Wiki vs. Wikipedia

[MIG29pilot]

Hi!
I have noticed that many of the aircraft articles in FlightGear lack a lot real and detailed information about the real life aircraft. However, in Wikipedia there is of course a wealth of Information about every aircraft you could imagine. My question is this is the content of Wikipedia, licensed under the Creative Commons License, compatible with FlightGear and the FlightGear wiki?

[Hooray]

please don't just blindly copy wikipedia articles/info over to the fg wiki, if in doubt, add a link using the wikipedia template

thanks

[Johan G]

Also note that license used by Wikipedia, the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA 3.0 Uported), and the one used by the FlightGear wiki, the GNU General Public License, version 2 (GPLv2), are different and not 100% fully compatible, though I unfortunately do not remember the details. I think the GPLv2 license was to permissive to use for CC-BY-SA 3.0 licensed works.

In any case rephrasing and maybe a slight reduction, instead of a verbatim copy, is always a good practice when handling text, regardless of license. (The exception of course being quotes. )

[gsagostinho]

@Johan I think GPLv2 is permissive for CC0 and CC-BY but NOT CC-BY-SA, since "share alike" means sharing using the same license, in which case isn't the GNU license.

[Johan G]

@Gilberto: I think so, but there might be some incompatible clauses in CC-BY (depending on the version of that license). I have read about it, but do not remember for sure, and have not compared the licenses myself.


Just to add some confusion, note that there is there is also a distinction between permissive and restrictive kinds of open source licenses, for example BSD and GPL respectively.

Restrictive open source licenses are often called copyleft licenses. This does in no way imply works under them are not copyrighted, as copyrighting works under them is a necessity if a license should be of any use. In essence if a work is copyrighted, it has an owner who can apply a license and, if needed and possible, enforce it.

Licenses are a legal minefield.

[gsagostinho]

@Gilberto: I think so, but there might be some incompatible clauses in CC-BY (depending on the version of that license).

Sure, you are absolutely correct AFAIK. But my main point was rather that NO version of CC-BY-SA is compatible with GPL. I should have anyway wrote that, for the other licenses, compatibility may depend on the version and even some interpretation of what each license really means (there were huge discussions about it regarding the c172p in the list some time ago).

Licenses are a legal minefield.

Totally!

[Gijs]

Just to re-iterate what's been said before (apart from licensing): the FlightGear wiki is meant to provide FlightGear specific information. Lengthy descriptions about the history of aircraft, (real) development etc. are better of on Wikipedia. It's okay to write a paragraph or two to introduce the aircraft, but for further general information, a link to the corresponding Wikipedia article has more value.

Cheers,
Gijs

[Johan G]

the FlightGear wiki is meant to provide FlightGear specific information. Lengthy descriptions about the history of aircraft, (real) development etc. are better of on Wikipedia. [...] for further general information, a link to the corresponding Wikipedia article has more value.

+1 on that (at least when it comes to aircraft, airports and locations).