[Bf-docboard] Wiki content license

[Ivan Paulos Tomé]

Hi !

Here is Ivan Paulos Tomé (Greylica).

I guess the real question we are discussing here is not only about the
contents,
but a question whether other people should or not have the right to copy
the entire
wiki and charge for this service or charge for translating an offline wiki.

Mediawiki is only a media or medium, a paper is also another media and
writers also charge for "their" contents, meaning we have some books with
exact copies of the wiki pages, only with different screenshots, formatting
and reorganization.

Do we have to blame them for plagiarizing the wiki ? No.

Are some of those books being sold through Blender Foundation e-store too ?
Yeah !

Here in Brazil, I have made a running copy of the text contents of the
blenderwiki as
a fork to start another project, but without Nayad Skin, using other codes,
no templates,
no special CSSs.

I have been working not only to reorganize contents, but to update,
reorganize and
 translate this fork, in which I have been working to provide good
documentation for Brazilian people and possibly Portuguese people too, with
Blender in Portuguese.

One of the goals of this project is to create, update, improve and help,
not to copy or "plagiarize".

In fact, I have been copying my own blenderwiki pages as a starting point
too. :)
I have no problems with others doing the same, but their goal could be
different than mine.

I have plans to charge, not for the contents of the Banana wiki, not for
the connection,
but for the project maintenance, in which I have also, future plans to
start converting
some of the documents back to the blenderwiki and free great part of the
documentation
 when the project is mature enough. It's a question of how to find a point
between public and
private services, but also a point on how to really help Blender ecosystem.

Nowadays, Banana wiki is getting so different than the blenderwiki,
that some friends said that I'm rewriting a manual from the scracth,
 so most of the OPL doesn't apply anymore...

I must say that I have been writing contents for blenderwiki since 2009,
and between
 2010 and 2011, I have made 98% of the translations of the 2.4x project,
and
I have at least 15~20 pages in the main project. I saw other people using
parts
of the work I have done to teach Blender, copying modifying, etc.
I have no problem at all with this.

When I signed the blenderwiki for the first time, It was a GNU/GPL project,
so I have no problem at all with copies, forks and other based projects.
I was, and I'm aware that the contents I have been writing for blenderwiki
are "Public Domain".

Put the sticker "OPL and GNU/Free" on every page :)

But this flexibility was about to raise ethical and moral questions sooner
or later.

We can't say for sure that their project is aimed to help Blender
Foundation,
and to lend a hand with Blender Foundation and Blender Institute, like the
Banana
Project is meant for since its beginning. The Banana project aims to
provide a full
documentation capable of receiving an approval as a certification material,
and
my plan is to continue working with Blender and for Blender.

It's love :)

Cheers !
Sorry for the long e-mail.

Ivan Paulos Tomé.
Greylica.
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