millosh's blog

Anarchopedia changed its license

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 02:04:00 +0000

First of all, anarchists don't care about licenses. Because of that, one month of discussion and voting didn't pass with a lot of discussions. Actually, some of the most active members of the community didn't discuss and didn't vote. I didn't vote, too, but it is because I didn't want to influence others.

At the beginning I thought that we have the next options:

Stay at GFDL
Switch to Wikipedia licensing
Switch to Wikipedia licensing with a possibility of importing GFDL texts
Switch to the straight dual licensing
Switch to the straight dual licensing with a possibility to import GFDL and CC-BY-SA texts
Switch to CC-BY-SA

Actually, my mind is so strong inside of the licensing issues that I totally forgot that there are a couple of other options. (I have to think about this problem.)

So, I was thinking that the best option is to switch to the straight dual licensing, while Wikipedia-like licensing would be the most pragmatic approach. (However, again, even two community members voted for the straight dual licensing, I didn't express my opinion.)

But, fortunately, there are anarchists inside of the community :) and we've got the option "Switch to multiple licensing / public domain". At the first moment, I didn't understand that, so I said that this solution is not possible. However, in brief, this proposal is about per-page licensing, as well as that Anarchopedia by default realizes its content under the public domain or attribution-only terms (depending of jurisdiction).

We had a clause that we'll switch our licensing just in case if Wikimedia community switch its licensing. However, during the discussion, it became obviously that the most of the community is willing to change the licensing terms.

The conclusion of the decision making process is:

Anarchopedia used the right described inside of the GNU Free Documentation License 1.3 to release its content under CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported license, too.
Anarchopedia is switching to per page licensing, which may include any acceptably licensed material for the work based on wiki system.
License change is valid since April 22nd, 2009, no matter what Wikimedia community would decide. Almost all of the participants expressed will to switch the licensing terms no matter what Wikimedia community would decide.
If not stated opposite at the page, all contributions by editors of Anarchopedia are under public domain (for Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions) or under attribution-only terms (for Continental jurisdictions).
As previous conditions will be valid for all Anarchopedia content, any editor of the content may mark article which he or she previously edited as licensed under GFDL and CC-BY-SA.
Any editor may mark her or his new content as licensed under any acceptable license if it is not in collision with previously declared per page license.

Acceptable licensing terms by preference for Anarchopedia are:

Public domain / attribution-only (depending of jurisdiction). This is Anarchopedia default. If you don't put any license template at article in which you contributed, article will be published under those conditions.
Attribution-only forced. We may use and create content explicitly licensed under attribution-only terms of use or under some license which defines it. Such licenses are, for example, CC-BY, GNU Lesser General Public License and BSD Revised License.
Copyleft license. Examples of copyleft licenses are GNU Free Documentation License, Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License, GNU General Public License and so on. In brief, such licensing allows any kind of usage, distribution and modification of the content while the content stays under the same license.
Solidarity terms. "Solidarity terms" mean that the content may be used just by a particular group related to anarchists and Anarchopedia. We may adopt materials which may be used just by anarchists, socialists, anti-authoritarians and so on.
Non-commercial attribution-only licenses. We may use non-commercial content as Anarchopedia is not a commercial project. The example for such licenses is Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License.
Non-commercial share-alike licenses. We may use this type of licenses, too. The example of such licenses is Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike license.
Anarchopedia only. This is the bottom of the sum of acceptable licenses.

All interested persons may join us in discussion about the final form of the terms of use of the content at the page License.

And a couple of my personal notes:

Anarchists are not a part of the free culture movement. Free culture is defined by licenses and licenses are the part of state system.
I even think that "free culture" term is an oxymoronic one. There is no free culture. Every culture defines its own rules, which is lowering freedom. Of course, I am not against culture, but I, simply, think that "free culture" is a similar phrase to "free prison". There are no such things.
Yes, it is better to have non-proprietary knowledge than proprietary knowledge. As well as capitalism is better than feudalism or slavery. However, licensed knowledge and capitalism are just far away of anarchist political positions.
And, inside of current social organization I think that the best option for one anarchist project is to choose the most pragmatic one.

