Free Culture: FSF updates GNU FDL, what a change!
The Free Software Foundation on Monday announced the release of version 1.3 of the GNU Free Documentation License. The new version of the GNU FDL allows public wikis like Wikipedia to relicense their FDL-covered materials under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) 3.0 license.
This new permission has been added at the request of the Wikimedia Foundation, which oversees the Wikipedia project. The same terms are available to any public wiki that uses materials available under the new license. The Wikimedia Foundation will now initiate a process of community discussion and voting to determine whether or not to use CC-BY-SA 3.0 as the license for Wikipedia.
Lawrence Lessig positively comments the news:
TheFree Software Foundation has released the GNU Free Document License version 1.3. Section 11 of that license now (essentially) permits certain wikis to be relicensed under theCreative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (v3.0)license, so long as the relicensing is completed by August 1, 2009. That means, the Wikipedia community now has the choice to relicense Wikipedia under a Creative Commons license. (Here’s the FAQ for the amendment.
This is definitely an important change, I hope we will see more cooperation in the next future between the free software movement and the open source initiative.
Great move Richard!
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