Open content license for InfoVis wiki?

I just noticed that this wiki does not have a clearly open licensing policy. Why is this wiki’s content not put under a Creative Commons-like license? How can i be sure that my contributions remain free and reproducable re-usable? Considering that many infovis projects rely on open data or information, i think it would be appropriate to employ a CC license that allows re-use and demands attribution. This would allow for new interesting uses and give contributors the security that there efforts remain free. To be honest, i am not sure if i want to contribute any longer to something which has rather obscure IP policies. On the disclaimer page it says "totally altering someone's statement around would not be allowed, because that allows for stuffing words and realities into people's mouths." Why have a wiki then? A forum might be just as good. Apart from discussion pages, i think it is the strength of a wiki to improve statements, wordings, etc. Anybody has some ideas on that? Anarchitect 11:15, 24 April 2008 (CEST)

Hi, we have thought a lot about this issue and the different possible licensing terms. Finally, we decided to keep it up to the authors on what copyright they want their contributions to be applied and thus give the most freedom to the contributors. What the disclaimer states, says that the coordinators of the Wiki have the right to host the contributions on their technical platforms and make changes due to the structure of the Wiki. By default, all other authors and readers have the right to change entries in a Wiki manner (which is in practical terms the same as the CC license you are referring to). We deliberately did not want the authors to be forced to a completely open license (like the FDL of Wikipedia) because we thought that would might hinder people to put up discussions or new ideas before they published these scientifically. But the content is always free to use by others if they give attribution to the original creators. Furthermore, each author might impose other copyrights to their contributions as stated here:

Make sure that you do not use copyrighted material unless legible under the terms of fair use or the original author's consent (InfoVis:Wiki Copyright). Furthermore, each author might select other types of licenses like for example creative commons by including the type of license at the bottom of the article. Every editor has to comply to the license of the original author. Please contact the InfoVis:Wiki team in case of violations.

In case of using material of others, always GIVE ATTRIBUTION to the original authors! This is especially important for images. See Citation & Bibliography Format for details on the citation format.

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-- Wolfgang Aigner 19:45, 24 April 2008 (CEST)