about the option to reference the license with a link to a URL

Evan Prodromou evan at wikitravel.org
Fri Jan 16 00:47:31 EST 2004


>>>>> "p" == pinna  <pinna at autistici.org> writes:

    FSF> (...) we strongly urge you to reject the option to reference
    FSF> the license with a link to a URL. You cannot take for granted
    FSF> that the same URL will still function ten years from now; fifty
    FSF> years from now, URLs as they exist today may be entirely
    FSF> obsolete.

On the other hand, it's also kind of unreasonable to assume that the
Free Software Foundation will have the same postal address in 50
or even 10 years -- if it exists then at all.

I think it would be fair to say that the people who have made an
investment in the Creative Commons licenses will do what it takes to
make sure that URL continues to function as long as possible.

As to whether URLs will still be around in 50 years: I doubt it.
However, the problem is so general -- it presents such an information
management problem for the entire World Wide Web -- that I'm sure that
we'll figure out a way to make URLs retrievable from some kind of
archive in the future.

We use a CC license for Wikitravel _primarily_ because of the URL
provision. It makes distributing small documents in print form
feasible.

        http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Why_Wikitravel_isn't_GFDL

~ESP

-- 
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
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