User:Onebyone
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
All original work I contribute to Wikipedia is public domain.
This means that although use of Wikipedia is restricted by the GFDL, any substantial section which I wrote can be used completely freely. There is no obligation to credit Wikipedia or myself as author, and there is no requirement that your use of it be under the GFDL or any other license which guarantees free distribution. The public domain is not a viral license.
Note that just because I started or rewrote an article doesn't mean it's my original work. You have to establish from the edit history that I created the section you want to freely use. For example, look at [1]. You might think from this diff that the entire red paragraph is in the public domain. But the checkin comment says "(Merge in information from Criminal Violence, Criminal Justice)", so you can't tell from this whether I wrote that paragraph or not.
In fact, looking at [2], my guess is that because I also rewrote that paragraph in the process of moving it, it can be said to have been created by me. But I'm not a lawyer, and if you get this wrong it's your problem and not mine. If you're paranoid, don't trust anything I've done without a checkin comment unless it's obviously discussion in my own voice. I will endeavour always to say in the checkin comment when I am copying from another source, including another Wikipedia article.
Possible todos:
Onebyone 20:31, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
