I still love how years ago, Stallman basically added a backdoor to GNU FDL just for wikipedia (and similar wikis) just for the few months when Wikipedia was migrating the license.
It worked though
to elaborate… wikipedia used to be GNU Free Document License, which is a terrible license. But there was no way to easily migrate to CC, as you would need to contact all the authors and get agreement.
So FSF used the “or later” clause to make a new version of FDL that said “these few months, wikis can migrate from this license to CC”. The new version of the license was made just for wikipedia, just so they could migrate to CC.
Pretty much the one time the GNU Project conceded anything to a different organization. Still very strange. Also, for anyone wondering - don't use the GFDL, it's one of the worst written licenses out there.
Every copy or snippet of it needs the full license text attached, which is kind of bonkers if all you're doing is a citation. Debian rejects documentation written under the license because it's unclear and onerous to comply with[0]. It's incompatible with literally any other license on the planet as well (it's not a "proper" Free Software License because of crap like invariant sections, which just exists to force the GNU Manifesto in every copy of the GNU projects documentation). There's also such charming issues like "the anti-DRM clause is worded in such a way that you can't store a GFDL file on an encrypted filesystem". It's a really really bad license and a serious competitor for the worst license ever written by the GNU project (even the AGPL isn't this bad).
Wikipedia changed it because they kept having to deal with people who pointed out that anyone reproducing Wikipedia content could technically violate it's license, an obviously-on-the-nose issue.
The worst part? The GNU/FSF still recommends the fucking GFDL on its website[1] for documentation even though they offered a carveout for the WMF.
GFDL is an especially bad license for a wiki because, under a strict reading of the license, editors are obligated to treat any section of a page titled "Acknowledgements" or "Dedications" as append-only. Did a vandal create a section with that name and fill it with nonsense? Too bad! License says you can't touch it.
This is hardly even the craziest thing about the GFDL, but it's one of the most obviously problematic for a wiki.
> K. For any section Entitled "Acknowledgements" or "Dedications", [anyone copying a modified version of the document must] Preserve the Title of the section, and preserve in the section all the substance and tone of each of the contributor acknowledgements and/or dedications given therein.
I'd be interested to know why you imply that the (GNU?) AGPL is a bad licence. AGPL-3.0-or-later is a very sensible FOSS licence in my opinion; some awkward punctuation is about the most I can level against it.
The short of it is that it doesn't do what people think it does. Enforcement of the AGPL is almost exclusively on "please comply" basis rather than the (relatively) battle-tested GPL. It's not "just" the GPL with an extra demand that it also applies on network software, it's much more complex than that.
The AGPL is basically a EULA disguised as a license. It tries to solve the network problem (aka SaaSification, a practice I would argue is against the spirit but very much permissible by the Four Freedoms) in a very "lawyeristic" way. If you don't modify AGPL software, you're not under any obligation to comply with the AGPL in any form. But the moment you touch the code, you now need to make the source available.
This also means it is (theoretically) trivially easy to work around - just contract out your modifications, have the contractor keep the copyright and act as the only user of the software with an indefinite license. You don't have to distribute a thing since you didn't modify the source code, your contractor did.
Going on from that, the AGPL doesn't actually say how compliance with section 13 must be achieved. According to most lawyers I've heard (not that I am one to be clear), basically your only "safe" option for most network apps is to make your code a quine (a program that can reproduce its own source code, most software isn't this, especially not network software) or something like JavaScript that is fully interpreted clientside anyway. Something like a link to a GitHub repository is not compliant with the AGPL.
This specific property also tends to cause major issues when confronted with protocols that don't easily allow for transferring large amounts of text. ie. MIDI is technically a network protocol.
All of those issues come from the fact that what the AGPL wants to do fundamentally conflicts with both freedom 0 (right to run software however you wish) and a more informal FSF stance that EULAs are bad.
It's just a bad license in terms of how it's understood and the text itself is of dubious quality due to how clearly it's written by a lawyer who got asked to say X without saying X.