Without any change

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 15:10:00 +0000

To be honest, I expected much more from Obama. Sending 20,000 more marines to Afganistan is everything but change in militaristic foreign policy.

Inauguration censorship

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 04:53:00 +0000

Photo-montage below is censored at Facebook. Very good beginning for the new US president.

Let 3: Dijete u vremenu & Šaban Šaulić: Dođi da ostarimo zajedno

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:50:00 +0000

One more song from Let 3, a modern rock band from Rijeka, Croatia.

For the first part of the context you should know that the song is based on the song of Šaban Šaulić, a famous folk singer from former Yugoslavia:

The other parts of the context you may guess.

Of course, maybe you missed my previous post with another song made by Let 3.

Let 3: Tazi, Tazi

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 13:31:00 +0000

Song "Tazi, Tazi" by modern rock band Let 3 from Rijeka, Croatia. Enjoy :)

Robert L. Patrick: Operating Systems at Conception

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 22:50:00 +0000

Contribution to the history of computing: Robert L. Patrick's text Operating Systems at Conception.

Typewriting as a new evolutionary step

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 19:49:00 +0000

(Before the beginning: I was surprised when I realized a couple of minutes ago that there is no article about typewriting on Wikipedia in English. It is a redirect to typewriter. Maybe I am missing something because English is not my native language.)

NetworkWorld brings IBM's five predictions for the next five years. By accident, these weeks I am preparing a text about just one big improvement which we will get in the next five years and which will change our lives a lot. Some of IBM's predictions are very close to mine. And, indeed, it is not about prophecy, it is about rationally analyzing current trends.

However, I think that one part of their predictions is a field for not so brilliant speculations, which proves this Slashdot article.

As someone educated in linguistics, claims that listening the Web will substitute reading it or that written communication (especially chats) will be substituted with communication by voice -- seems to me at least as not well informed speculation. Keyboard will become past at the moment when computers would be able to have read-write access to our brain. Not earlier, but maybe much later.

Did you ever try to talk (by voice) separately with more persons at once (like talking with someone in person and with other by phone)? What are your impressions? With how many persons you are able to talk at once and to be able to have more sensible conversation than just arguing? For me, separate spoken conversations with even two persons is stressful enough. (I want just to mention here that even speech recognition is an issue which is far from being solved.)

And now, repeat previous questions for communication via instant messaging. While number of separate conversation via IM has limits, having two separate conversations is not so hard. If you are just talking, you would be able to handle maybe up to five separate conversations, but I am sure that young persons are able to have even more of them.

We are not thinking a lot about our everyday tasks, situations, technologies. If we are able to use Internet, we are not asking ourselves often what our parents did without Internet and what Internet changed in our lives. We are not asking ourselves even what our grandparents and grand-grandparents were doing without electricity. We are not asking ourselves often how many days one ordinary person had to spend to travel 300km and back without cars and highways.

We are not asking ourselves about consequences of typewriting, too.

Ten years ago, when I wanted to teach someone to work with computers, I had to spend significant amount of time to explain them that they have to learn typewriting. It is better to use some standard ways, like professional typewritists, but the most important is to know to do that blindly. Simply, I can't teach someone Unix if they need to spend extra efforts to type 'ls'.

Today, the situation is different. People around me know to type; not so fast, a lot of them just with looking into keyboard, but at average level it is much better than it was ten years ago.

But, I don't want to write here about running Unix commands or typing an essay as an evolutionary step. This is a kind of technological advance, but it is not an evolutionary step.

A real evolutionary step is when you are communicating with three persons at once via your Gmail account. For the first time in history one person is able to talk easily with two or more persons. Before instant messaging systems (back to BBS chats and early IRC), humans were not able to do that.

Like printing press was not so big social advance (while it is, of course, much bigger technological advance) in comparison to daily newspapers, typewriting on typewriter or even in text processing programs was not so big social advance, like typing instant messages is.

