Thread: swik.net is copying planetpostgresql content
Hello all, found this one during a Google search: http://swik.net/PostgreSQL/Planet+Postgresql It seems this wiki is fetching all Planet PostgreSQL content and adding anything to their own wiki - without even a link back to planet. Any planet link is rewritten to match the wiki structure. The PG planet is not the only website in question, they fetch much more blogs: http://zeitgeist.swik.net/ http://swik.net/?randomproject In addition they change any license to: "All original text is available as Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike". This behavior gives (of course) top positions in any search engine result - but i'm not sure that all planet feeds find this amusing. Just spoke with Devrim about that and his opinion is to let the community decide. So is there anything we want to do? The wrong/changed license and the missing links back to the original website are at least questionable. Kind regards -- Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum German PostgreSQL User Group
On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 1:26 PM, Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum <adsmail@wars-nicht.de> wrote: > > Hello all, > > found this one during a Google search: > > http://swik.net/PostgreSQL/Planet+Postgresql > > It seems this wiki is fetching all Planet PostgreSQL content and adding > anything to their own wiki - without even a link back to planet. > Any planet link is rewritten to match the wiki structure. > The PG planet is not the only website in question, they fetch much more > blogs: http://zeitgeist.swik.net/ http://swik.net/?randomproject > In addition they change any license to: "All original text is available > as Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike". > > This behavior gives (of course) top positions in any search engine > result - but i'm not sure that all planet feeds find this amusing. > > Just spoke with Devrim about that and his opinion is to let the > community decide. > > > So is there anything we want to do? The wrong/changed license and > the missing links back to the original website are at least > questionable. > > > Kind regards > > -- > Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum > German PostgreSQL User Group > > -- > Sent via pgsql-advocacy mailing list (pgsql-advocacy@postgresql.org) > To make changes to your subscription: > http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-advocacy > <quote> You can also syndicate RSS feeds into SWiK. This is useful in cases such as a project news feed, or a tips and tricks blog. Every registered user of SWiK also has a set of personal pages, and you might want to syndicate your personal feeds into SWiK as well – such as your del.icio.us bookmarks or your blog. </quote> It seems to me that someone pushed the feeds, rather than swik directly fetching. If this is the case that user probably accepted some conditions, and probably the license and missing links are an effect of this conditions. Could be? 2 cents. -- Guido Barosio ----------------------- http://www.globant.com guido.barosio@globant.com
On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 10:26:46PM +0200, Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum wrote: > It seems this wiki is fetching all Planet PostgreSQL content and adding > anything to their own wiki - without even a link back to planet. > Any planet link is rewritten to match the wiki structure. > The PG planet is not the only website in question, they fetch much more > blogs: http://zeitgeist.swik.net/ http://swik.net/?randomproject > In addition they change any license to: "All original text is available > as Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike". It isn't clear that they're actually relicensing in that case, because they may mean "stuff we wrote" when they say "original text". One problem is that there's no license posted anywhere I can see on planetpostgresql (which is fine, since it's an aggregator) or on many of the underlying blogs. In any case, even if what they're doing is not against some license, it's at least impolite. I'd ask them to stop. It also undermines the attempt by the community to unify its message, basically by subsuming it under their own project. I think that's not cool. A -- Andrew Sullivan ajs@commandprompt.com +1 503 667 4564 x104 http://www.commandprompt.com/
On Mon, 26 May 2008 14:06:09 -0700 Guido Barosio wrote:
> It seems to me that someone pushed the feeds, rather than swik
> directly fetching. If this is the case that user probably accepted
> some conditions, and probably the license and missing links are an
> effect of this conditions.
"This user" is not the owner of all blogs on planet. "This user" is not
in a position to "change" the license or allow swik to do so.
So if swik wants to feed this user account - no problem. But
please just for this user, not for the public.
> Could be? 2 cents.
Could be, yes. But that's no excuse for doing it wrong.
Kind regards
--
Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum
German PostgreSQL User Group
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: RIPEMD160 > It seems this wiki is fetching all Planet PostgreSQL content and adding > anything to their own wiki - without even a link back to planet. > Any planet link is rewritten to match the wiki structure. Not sure what you mean by this? EVery article I looked at does link back to the originating blog. All the links in my article, for example, still work exactly as I wrote them: http://swik.net/PostgreSQL/Planet+Postgresql/Greg+Sabino+Mullane%3A+DBD%3A%3APg+advanced+tracing+options/b3sdf or: http://tinyurl.com/54lg28 > In addition they change any license to: "All original text is available > as Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike". That means any text *not copied from somewhere else* is under CCA-S. In other words, anything created on their site. Which seems perfectly valid to me. > This behavior gives (of course) top positions in any search engine > result - but i'm not sure that all planet feeds find this amusing. > Just spoke with Devrim about that and his opinion is to let the > community decide. What makes you think that they get "top position" in a search engine result? Searching for "DBD::Pg tracing" gives my original article as the top result, with swik.net not even showing up at all. They are simply parsing the RSS feed, and they *do* link back to planetpostgres, including the "Continue reading" bit, so I'm not seeing this as a really big deal. If they weren't linking back to PP at all, this might matter, but because they do, this is actually a good thing and probably helps PP's Google rating. - -- Greg Sabino Mullane greg@turnstep.com PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200805261738 http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iEYEAREDAAYFAkg7L3QACgkQvJuQZxSWSsjh/QCeNfyAsxQKnBIT0HMsPr4aW/KS 8W8AoPgsAB/eWVO/Oaqs1hvldfs0OrV5 =NJjv -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Mon, 2008-05-26 at 17:07 -0400, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> One problem is that there's no license posted anywhere I can see on
> planetpostgresql (which is fine, since it's an aggregator) or on many
> of the underlying blogs.