Also, or-later is generally a bad clause for any license, since it hands over all licensing grants to whatever entity you trusted to write the license in the first place, so unless you wrote it yourself, that's not a good idea.
Surely they didn't mess up so badly that you can just contract out the modifications. Why not just require that the code is available, period?
The problem that AGPL tries to fix is quite tricky though, since AFAIK you can do whatever you want with GPL code, unless you want to publish anything. And SaaS is not technically publishing the code but only its behaviour (even though for all intents and purposes this is the same as an obfuscated binary, especially in places where deobfuscation is illegal).
Not parent, but thank you for the thoughtful explanation.
Which free/open source licences do you think would be better for the specific purpose of preventing SaaSification while actually being usable/useful in real life?
I agree with the above commenter that the problem is that SaaSification is a use case of software, rather than properly/entirely a distribution model. Trying to prevent SaaSification falls outside of the available scope of copyright law and thus free/open source licenses entirely. It's the job of an End User License Agreement or a "Mutually Assured Destruction" Patent "Grant" or a Trademark Embargo, not a copyright license/open source license.
The fact that all of those options (EULAs, explosive patent grants, strict trademark enforcement) additionally sound so antithetical to free/open source licenses does seem to directly reflect that "Software Freedom 0" paradox that preventing SaaSification tells users how they can't use the software, which is the very opposite of a modern software freedom. (The FSF probably made a massive mistake in accepting the AGPL as anything more than GPL fan fiction, because it does seem to reflect that they don't trust their own software freedoms and will accept some unfortunate compromises on them.)
I don't know if there is an easy answer for how you build free/open source software and prevent SaaSification without also terribly compromising some of the core virtues of what free/open source software was meant to uphold in the first place.
> it is (theoretically) trivially easy to work around - just contract out your modifications, have the contractor keep the copyright and act as the only user of the software with an indefinite license
Would this not require the contractor to comply with section 13? At this point, you would be paying the contractor for ensuring legal compliance instead of doing this yourself, which is something that companies sometimes do anyway.
> AGPL doesn't actually say how compliance with section 13 must be achieved... MIDI is technically a network protocol
MIDI is indeed a network protocol, but I wouldn't read section 13 as requiring that the network used for the offer of source code or the source code itself is the only network used by the software. If you had a remote MIDI sequencer that users could connect their musical instrument to, it would almost certainly have something like a Web interface as well (MIDI isn't by itself an internet protocol, which I'm sure you already know) where the source code could be offered.
Ambiguities inherent to the diversity of software don't negate the general legal principle of good faith. Posting a link to a repository on GitHub with your modifications is usually sufficient for compliance, and edge cases like where GitHub is down or blocked for your user can be resolved with good-faith email correspondence. Given how much fuzziness there is in law, I don't think it would help much to be more prescriptive in say, requiring the offer to be made over HTTP.
> or-later is generally a bad clause for any license, since it hands over all licensing grants to whatever entity you trusted to write the license
This is true, but I consider it to be the lesser of two evils. The evil that or-later avoids is that of licence incompatibilities and ambiguities, which are frequently complicated by a difficulty in tracing the authorship of older software. Those programs which were licensed with an or-later clause can typically be 'rescued' by a new revision published by the licence steward, similar to how the FSF carved out an exception to the GFDL for Wikimedia as discussed elsewhere in this thread. The evil that or-later causes, that the licence steward makes a compromising change, is quite limited: since they can't restrict rights beyond the older licence, the worst-case scenario is that they go against the spirit of copyleft and make it a fully permissible licence, which is still 100% FOSS and in practice the FSF are not going to do any time soon.
Again, thanks for going into depth. I agree that there are improvements to be made, and I certainly wouldn't consider the AGPL-3.0-or-later to be the 'be all and end all' of FOSS licensing, but I'm not yet convinced it's a bad choice! :)
> If you had a remote MIDI sequencer that users could connect their musical instrument to, it would almost certainly have something like a Web interface as well...
