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:::2) Wikipedia is perfectly happy with the idea of building a "Wikipedia fork," that is a modified copy of Wikipedia. But. There are serious complications with this, due to the GFDL license (which is not easy for anyone to understand, apparently including Wikipedia).  

:::2) Wikipedia is perfectly happy with the idea of building a "Wikipedia fork," that is a modified copy of Wikipedia. But. There are serious complications with this, due to the GFDL license (which is not easy for anyone to understand, apparently including Wikipedia).  

:::3) The big GFDL issue, and the one that I sense Conservapedia will not agree to, is that if you copy and modify a Wikipedia article, you have to make the copy available under GFDL, too. This means a significant loss of control. For example, following the GFDL rules, if Conservapedia took a bunch of Wikipedia articles and rewrote them, and if a liberal cherrypicked the rewritten articles for the funniest examples of ludicrous over-the-top spin, and published in book form as "The Conservapedia joke book," I don't think Conservapedia could stop it. (Disclaimer 1: I'm not a lawyer. Disclaimer 2: I don't think ordinary lawyers understand intellectual property law. Disclaimer 3: I'm not so sure intellectual property lawyers understand intellectual property law.).

:::3) The big GFDL issue, and the one that I sense Conservapedia will not agree to, is that if you copy and modify a Wikipedia article, you have to make the copy available under GFDL, too. This means a significant loss of control. For example, following the GFDL rules, if Conservapedia took a bunch of Wikipedia articles and rewrote them, and if a liberal cherrypicked the rewritten articles for the funniest examples of ludicrous over-the-top spin, and published it in book form as "The Conservapedia Jokebook," I don't think Conservapedia could stop it. (Disclaimer 1: I'm not a lawyer. Disclaimer 2: I don't think ordinary lawyers understand intellectual property law. Disclaimer 3: I'm not so sure intellectual property lawyers understand intellectual property law.).

:::4) Another issue with the GFDL is that anything published under the GFDL must "preserve the history," whatever that means. If someone starts a new article at Wikipedia in 2003, and there are a thousand edits to it, and in 2007 you copy it, rework it, and republish it on Conservapedia, there is supposed to be some way for readers of the Conservapedia article to retrace all those steps if they want to. Nobody seems to be completely sure how to do this, or what does and doesn't really comply with the GFDL, which wasn't really designed to cover anything like Wikipedia. So, Wikipedia encourages re-use, and there are in fact numerous commercial "mirrors" that duplicate Wikipedia content, but Wikipedia does not give any nice clear recipe on exactly how to go about producing a censored or redacted or reworked derivative of Wikipedia. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith]] 13:38, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

:::4) Another issue with the GFDL is that anything published under the GFDL must "preserve the history," whatever that means. If someone starts a new article at Wikipedia in 2003, and there are a thousand edits to it, and in 2007 you copy it, rework it, and republish it on Conservapedia, there is supposed to be some way for readers of the Conservapedia article to retrace all those steps if they want to. Nobody seems to be completely sure how to do this, or what does and doesn't really comply with the GFDL, which wasn't really designed to cover anything like Wikipedia. So, Wikipedia encourages re-use, and there are in fact numerous commercial "mirrors" that duplicate Wikipedia content, but Wikipedia does not give any nice clear recipe on exactly how to go about producing a censored or redacted or reworked derivative of Wikipedia. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith]] 13:38, 12 March 2007 (EDT)