Tim Starling wrote:
> On 18/09/11 21:01, Bram Moolenaar wrote:
> > [Name?]
> >
> >> Some people use Vim to edit Wikipedia articles, and probably also to edit
> >> other
> >> wikis that use also the MediaWiki backend software. Would you please
> >> accept the
> >> MediaWiki syntax file into Vim?
> >>
> >> It's at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_editor_support#Vim in
> >> the
> >> first gray box.
> >>
> >> I didn't write it. I would appreciate it very much if you'd please paste a
> >> second copy of your comments at the very bottom of
> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Text_editor_support . Just
> >> click
> >> the "+" tab at the top of the page. No registration required.
> >>
> >> In case it matters, the MediaWiki syntax file is probably dual-licensed.
> >> You
> >> can probably use it under your choice of:
> >>
> >> * the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, or
> >> * the GNU Free Documentation License (unversioned, with no invariant
> >> sections,
> >> front-cover texts, or back-cover texts).
> > The file says: Published on Wikipedia in 2003-04 and declared authorless.
> >
> > That means there is no copyright statement and thus this file can't be
> > copied.
> >
> > Can the author please come forward, add a maintainer to the header, so
> > that we can include this in the distribution? I don't add files unless
> > there is a maintainer.
> >
> > What's this thing with anonymous writings? Are you afraid to tell your
> > mum you are using Vim and like it?
>
> I wrote that "authorless" comment on the original version of that
> file, which I uploaded to Wikipedia in June 2003. It was a riff on
> Wikipedia's article ownership policy:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ownership_of_articles
>
> But by "published on Wikipedia", I meant to imply that it was released
> under Wikipedia's normal license, which was GFDL at the time, and is
> now CC-BY-SA. It's been edited substantially since then.
> Reconstructing the full author list would be non-trivial since it's
> part of a larger article on Wikipedia.
The problem is that if no author is mentioned, then no matter what
copyright license is mentioned it can't be copied. That is because only
the author can grant copyright, and if the author is unknown that means
nothing can be granted.
In the case of wikipedia the author can be considered "the wikipedia
editors" as a collective. Quite a few open source projects have started
doing this to avoid having to list the names of all authors. This does
require agreeing to something, I don't know the details.
> I can't vouch for the quality of it. The quality of the original
> version was certainly not good enough to warrant inclusion.
Well, let's await someone to claim maintainership then.
--
Shift happens.
-- Doppler
/// Bram Moolenaar -- [email protected] -- http://www.Moolenaar.net \\\
/// sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\
\\\ an exciting new programming language -- http://www.Zimbu.org ///
\\\ help me help AIDS victims -- http://ICCF-Holland.org ///
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