Not at all. There are tons of MIDI devices which communicate over MIDI, and which don't have another network interface. Most electronic keyboards fall into this category, for example.
> MIDI isn't by itself an internet protocol, which I'm sure you already know
AGPL doesn't care. MIDI is a network protocol; whether it's bridged to the general Internet is irrelevant to the license.
Here is the text of section 13. I think you are badly misreading it:
> Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software. This Corresponding Source shall include the Corresponding Source for any work covered by version 3 of the GNU General Public License that is incorporated pursuant to the following paragraph.
First of all, it says "your version" has to offer users the ability to download the source. Clearly, a sticker with a URL next to the midi jack would comply. However, it only applies to remote users, so your example is already limited to the corner case where they are connecting to a remote midi device through a network port that doesn't have a UI.
Even then, the license says "if your version supports such interaction" which could be construed to be referring to the phrase that follows the disclaimer instead of the one that precedes it.
Even if you read all of those things in the "you have to serve source code over the network that serves the remote midi protocol" way, the clause "through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software" clearly implies that you could (say) offer it over port 443 on some server you run, or via a github link.
In fact, that clause pretty clearly means that only distributing it through some obscure MIDI extension would not put you in compliance with the license.
This is true, but if you were selling a physical musical instrument which included AGPL-licensed software, you could also include a physical copy of the source code on a DVD as per section 6(a). Your argument still stands, but I don't think it is against the spirit of the the licence nor a significant legal risk to ignore section 13 in that (very unusual) case.
Maybe I do not understand this fully, but this sounds like effectively bypassing the licence to do something which wasn't originally intended, or what the contributors or authors didn't agree to.
Does this put other licences at risk? What if someone releases something under a licence, and there is a new version that is less or more permissive, allowing the original author's intention to 'vetoed'?
It seems like GFDL has an optional declaration that is referred to as the "Or later"-clause. Apparently wikipedia opted for that clause allowing automatic migration of licenses for all content to newer versions of the license.
In collaboration with the organisation behind GFDL, they used that clause to re-license everything under CC.
I think doing something like this is not somethings that should be taken lightly. you are risking the only asset the contract has: trust.
On the other hand: It is good to know, as an author, that you should not accept releasing stuff under a license that has an "or later" clause.
It does put all “or later” clauses licenses at risks, yes
If you have “GPLv2 or later”, FSF is then overtaken by Microsoft and makes “GPLv4 is allowing Microsoft to use your code in Windows” then it’s what it is, your code can now be used by Microsoft
You mean like that time where they added lenience for people building FDA compliant medical devices?
Oh wait, they didn't. No, they instead told the people wanting to build those devices that they were supporting Tivoization and that the only road to compliance was to change the law.[0]
The FSF has a far greater history of telling other people to shove it than they have been trying to work together with possible members of their community.
In that very article the FSF says to comply with both the GPL and "regulatons" companies are free to employ a ROM.
Nowhere in that article does it say the regulations must change.
Why even bring this article up? The FSF seem pretty reasonable here. Not to mention I couldn't find any evidence on the web of the FDA requiring Tivoization for medical devices.
Why every goddamn thing has to be exciting? Surely American organizational culture is becoming a parody of itself.
If anything, this reminds us that American non-profits are run just like corporations.
Agree. "We're excited to announce this hum-drum thing" is an annoying PR cliche probably popularized by dead-eyed corporate drones to the extent it's now a part of every formulaic announcement.
I'm sure in some cases the writer thinks they'll get in trouble with the boss if they aren't sufficiently unctuous but it's annoying to read again and again.
Perhaps there is an opportunity here to establish an "Announcement Excitement Scale" from 1 to 10 where 10 is - say - ChatGPT or the iPhone and 1 is a license change.
This can be printed with the announcement of being excited, then the reader can easily judge for themselves whether to peruse further.
