to prevent greedy people outside our community (or bad members of our community) from exclusively appropriating our free work. These people would probably just take a screenshot and claim that it is public domain, CC-BY, or under other licence, and hope that their actions are not seen as appropriation. However, some people may prefer to be totally certain that what they do will never be objected by anyone, and these people may find it very hard to take screenshots of their wikis under this interpretation.

Therefore, it is suggested to make the life easier for people wanting to be assured about what their rights are regarding their screenshots showing bits of MediaWiki's skins and rendering. We can do so if people who participate in MediaWiki development make a discussion about what they believe is acceptable usage of screenshots containing parts of MediaWiki's user interface.

It is possible that different MediaWiki copyright holders may have different ideas about screenshots, or in some cases they may have never thought about this issue before. Possibly we can categorise the various ideas one can have on this issue in the following broad categories:
 * If the software is GPL, all screenshots of it must be GPL
 * The software can be GPL, but screenshots of it can be licensed by their creator under any terms (including public domain) as a whole screenshots, but if an identifiable user interface element is cropped out from the screenshot (by the user or another person) then it must be considered GPLed. ie this means that individual user interface elements are always GPLed (eg icons), but a screenshot as a whole can be under another licence, but the moment someone separates an individual user interface element from the screenshot then standard GPL applies. (I have no idea whether this makes any sense per the wording of the GPL or any law, it's just an idea)
 * The user must have unlimited freedom to create/use/distribute screenshots in any way and any licence they want

(if you can think of other possibilities, include them above)

Discussion
Raw discussion at Talk:Copyright of MediaWiki screenshots. This page may be better utilised as a place to post distillations/insights/summaries from the discussion to help users decide what they can do with their screenshots.