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Change of default license for Wikinews to CC-BY-4.0 and for fawikinews and svwikinews to CC-BY-SA-4.0 on January 30, 2025
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Description

Wikinews would like to change the default license to CC-BY-4.0 on January 30, 2025. At the same time a few Wikinewses need another license (as specified below).

The change was discussed on the RfC on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Update_standard_license_for_Wikinews
There were also votes/discussions on every Wikinews (including those in Incubator).
There are links to all the 60+ discussions listed on Meta. I hope I do not have to add them all here :-)

@matmarex can you perhaps check if this request will require any other edits in the WikimediaMessages etc. like on T383338: Check/fix/cleanup licenses on Wikinewses january 2025?

When the standard license is changed to CC-BY-4.0 perhaps you would prefer to remove the lines for the Wikinewses that have that license set directly. For example per T381421: Change default license on en.wikinews, pl.wikinews and he.wikinews to cc-by-4.0 on December 16, 2024.

Summary of changes

  1. change default from 2.5 to 4.0
  2. add exception for de and ru to make sure they keep 2.5
  3. change fa and sv to CC-BY-SA-4.0
  4. remove lines that will be redundant (en, he, nl, pl, pt and ro)

Changes in 'wgRightsUrl'

From: 'wikinews' => 'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/',
To: 'wikinews' => 'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/',

Add:
'dewikinews' => 'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/',
'fawikinews' => 'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/',
'ruwikinews' => 'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/',
'svwikinews' => 'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/',

Remove (if you wish to keep code short):
'enwikinews' => 'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/',
'hewikinews' => 'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/',
'nlwikinews' => 'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/',
'plwikinews' => 'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/',
'ptwikinews' => 'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/',
'rowikinews' => 'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/',

Changes in 'wgRightsText'

From: 'wikinews' => 'Creative Commons Attribution 2.5',
To: 'wikinews' => 'Creative Commons Attribution 4.0',

Add:
'dewikinews' => 'Creative Commons Attribution 2.5',
'fawikinews' => 'Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0',
'ruwikinews' => 'Creative Commons Attribution 2.5',
'svwikinews' => 'Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0',

Remove (if you wish to keep code short):
'enwikinews' => 'Creative Commons Attribution 4.0',
'hewikinews' => 'Creative Commons Attribution 4.0',
'nlwikinews' => 'Creative Commons Attribution 4.0',
'plwikinews' => 'Creative Commons Attribution 4.0',
'ptwikinews' => 'Creative Commons Attribution 4.0',
'rowikinews' => 'Creative Commons Attribution 4.0',

Event Timeline

Setting project to Wikimedia-Site-requests, as this request is about settings / configuration of a Wikimedia website.

@matmarex can you perhaps check if this request will require any other edits in the WikimediaMessages etc. like on T383338: Check/fix/cleanup licenses on Wikinewses january 2025?

It looks like all of the licenses are already defined, so no more edits to WikimediaMessages are needed.

I think these lines in your plan have a mistake:

'fawikinews' => 'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/',
'svwikinews' => 'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/',
'fawikinews' => 'Creative Commons Attribution 4.0',
'svwikinews' => 'Creative Commons Attribution 4.0',

Since you wrote "3. change fa and sv to CC-BY-SA-4.0", but these lines describe the CC BY license (not CC BY-SA).

They should probably be like this instead:

'fawikinews' => 'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/',
'svwikinews' => 'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/',
'fawikinews' => 'Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0',
'svwikinews' => 'Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0',

I think these lines in your plan have a mistake:

...

@matmarex YES!!! You are right. Happy you saw it! I updated the task.

Also thank you to @Aklapper for adding the project Wikimedia-Site-request that I forgot to add.

@Lolekek or @DreamRimmer you have helped out fixing licenses on Wikinews earlier. Can one of you help here too? Sorry to bother you but since deadline is the deadline January 30, 2025 is getting close I really hope you have time.

Change #1114382 had a related patch set uploaded (by Dreamrimmer; author: Dreamrimmer):

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Changed default license for Wikinews to CC-BY-4.0 and for fawikinews and svwikinews to CC-BY-SA-4.0

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1114382

Change #1114382 merged by jenkins-bot:

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Changed default license for Wikinews to CC-BY-4.0 and for fawikinews and svwikinews to CC-BY-SA-4.0

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1114382

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-01-27T14:40:19Z] <zabe@deploy2002> Started scap sync-world: T384614 T183490

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-01-27T14:57:26Z] <zabe@deploy2002> sync-world aborted: T384614 T183490 (duration: 17m 07s)

@MGA73: The changes are live now. There was a backport window right after I uploaded this patch, so I went ahead and scheduled it, and it has now been merged. I initially forgot about the deadline but doing it four days early shouldn’t be an issue since the RfC was already closed on 22 January.

Please check all the licenses and let me know if you spot any issues. I am keeping this task open for now, so feel free to mark it as resolved once you’ve reviewed everything.

I think there are some issues with the deployment (not with this patch). It is not 100% merged because the deployer had to abort it, so please do not close this task until the patch is fully merged.

Hi @DreamRimmer thank you! It looks correct to me. You can close it if you also agree things look right. You can also close T382649: Change license on ptwikinews, nlwikinews and rowikinews to cc-by-4.0. I think that if I close it I will be the owner and you were the one that did the work.

I cannot see where this was coordinated with WMF legal. Though obviously they approved the change from 2.5 to 4.0 I do not see an approval to a.) change to CC-BY-SA and b), I don't see that they have or would apprive that different language version would use different license on their own will. CC-BY-SA is not usable within CC-BY so FR AR and SV and the other perhaps following suite Wikinewses' contents cannot be reused, for example in translations within language languages.

For example: FR to AR allowed. FR to EN strictly forbidden. from EN to DE allowed though we're hanging back on 2.5. In the past translating wasn*t a big thing but this might change with upcooming AI faciliating translations dramatically. Here was created a wholly mess.

I believe that WMF legal ever thought about that the different language communities would act in this way by clustering in a way which people unsure in proper licensing might get into problems. This should be stopped and totally redone with only one identical license for all language versions based on a new, formal RfC which is properly announced in all language versions. It was User:MGA73 on 12:27, 31. Dez. 2024 (CET) who firstly informed the German comuniy on :meta:Requests for comment/Update standard license for Wikinews. (Sorry, don't know how to set Wikilink her.)

Just as info I first wrote on German Wikinews on December 18, 2024: https://de.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Pressestammtisch#c-MGA73-20241218164800-Informationen_zum_Vorschlag_auf_Meta_zur_%C3%84nderung_der_Standardlizenz_f%C3%BCr_Wikin (the same day the RfC was started)

WMF Legal have commented on the change of license on https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:2024_Copyright_license_upgrade/contact-legal and https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews_talk:2024_Copyright_license_upgrade#Contact_legal_to_request_input

I think the first Wikinews to get a different license was Hungarian Wikinews that originally used GFDL but changed to CC-BY-3.0 in August 2009 per T21941: Hungarian Wikinews Licence Change

Next wiki was Arabic Wikinews that on August 19 2024 changed to CC-BY-SA-4.0 per T372730: Update content license for Arabic Wikinews to CC BY-SA 4.0

The question if it is a good or bad idea to have different licenses belong on Meta or Wikinews and not here I think.