I am excited you made such an excellent comment! It positively affected my thinking. I am also glad to announce I will recommend this comment to other people.
Taking this out of context really puts the spotlight of the weirdness of this type of copy.
Considering the posts I see on LinkedIn, when occasionally scanning for career opportunities, I'd say most PR/Marketing types think all their stuff is 9+, but everyone else's is sub-4.
Ever consider that it is exciting for someone to have completed this work successfully? Would you also say it’s strange for someone to be excited that they’re done with class, or finished an exam, or successfully closed an old bug?
A better question is why everyone has to be so negative.
It's typical American usage where everything is awesome, amazing or exciting.
From my British view, without reference to a dictionary, awesome is when you hear fighter jets zoom overhead, or a metal band from in front of the stage, or Niagara Falls, or a mile-long freight train full of rocks shaking the ground as it passes. The target has strength, size and power.
An amazing thing is far beyond normal expectations in art, craft, or human behaviour. A detailed painting, where you step up closer and see it's even more detailed than you first thought. A carving from 3000 years ago with intricacy we didn't think possible at that time.
Something exciting causes strong, (mostly) positive emotions. A roller coaster ride, an impromptu water fight in the summer, stripping off clothes and running into the sea in a group, getting close to the end of a game with the realization that you might win.
Starting a job at Google and seeing 50 exabytes of data or a cluster of 10 million computers or whatever could be awesome.
Someone's clever and efficient algorithm that reduces runtime by 10× could be amazing.
Finishing the final university exam, expecting to pass the degree, could be exciting.
Changing from licence version 3 to licence version 4 is none of these. It might be satisfying, or perhaps rewarding for the people directly involved.
I'm also British, and I found this very exciting. I'm deeply involved in the study and development of FOSS and open culture licensing, and the improvement from CC-BY-SA-3.0 to CC-BY-SA-4.0 can't be overstated.
Roller coaster ride? That's not exciting; that's frightening! I can kind of understand 'getting close to the end of a game with the realization that you might win', but this is more frequently nerve-racking for me.
It's not exclusively an Americanism to be excited about law.
I’m a Californian and I don’t think something is exciting unless it’s somewhat frightening. That is to say Adrenaline is involved in excitement. Otherwise it is just fun, interesting, or cool.
As an American it’s pretty awesome when I eat a particularly good street truck gyro after a night of drinking.
I saw a vulture outside yesterday. I thought that was pretty amazing! I’d never seen one before.
I was pretty excited yesterday to run after a rabbit in my yard like a five year old as my kids yelled “dad no don’t eat it!”
But even as an American with my strange irrational exuberance and positive language creep, I can agree with you that changing from version 3 to 4 of a license is none of these things.
Government rationing restricts us to one spoken "awesome" per year, using "amazing" twice and "exciting" five times, though children get double until their 13th birthday.
Local government officials, BBC Radio 4 presenters and the nobility often sell or donate their ration to youth workers and minor celebrities.
> awesome is when you hear fighter jets zoom overhead, or a metal band from in front of the stage, or Niagara Falls, or a mile-long freight train full of rocks shaking the ground as it passes.
To me all of these things sound very lame. I find the Wikipedia licensing change more interesting. I think the post did a good job explaining why this matters and what this changes for Wikipedia.
> It's typical American usage where everything is awesome, amazing or exciting
there are two aspects of American usage in play, just want to clarify. One is that Americans simply are more optimistic in the way that de Tocqueville noticed 200 years ago. Then layered on top of that are regional American differences where people in the northeast are optimistic but speak in a grumpier way ya fackin bastid, people in the middle are, okadiddlydokily, friendlier how they win friends and influence people, and people on the west coast really lay the positivity on thick, double rainbow all the way.
> Changing from licence version 3 to licence version 4 is none of these. It might be satisfying, or perhaps rewarding for the people directly involved.
who are you to say how someone else should feel?
