Hey everyone! Today we started up a mediawiki instance for the
tildeverse as a whole. Anyone with a tilde account is welcome to join
and contribute.

https://tilde.wiki
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

Cool thanks for setting it up! I'm going to check it out now.
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

James Tomasino <tomasino@cosmic.voyage> wrote:

Hey everyone! Today we started up a mediawiki instance for the
tildeverse as a whole. Anyone with a tilde account is welcome to join
and contribute.

https://tilde.wiki

Nice! Looks like one of the first jobs will be fixing lots of
broken links from where stuff has been copied from other places.

I'm a bit too much of a control freak to get into editing a public
Wiki that much, but one thing I would be keen on is adding the
geographical location of Tilde servers to the "Known Tildes" table
(also, aussies.space is missing). Only it says the auto-generated
list will replace that, so maybe I'd be confusing things, or at
risk of my additions all getting deleted when it changes?
--

- The Free Thinker | gopher://aussies.space/1/%7efreet/
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On Wed, 2 Jun 2021, James Tomasino wrote:

Hey everyone! Today we started up a mediawiki instance for the
tildeverse as a whole. Anyone with a tilde account is welcome to join
and contribute.

https://tilde.wiki

Well, the license could have been better. Is there any particular reason
that a non-free CC-BY-*NC*-SA 4.0 license is imposed for this?

I would consider it, if it used copyleft, or at least using a
Free content [2] license; e.g. Wikipedia-compatible CC-BY-SA 3.0 [1];
although I would not mind other copyleft terms like CC-BY-SA 4.0,
GNU GPL, or even GNU FDL (with no extra options) [3] either;
as long as it was clearly denoted (+which version and which options),
and remain unchanged afterward.

As the Wiki currently stands, I wish you guys luck in this endeavor,
but I cannot -in good consience- participate in this;
so I would just be an onlooker.

Regards,
~xwindows

-----

[1] I edit Wikipedia and post my works on Wikimedia Commons on semi-regular
basis; so I consider the point of Free(dom) content [2],
license compatibilities, and quid pro quo property of copyleft
being important.

[2] https://freedomdefined.org/

[3] I have personally dual-licensed some of my book-length writing works
under GNU FDL before (without using any problematic options of course);
but I do acknowledge problems around its usage with smaller works.
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 2021-06-04, xwindows <xwindows@tilde.club> wrote:

On Wed, 2 Jun 2021, James Tomasino wrote:

Hey everyone! Today we started up a mediawiki instance for the
tildeverse as a whole. Anyone with a tilde account is welcome to join
and contribute.

https://tilde.wiki

Well, the license could have been better. Is there any particular reason
that a non-free CC-BY-*NC*-SA 4.0 license is imposed for this?

I put in the NC because this is a gratis community and use of such
material in commercial works is counter to that mentality. The very idea
that a gratis community's works and contributions could be monotized
without warning hangs a threat of predatory behavior over everything.

It's a shame you won't be contributing.
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 2021-06-04, James Tomasino <tomasino@cosmic.voyage> wrote:

On 2021-06-04, xwindows <xwindows@tilde.club> wrote:

On Wed, 2 Jun 2021, James Tomasino wrote:

Hey everyone! Today we started up a mediawiki instance for the
tildeverse as a whole. Anyone with a tilde account is welcome to join
and contribute.

https://tilde.wiki

Well, the license could have been better. Is there any particular reason
that a non-free CC-BY-*NC*-SA 4.0 license is imposed for this?

I put in the NC because this is a gratis community and use of such
material in commercial works is counter to that mentality.

I had a long conversation today with a friend about NC clauses. I'd
mentioned to him my problems with them and asked for a counter-argument.
We discussed it at length and I'm now less adamant than I was.

Ultimately it comes down to the vagueness of NC and the suprising
effectiveness of SA. I like NC in theory because I don't want
BigMegaCorp to act in a predatory manner by exploiting the free labor of
open source. NC does that, but also is vague enough that it can harm individuals who aren't seeking exploitation and want to engage with it
in an arena that might get caught in the web, like an NGO with donor
funding as an example. SA, on the other hand, has nothing explicit to
say about commercial use, but it represents a threat through virality
that manages to keep many SuperMegaCorps away, thus accidentally
achieving the desired end.

I'm open to removing the NC on tilde.wiki as a result. Now that we have
many contributors I'll bring it up in IRC to get buy-in before making
the change. Honestly, I'm only about 40% satisfied with the result. I
still wish there was a proper way to ensure gratis works stay gratis
without harming use, but it seems there's no good legal mechanism for
it. Whether that's because legal systems are just too wibbly, or because lawyers haven't been paid enough to protect gratis rights, or some other reason, there's a gap there.

I'll probably write more about the philosophical side of this on my
phlog soon, and about how I subscribe to the "betterment of humanity"
aim of open works sharing rather than the libertarian "I can do what I
want" model. More to come.
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113