Perhaps the authors are not licensing their content for others to copy,
they are merely publishing it for others to read.
Regards,
Jeff Davis
For what it's worth, this is my take on it as well, and I agree with all points below.
On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 5:46 PM, Greg Sabino Mullane <greg@turnstep.com> wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160Not sure what you mean by this? EVery article I looked at does link back to
> It seems this wiki is fetching all Planet PostgreSQL content and adding
> anything to their own wiki - without even a link back to planet.
> Any planet link is rewritten to match the wiki structure.
the originating blog. All the links in my article, for example, still work
exactly as I wrote them:
http://swik.net/PostgreSQL/Planet+Postgresql/Greg+Sabino+Mullane%3A+DBD%3A%3APg+advanced+tracing+options/b3sdf
or: http://tinyurl.com/54lg28That means any text *not copied from somewhere else* is under CCA-S. In
> In addition they change any license to: "All original text is available
> as Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike".
other words, anything created on their site. Which seems perfectly valid
to me.What makes you think that they get "top position" in a search engine result?
> This behavior gives (of course) top positions in any search engine
> result - but i'm not sure that all planet feeds find this amusing.
> Just spoke with Devrim about that and his opinion is to let the
> community decide.
Searching for "DBD::Pg tracing" gives my original article as the top result,
with swik.net not even showing up at all.
They are simply parsing the RSS feed, and they *do* link back to planetpostgres,
including the "Continue reading" bit, so I'm not seeing this as a really big deal.
If they weren't linking back to PP at all, this might matter, but because they
do, this is actually a good thing and probably helps PP's Google rating.
- --
Greg Sabino Mullane greg@turnstep.com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200805261738
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
iEYEAREDAAYFAkg7L3QACgkQvJuQZxSWSsjh/QCeNfyAsxQKnBIT0HMsPr4aW/KS
8W8AoPgsAB/eWVO/Oaqs1hvldfs0OrV5
=NJjv
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
--
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To make changes to your subscription:
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On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 03:21:45PM -0700, Jeff Davis wrote: > Perhaps the authors are not licensing their content for others to copy, > they are merely publishing it for others to read. Right; I meant that "problem" was the aggregator's, not the authors'. A -- Andrew Sullivan ajs@commandprompt.com +1 503 667 4564 x104 http://www.commandprompt.com/
On Mon, 26 May 2008 21:46:20 -0000 Greg Sabino Mullane wrote: > > It seems this wiki is fetching all Planet PostgreSQL content and adding > > anything to their own wiki - without even a link back to planet. > > Any planet link is rewritten to match the wiki structure. > > Not sure what you mean by this? EVery article I looked at does link back to > the originating blog. All the links in my article, for example, still work > exactly as I wrote them: > > http://swik.net/PostgreSQL/Planet+Postgresql/Greg+Sabino+Mullane%3A+DBD%3A%3APg+advanced+tracing+options/b3sdf > > or: http://tinyurl.com/54lg28 Every article which in original comes from planetpg is copied and linked into this wiki. Links to external websites are fine. > > In addition they change any license to: "All original text is available > > as Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike". > > That means any text *not copied from somewhere else* is under CCA-S. In > other words, anything created on their site. Which seems perfectly valid > to me. That's not what is written in the license statement, that's your opinion. By the way, you can't see a difference between what's original by swik and what's copied from planet - because anything appears as being in the swik wiki. As example: http://swik.net/PostgreSQL/Planet+Postgresql/Selena+Deckelmann%3A+PostgreSQL+Conference+East+-+buckets+of+awesome%21/b3non The full text appears as written in this wiki, even the link "Return to Planet PostgreSQL" in the upper right corner is a link back into this wiki and not back to planetpg. Fine, the "read more" links back to the original article, but this link is very small, given all the other links on this website. An aggregator (like planet) links the article back to the original blog site, this wiki links all posts into his own wiki and just adds this small "read more" link. > > This behavior gives (of course) top positions in any search engine > > result - but i'm not sure that all planet feeds find this amusing. > > Just spoke with Devrim about that and his opinion is to let the > > community decide. > > What makes you think that they get "top position" in a search engine result? > Searching for "DBD::Pg tracing" gives my original article as the top result, > with swik.net not even showing up at all. What makes me think? I found out because i searched for something which i know it is on planet (sorry, it's almost 4 days ago, don't know the keyword anymore but i wanted to wait until i spoke Devrim) and this wiki was the number one hit, even before planetpg. > They