It’s like someone not familiar with coding saying why should software engineers feel excited for releasing something? It’s literally just text you typed. Wow, boring.
Your other examples are literally just your opinion, which is fine. Understand others do not feel the same way necessarily.
Dear Hacker News community,
I am thrilled to share some exciting news with all of you. After much delay, I proudly announce that I have taken the initiative to call not just one, but two separate repair services. One is to address the issue with my recently broken water heater, while the other is to finally fix the blinds that have been broken for over 18 months.
I'm sure many of you can relate to the frustration of dealing with household repairs that seem to linger indefinitely. Well, I have taken the proactive step of reaching out to professionals, and I am hopeful that these long-standing problems will soon be resolved.
Firstly, I have connected with a reputable repair service for the water heater. This essential home appliance will soon be restored to its full functionality, providing the comfort and convenience it once did.
Additionally, I have engaged with another repair service to tackle the issue with my broken blinds. These blinds, which have been a persistent eyesore for far too long, will finally be repaired, allowing me to control the amount of light entering my home and restoring a sense of privacy.
I wanted to share this news with the community because it signifies a small but meaningful personal achievement. It's a reminder that sometimes the smallest victories, like making those long-overdue repair calls, can bring a sense of satisfaction and relief.
Thank you for allowing me to share this update with you.
Best regards, Mordisquitos
And no, the better question is why everyone has to be pretentious?!
Completing the work is an everyday kind of thing by the way, not some sort of exceptional or rare achievement but common occurrence (if we are optimistic). : )
It’s so formulaic, that even ChatGPT will express itself similarly.
Me: Write a press release stating that Wikipedia is announcing the update to our license to Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
ChatGPT: […] Wikipedia, the world's largest online encyclopedia, is thrilled to announce a significant update to its licensing terms. Effective immediately, Wikipedia will adopt the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license. This change represents Wikipedia's ongoing commitment to open knowledge and collaboration. […]
I like this concept. If what you're trying to communicate is so formulaic and devoid of actual significant content that AI text generators will output nearly the same text: reconsider.
The point of the communication is not to contain actual significant content; it's to declare a fait accompli. Lots of text is like this. Being fresh and exotic isn't the goal.
I find it kinda exciting that there is one global license. People have different interests and different tastes. Software developers may find it very exciting if Rust improved compile time by 8x for a certain, common access pattern even though, in the grand scheme of things it does not really matter.
This specific change shall excite many as CC BY-SA 4.0 is one way GPLv3 compatible, but CC BY-SA 3.0 is not. Which means that free software developers can now embedded many Wikimedia contents in their GPLv3 applications. This seems not mentioned in the blog post though.
Incompatibilities between content and code licences has been a perennial problem for FOSS video games. CC-BY-SA-4.0 is an important step in the right direction!
My boss recently told me that my enthusiasm level (average) doesn't match the quality of my work (high), and that the higher the ladder I climb, the more that will matter for further promotions.
Wikipedia has a ton of contirbutors wary of any changes to how Wikipedia functions. So every little change is under a ton of scrutiny from them. With the license, I presume most of them are interested; it is the license that applies to their own words after all.
Everything has to be exciting or awesome (as in something that evokes awe). Back in 2010, Barbara Ehrenreich critiqued this culture of unrealistic optimism and unrelenting exuberance in Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World¹. I would’ve thought that post-Lehman Brothers America would have been more receptive of her critique but unfortunately not.
A change to, say, a non-commercial license would have been very exciting.
But yeah, here, it is just a technical update that may be exciting only to specialized lawyers. But we are on a website where we get excited by some tool we never heard about before being rewritten in Rust, so...
Wikimedia specifically avoids non-commercial licenses because it is such a nightmare to define what commercial activity is in a way that everyone can agree on. And the license does not help with figuring that out.
I agree. I've lost count of the number of times someone from the WMF announces on the Wikimedia mailing list that they're "excited" – often in contexts where it just comes across as obnoxious and narcissistic.