Simply, other brain functions are in use when you are typing your essay and when you are chatting with different persons. Typing an essay is just a faster way to write it by using different methods than handwriting. Chatting with more persons is improving your communications skills in a different way than any other kind of communication is doing. And, probably, it is not just about communication skills.

It is very hard to talk about consequences because this is the time when children are starting to use IMs at the wider scale. Probably, their social skills will be much better than our are. Probably, interaction between them will be more intensive. They will be able to think much faster. Working on complex tasks will be much easier to them.

And this is not a type of change which had been happened between us and our parents. We are better informed. Because of that, on average, our skills are better maybe 10% than skills of our parents. This is it. Changes between us and our children will be much bigger. (Of course, it may be different if we find some way how to improve our skills by improving our brains axon by axon, dendrite by dendrite.)

Such skills may make completely different society. Bad scenario is an extra-anxious society. Good scenario is a society with much more free and content persons.

Pinker on heredity, environment and language

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 14:19:00 +0000

First, to reassure the nervous: yes, there are important roles for both heredity and environment. A child brought up in Japan ends up speaking Japanese; the same child, if brought up in the United States, would end up speaking English. So we know that the environment playes a role. If a child is inseparable from a pet hamster when growing up, the child ends up speaking a language, but the hamster, exposed to the same environment, does not. So we know that heredity playes a role.

Steven Pinker, Language Instinct, HarperPerennial, New York, 1995, p. 408.

Google Knol and the future of Wikipedia and Wikimedia

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 02:27:00 +0000

My post about this issue.

Why you should know different alphabets

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Thu, 01 May 2008 22:44:00 +0000

It may be very helpful :)

(12:19:48 AM) mohsen salek: ψαν υοθ ρεαδ τηισ αλπηαβετ
(12:20:36 AM) millosh: :)
(12:20:45 AM) mohsen salek: υεσ ορ νο?
(12:20:57 AM) millosh: yes :)
(12:21:14 AM) mohsen salek: φορ Γοδ σακε ηελπ με
(12:21:21 AM) mohsen salek: ι αμ λοστ ιν λινθχ
(12:21:28 AM) mohsen salek: κθβθντο 8.04
(12:21:55 AM) mohsen salek: ι τρυεδ το αδδ περσιαν λανγθαγε σο ι φινναλυ γετ υο ηερε
(12:22:07 AM) mohsen salek: ανδ ι ψαν'τ γετ ενγλιση ρο περσιαν κευβοαρδ βαψκ
(12:22:22 AM) mohsen salek: δο θ κνος ανυ ψομμανδ το μακε ιτ βαψκ
(12:22:34 AM) millosh: are you on ubuntu?
(12:23:05 AM) millosh: gnome or kde?
(12:23:06 AM) mohsen salek: υεσ
(12:23:09 AM) mohsen salek: κδε
(12:23:34 AM) mohsen salek: σο εωεν ι ψαν'τ σεαρψη τηε ιντερνετ
(12:23:46 AM) millosh: so, you have a problem with putting greek alphabet and you don't know how to back to english and persian?
(12:24:21 AM) millosh: i'll take a look into kde now
(12:24:28 AM) mohsen salek: νο ι κνες ςερε διδ ι μαδε ψηανγε
(12:24:37 AM) mohsen salek: βυτ ι δο τηε εχαψτ τηινγ
(12:24:41 AM) mohsen salek: βθτ ι ψαντ γετ ενγλιση
(12:25:02 AM) mohsen salek: 10 τιμεσ ι ινσταλλεδ ανδ θνισταλεδ λανγθγεσ
(12:25:18 AM) mohsen salek: :((
(12:25:23 AM) millosh: do you see a little flag at the bottom?
(12:25:30 AM) millosh: greek flag?
(12:25:45 AM) mohsen salek: νο
(12:25:50 AM) mohsen salek: ιτ ισ ενγλισ φλαγη
(12:25:56 AM) mohsen salek: ι θσεδ τηισ ψομμανδ
(12:26:00 AM) mohsen salek: setxkbmap -model pc101 -layout us
(12:26:10 AM) mohsen salek: ι ψοπιεδ τηισ ψομμανδ
(12:26:29 AM) mohsen salek: αφτερ ι δοςνλοαδ περσιαν λανγθε παψηακφε ι γοτ τηισ προβλεμ
(12:26:40 AM) millosh: oh
(12:26:45 AM) millosh: i understand
(12:27:16 AM) millosh: log out from the account and log in again
(12:27:36 AM) mohsen salek: οκ λετ με δο ιττ
(12:27:41 AM) millosh: :)
(12:28:54 AM) millosh: so?
(12:29:08 AM) mohsen salek: seems to be solveh
(12:29:12 AM) mohsen salek: solved
(12:29:12 AM) millosh: :)

