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How can the license for text be changed to the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license retrospectively? Doesn't the old license apply in perpetuity? If not, shouldn't we take the opportunity to change it to a CC-NC license? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:47, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

• @Hawkeye7: as I understand it, the reason for changing the ToU now is that several small changes to it have been proposed and tentatively accepted, but that going thru the ToU process is daunting enough that they decided to wait until something big came along to make one big change rather than several little ones. The two big things now are UCoC and the new European law. The tentative decision for changing to CC BY-SA 4.0 was made all the way back in 2016(!) by an !vote of 319-92 in favor. This is at m:Talk:Terms of use/Creative Commons 4.0 where the FAQ says:

How can we "upgrade" the license?

If we choose to amend the Terms of Use, the 4.0 version of the license will apply to new edits submitted to Wikimedia projects. After a page has been edited, it can be reused under the latest version of the license according to the attribution requirements in the Terms of Use. Revisions of pages before the upgrade to the 4.0 version will continue to be available under the version 3.0 of the license.

• I'll let WMF legal correct me if I misunderstood. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:22, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
  • Here's a description of the change which should help. m:Terms_of_use/Creative_Commons_4.0/Diff
  • But the best way will be to ask the question over here when discussion opens m:Wikimedia Foundation Legal department/2023 ToU updates/Proposed update Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:49, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

    The key change here is the passage about volunteers waiving their "Sui Generis Database Rights". This is the reason this move was delayed for so long.

    The way Wikidata has been harvesting data from Wikipedia arguably constitutes a licence infringement, and this would have been even more clearly the case under the 4.0 licence:

    In particular, the fact that sui generis database rights are not explicitly covered by the 3.0 unported licenses has led to confusion in jurisdictions that recognize those rights. Version 4.0 removes any doubt, pulling applicable sui generis rights squarely within the scope of the license unless explicitly excluded by the licensor. It also allows database providers to use the CC licenses to explicitly license those rights. Andreas JN466 09:07, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

• Do we think our pages relating to attribution – such as WP:Copyrights#Re-use of text (policy), WP:Copying within Wikipedia (guideline), and WP:Attribution does not require blame (essay) – will need to be updated? My guess is that they will not because 7.b. Attribution is not being changed per m:Terms of use/Creative Commons 4.0 and m:Terms of use/Creative Commons 4.0/Diff. m:Terms of use/Creative Commons 4.0/Legal note does include a point about Updated attribution. @MLauba and Moneytrees: You commented briefly on the distinction between 3.0 and 4.0 at WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive340#Revdel on Himachal Pradesh (January 2022, Ctrl-F CC-BY-SA 4.0). Any thoughts? This question should be asked at the Meta page, but I am gauging concern here first. Flatscan (talk) 05:38, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

  @Flatscan as far as I can the only real change is the "reasonable for the context" portion of "Updated attribution", which I see as saying that a hyperlink/URL is not specifically needed for attribution. I believe there's some pages that specify that a hyperlink to wherever you're copying from is needed for attribution, but in practice that hasn't always been followed and the "reasonable for the context" is closer to the actual use. So when the change goes into effect, guidelines referring to that could be changed. Moneytrees🏝️(Talk) 17:32, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks for your reply. Since we believe there are no major changes, I will not follow up. Flatscan (talk) 05:27, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

I love that you asked ChatGPT for a statement, and it's AI-generated opinion seems pretty spot-on! WaggersTALK 09:42, 21 February 2023 (UTC)