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GFDL concerns: Difference between revisions
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==Guaranteeing public access in perpetuity== | ==Guaranteeing public access in perpetuity== | ||
Another problem is the permanence of the retention and public access to the material. The concept that participating in [[GNU Free Documentation License]] (GFDL) projects entices contributors with is, your work will become part of the common [[:Category: | Another problem is the permanence of the retention and public access to the material. The concept that participating in [[GNU Free Documentation License]] (GFDL) projects entices contributors with is, your work will become part of the common [[:Category:Heritage|heritage]] of [[:Category:Humans|mankind]]. And in the case of a big project like [[:Category:Wikipedia|Wikipedia]], with many [[mirror]]s, and an openly published unified download, with and without history details, this hope appears to have a firm basis. But at the other extreme are small [[wiki]]s run by a single individual with no technical expertise, who simply relies on the website host to make internal backups. The material could easily be lost. The GFDL merely guarantees that the public could make backup copies, but does not guarantee than anyone actually does, or that such copies will actually be made public in case the original source disappears. | ||
A related problem is that although the GFDL incorporates the concept of public, practical access to transparent computer files of the material, there does not seem to be a specific requirement to publish a unified database file of the entire GFDL material on a website, and few sites other than [[:Category:Wikipedia|Wikipedia]] offer such a public download. So, although a GFDL webpage may in theory be copiable, few would wish to hassle with spidering an entire website to collect all of the GFDL material, and most websites would take technical measures to slow or thwart such spidering. In cases where [[:Category:Wiki Creative Commons|Creative Commons]] (CC), GFDL, and other material is intermixed on a website, it might be impossible to automatically gather just the GFDL material externally. | A related problem is that although the GFDL incorporates the concept of public, practical access to transparent computer files of the material, there does not seem to be a specific requirement to publish a unified database file of the entire GFDL material on a website, and few sites other than [[:Category:Wikipedia|Wikipedia]] offer such a public download. So, although a GFDL webpage may in theory be copiable, few would wish to hassle with spidering an entire website to collect all of the GFDL material, and most websites would take technical measures to slow or thwart such spidering. In cases where [[:Category:Wiki Creative Commons|Creative Commons]] (CC), GFDL, and other material is intermixed on a website, it might be impossible to automatically gather just the GFDL material externally. | ||