(Of course, I asked Mohsen to publish this part of conversation.)

Finally, FCKeditor as a pure extension for MediaWiki!

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:19:00 +0000

I am glad to hear it. The post is here.

Balkan ethno version of Metallica's famous song (Bulgaria)

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:39:00 +0000

Enjoy :)

Stewards and Vogons

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:48:00 +0000

An analysis around my previous story.

A not so ordinary night of one Steward

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:30:00 +0000

A story about stewards ;)

New languages on Anarchopedia

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 09:46:00 +0000

After long time, I opened new language editions of Anarchopedia: Albanian, Armenian, Finnish, Hebrew, Latvian and Turkish.

Today, Anarchopedia exists in 28 languages (Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Serbo-Croatian are treated as one language, as well as there are three sites for two Norwegian languages). The most of the language editions have at least one or two contributors who are developing the project, while editions like German, French, English, Italian and Spanish have fully active communities.

Requirement for opening Anarchopedia in another language is writing the word Anarchopedia in that language. If you know how to spell Anarchopedia in some other language, please write it at the page: Anarchopedia in different languages.

Verifiability, inclusionism, deletionism and POV

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 10:51:00 +0000

A comment about the article from The Economist.

So, what's the point?

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:45:00 +0000

A post about current events around Wikimedia.

Affero General Public License

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 07:51:00 +0000

A post about AGPL on my Wordpress blog.

Developers and stewards needed on Anarchopedia

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 14:01:00 +0000

Anarchopedia started with work in September 2004. For a long time it was a wiki based encyclopedia with the most supported languages after Wikipedia. (I suppose that there are now wiki based encyclopedias with more then ~20 language editions.)

I am trying to keep Anarchopedia technically similar to Wikipedia (it is running MediaWiki 1.12alpha); thanks to the people from pywikipediabot project, it is supported there, too; etc. From the technical side, Anarchopedia is "a small Wikipedia": (almost) everything which exists on Wikipedia, exists on Anarchopedia, too -- but with a much smaller size.

A couple of days ago, a contributor from Portuguese Anarchopedia, Sir Lestaty de Lioncourt, started to take care about Anarchopedia in a fashion similar to Wikimedia stewards and I really support such effort. However, I realized that we need more people involved in developer and steward roles: administrators of the wikis from the server side (developers), as well as from the MediaWiki side (stewards).

If you are willing to help us, please contact me (by leaving a comment or sending me an email). It would be useful to write a little bit about your Wikimedian (or any other relevant) experience. (Of course, if I know you, just tell me that you are willing to help :) )

Non-free images on Wikimedian projects

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:34:00 +0000

Here the post is.

How not to build mutual trust between ethnicities

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 08:49:00 +0000

I wrote How *not* to build mutual trust between ethnicities.

Firefox 3.0beta4 is using GTK

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 21:40:00 +0000

Which is a very useful feature for us who are using Gnome.

Community development and POV stages (2)

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 13:46:00 +0000

The second part from the series Community development and POV stages is written.

Synchronic linguistics and prescription

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 09:31:00 +0000

Consequence of strictly synchronic linguistics is a strict prescription of language.

Simply, synchronic linguistics is not able to deal with language changes. However, sentence above is just my hypothesis and it proves should be found.

Community development and POV stages (1)

noreply@blogger.com (Milos Rancic) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 07:56:00 +0000

I wrote the first part of the text Community development and POV stages.