DRAFT
Dear Contributor to the Ubuntu Wiki,
This email is sent to you to inform you of the change to the licensing policy on the Ubuntu wiki at https://wiki.ubuntu.com.
You might be aware that the Documentation wiki at http://help.ubuntu.com was re-licensed to a free license (CC-BY-SA [1]) in 2007 [2].
Decision
After discussion among the Ubuntu Community Council, it has been decided that the material on the Ubuntu wiki should be licensed under a free license, CC-by-SA[1]. The Ubuntu wiki will be changed to make this clear to those creating or editing pages, and of course external links from the Wiki to documentation under other licences will continue to be welcome.
This decision is not intended in any way to underestimate the value of contributions, but rather to ensure that the material on the wiki complies with the same standards of openness as the Ubuntu project as a whole.
Rationale
The Ubuntu wiki is a collaborative resource, and the product of the Ubuntu community as a whole. Its content, put together by many contributors with different knowledge and points of view, is immensely valuable to us all. Unfortunately, at the moment, there is no clear definition of what rights contributors to the content retain over the material that they post, or the extent to which other persons are entitled to copy or modify the material. For example, it would be very useful to ensure that community contributed content may be shared by many teams without complex licensing issues, ensuring that those working on content can concentrate on producing the best information possible rather than legal negotiations.
Feedback
We would again like to make a good-faith attempt to ensure that contributors of existing material are happy with this change. We invite any contributors who have any questions or concerns about this plan to contact us at <community-council@lists.ubuntu.com>. Given that the re-licensing of http://help.ubuntu.com was fairly uncontroversial and since the aim to re-license the Ubuntu wiki at some point later has not brought up any objections, we hope that the vast majority of contributors will welcome it.
In the absence of substantial numbers of objections, this change will be made to the Ubuntu wiki after approximately one month.
More details can be found here:
Many thanks for your contributions to the Ubuntu Wiki, and we hope that you will continue to help!
[1] See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ [2] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2007-April/000275.html