Wikipedia:Simple News/EhJJ/1

1st article by EhJJ

Creative Commons licence

Wikipedia currently uses the GNU Free Document Licence (GFDL) to allow other people to use its content. This licence was picked in 2002 because it was the best one available at that time. Now, Wikipedia wants to licence its material under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike (CC-by-sa) licence, too. Information about the change, including a Questions and Answers section is available on meta at m:Licensing update. Information is available in English as well as many other languages.

From April 12 to May 3, the Wikimedia Foundation is asking all users (who had at least 25 edits before March 15) to vote on this proposal. To get to the vote page, go to Special:SecurePoll/vote/1.

Impact on Simple English Wikipedia

Our Wikipedia often uses content from the English Wikipedia as a foundation to writing articles. The GFDL has rules which don't make sense for a Wikipedia and make it (technically) illegal to copy information from the English Wikipedia to here. The new CC-by-sa licence would allow us to copy information from the English Wikipedia, as well as other places that have Creative Commons content, and use it in our Wikipedia. Also, it would make it easier for other people, including schools and charities, to use our articles in different ways (like in print books or CD-ROMS).

I encourage everyone to vote on this important issue. EhJJ^TALK