With 3.0 there were multiple versions of the licence, which varied depending on the country in which they were used. With 4.0, a single licence is applicable worldwide, with official translations in over 30 languages. This eliminates the need for different ported versions of the licence with changed language tailored for specific jurisdictions.
Also, it clarifies that linking to a webpage with attribution information is allowable. It also enables people to fix attribution mistakes within a reasonable time, which is important to help address simple mistakes without the need for overly aggressive copyright enforcement demands.
This comment is based on the "Stepping into the future: Wikimedia projects’ transition to Creative Commons’ 4.0 license" article from 29 June 2023 by Stephen LaPorte, Jacob Rogers and Shaun Spalding [0], and may be shared and modified, with attribution, under the terms of the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
I don't know if relevant for Wikipedia, but in CC BY-SA 3.0 where the entire licence was invalidated if you made a mistake with the attribution.
I was reading of an exploit where an organisation is publishing photos under the 3.0 licence, searching for minor infractions and then extorting random bloggers and businesses for infringement. I believe the 4.0 licence addresses this by allowing users to fix a faulty attribution within a reasonable time.
Yeah it's called copyright trolling because of how similar it is to patent trolling. Version 3.0 of the license isn't usually the favored version though since iirc it did include some mitigations on what's allowed for the whole attribution thing.
The one that's usually preferred is version 2.0, which has some fairly specific attribution requirements that are easy to mess up.
The practical reasons are almost entirely about legal minutia. It opens up some possibilities, like being able to seamlessly use OTHER CC-BY-SA 4.0 content, but there won't be any concrete tangible difference to readers.
No one could ever explain what the actual problem was that they had with the change. They admitted there wasn't any practical difference but still were red-hot angry about it. Some people are weird about licenses.
The issue was that StackExchange relicensed (without permission) all previous contributions. Their license (currently) says users grant them the ability to use their contributions under CC BY-SA 4.0 with no "or later". I'm pretty sure the previous one (for 3.0) was the same. StackExchange had no legal right to relicense those contributions.
Wikimedia got it right by putting "3.0 or later" in their terms of use (TOU). This allowed them to _legally_ claim all old contributions are available under 4.0. They're still also available under 3.0, but that's a minor detail.
I still don't get what these nuances ACTUALLY means for someone who might have contributed when the TOU was 3.0 and then suddenly an effectively identical license gets applied "without permissions" (4.0), and now there's a problem? How?
Most people (myself included) had no issue with the premise. The issue comes from StackExchange having a (then recent) history of starting to ignore their community. That has continued even to today.
Basically, people aren’t necessarily upset about them relicensing, but that there’s been no discussions with the community about these things. This was just another nail in the wound, and people got upset.
The practical effects are a function of the magnitude of the change and the scale at which it applies.
In the case of Wikipedia the scale is vast in terms of social impact and so the effect is large even for a small change...in a the-universe-includes-a-lot-of-corner-cases sort of way.
They have some sources already using version 4. They had to upgrade or not use these sources (see ShareAlike: «If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original»).
Can I confess something? I know that the Wikipedia licence requires (both the old and the new) linking the CC licence every time I quote something from Wikipedia[0], but I only link the Wikipedia article, and never link the CC licence.
So many human workyears poured into licences, and still even the most basic things are total moronic.
edit: actually I have no idea why does the CC licence contain that part? Any ideas?
If you're just quoting an excerpt from Wikipedia, especially for non-commercial use or to comment on the article, you are likely engaged in fair use and do not need to follow the copyright license. Same as for a copyright work with the traditional default license, as you have no right to reproduce it or make derivative works, but you can quote from it. The first notice in your link states:
"You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation. "
The license applies when you are reproducing the work or making derivative works. So if you were to fork or mirror Wikipedia in its entirety or even publish a book of curated Wikipedia articles, you would need to give appropriate credit and link to the license.
What were the challenges for the migration? Do the Wikipedia editors and authors transfer their works to Wikimedia when they publish it and so wikimedia can change the license as it pleases? If so, was the main difficulty just convincing the executives it was a good idea?
The TOU says the authors still hold the copyright to their contributions, but now says it must be licensed to Wikimedia under CC BY-SA 4.0 or later (instead of 3.0 or later).
From [0]:
> 7(h): Modifications or additions to material that you reuse: When modifying or making additions to text that you have obtained from a Project Website, you agree to license the modified or added content under CC BY-SA 4.0 or later (or, as explained above, another license when exceptionally required by the specific Project edition or feature).
> ...
The previous version[1] said the same, but called out CC BY-SA 3.0 or later:
> 7(h): Modifications or additions to material that you re-use: When modifying or making additions to text that you have obtained from a Project website, you agree to license the modified or added content under CC BY-SA 3.0 or later (or, as explained above, another license when exceptionally required by the specific Project edition or feature).
The solution adopted was to include a waiver in the Wikimedia Terms of Use:
Where you own Sui Generis Database Rights covered by CC BY-SA 4.0, you waive these rights. As an example, this means facts you contribute to the projects may be reused freely without attribution.
In fact the article addresses this as one of the changes:
> With version 4.0, it is easier for reusers to understand how to credit the original author of the work. For example, it clarifies that linking to a webpage with attribution information is allowable, which is helpful since doing so has already become a common method of providing attribution.
I believe that was standard practice already, hence the use of the term "clarifies," but now it should be spelled out in the license.
Nothing says that attribution has to be the legal names. The usual approach is that you attribute the exact page, for which the edit history with the individual contributors is available.
A link is a dynamic thing. If you print or let users download a PDF of a Wikipedia page and for the attribution you link to a page with the edit history, what happens when the link is shut down or repurposed to show something unrelated or changed so that it shows a contributor list which is not in line with reality?
You're overthinking this. If you link to the Wikipedia page, you have reasonable certainty the link will be valid for a decent length of time. If I distribute something now, the link doesn't have to be valid in 20 years time.
What if in 20 years time the link no longer works and I'm still distributing the content? Then I'll update the link, or link to the web archive. If for some reason neither of these is possible, it might even be reasonable to attribute more generally 'unknown wikipedia contributors, formerly documented at [old url]'.
> you have reasonable certainty the link will be valid for a decent length of time.
Welcome to the German Wikipedia where stuff gets deleted quicker than you can look up what a Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänspatent even is.
The official citation links provided on the articles give you something like "so and so, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia".
That has to be sufficient. No way is anyone expected to credit the possibly thousands of pseudonyms, IP addresses, and automated bots that have ever touched an article.
Note that sui-generis database rights are expressly excluded from the WMF version. The Wikimedia terms of use include a specific waiver:
"Where you own Sui Generis Database Rights covered by CC BY-SA 4.0, you waive these rights. As an example, this means facts you contribute to the projects may be reused freely without attribution."
This is of course to make it easer for commercial re-users to not attribute and share alike.
The change in database rights were one of the key reasons why the move to 4.0 was delayed for so long. Without the waiver, it would have put a legal question mark over the data pipeline leading from Wikipedia to Wikidata and thence to Google et al.
"Oh, well, the Wikimedia Foundation has gone ahead and updated our license to Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0, you know, one of the bloody changes in our recent Terms of Use update, which brings the Wikimedia projects up to the latest version of the Creative Commons licenses.
Not too shabby, really, and quite in line with the latest Creative Commons stuff, I reckon."
It worked though
to elaborate… wikipedia used to be GNU Free Document License, which is a terrible license. But there was no way to easily migrate to CC, as you would need to contact all the authors and get agreement.
So FSF used the “or later” clause to make a new version of FDL that said “these few months, wikis can migrate from this license to CC”. The new version of the license was made just for wikipedia, just so they could migrate to CC.
Here, part “relicensing”
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.3.html
edit also see
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.3-faq.html