are simply parsing the RSS feed, and they *do* link back to planetpostgres, <a href="http://swik.net/PostgreSQL/Planet+Postgresql">Return to Planet Postgresql</a> I see. They are not just "simply parsing" the feed, they publish the content from the feed without asking anyone and they try to hold you in that wiki as long as possible by rewriting all planetpg links. As others stated out: we make an effort to unify all PG blogs and they undermine this attempt. What's wrong with "simply parsing" the feed, publish the headline and then link back to the original article like others do? > If they weren't linking back to PP at all, this might matter, but because they > do, this is actually a good thing and probably helps PP's Google rating. It of course helps the swik rating, that's all. Kind regards -- Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum German PostgreSQL User Group
Folks, "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity or inattention." As far as I can tell, SWiK is guilty of nothing worse that sloppiness. I see absolutely no reason to assume that they are trying to do something sinister. What would be their motivation? Further, SWiK *does* link back to the original blogs. So some of the argument posted here has been based on false premises. The alternative is to have SWiK not include PostgreSQL at all, which is not a good outcome for us. I think that we *might* send them a politely worded request to clarify their copyright statement (I'll be happy to do this). Beyond that, this seems like a real non-issue. -- Josh Berkus PostgreSQL @ Sun San Francisco
+1 I've said something pretty similar though, or that was my intention at least :) gb.- On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 1:00 PM, Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote: > Folks, > > "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity or inattention." > > As far as I can tell, SWiK is guilty of nothing worse that sloppiness. I see > absolutely no reason to assume that they are trying to do something sinister. > What would be their motivation? > > Further, SWiK *does* link back to the original blogs. So some of the argument > posted here has been based on false premises. > > The alternative is to have SWiK not include PostgreSQL at all, which is not a > good outcome for us. I think that we *might* send them a politely worded > request to clarify their copyright statement (I'll be happy to do this). > Beyond that, this seems like a real non-issue. > > -- > Josh Berkus > PostgreSQL @ Sun > San Francisco > > -- > Sent via pgsql-advocacy mailing list (pgsql-advocacy@postgresql.org) > To make changes to your subscription: > http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-advocacy > -- Guido Barosio ----------------------- http://www.globant.com guido.barosio@globant.com
> The alternative is to have SWiK not include PostgreSQL at all, which is not a > good outcome for us. I think that we *might* send them a politely worded > request to clarify their copyright statement (I'll be happy to do this). > Beyond that, this seems like a real non-issue. They are in my neck of the woods, possibly a nice phone call would resolve the whole issue. Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake
JD, > They are in my neck of the woods, possibly a nice phone call would > resolve the whole issue. Sure. I'm just not sure there *is* an issue. As far as I can tell, they are just re-broadcasting *publically available RSS feeds* (which is what RSS feeds are for, no?). If there is any problem (and I'm not convinced there is) it's just that their copyright statement is unclear. -- Josh Berkus PostgreSQL @ Sun San Francisco
On Tue, 2008-05-27 at 09:13 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote: > JD, > > > They are in my neck of the woods, possibly a nice phone call would > > resolve the whole issue. > > Sure. I'm just not sure there *is* an issue. > Well there is an issue, it just may not be a problem :). It may just be one of clarification. > As far as I can tell, they are just re-broadcasting *publically available RSS > feeds* (which is what RSS feeds are for, no?). If there is any problem (and > I'm not convinced there is) it's just that their copyright statement is > unclear. Right. Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake
On Tue, 27 May 2008 09:20:21 -0700 Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-05-27 at 09:13 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
> > JD,
> >
> > > They are in my neck of the woods, possibly a nice phone call would
> > > resolve the whole issue.
> >
> > Sure. I'm just not sure there *is* an issue.
> >
>
> Well there is an issue, it just may not be a problem :). It may just be
> one of clarification.
Yeah.
> > As far as I can tell, they are just re-broadcasting *publically available RSS
> > feeds* (which is what RSS feeds are for, no?). If there is any problem (and
> > I'm not convinced there is) it's just that their copyright statement is
> > unclear.
>
> Right.
I would not name it "re-broadcasting" because of all the work they have
done to integrate the content into the wiki but basically that's it.
So i'm also +1 for politely asking.
By the way: RSS feeds are for read, not for republish the content
without permission. I granted Devrim the right to publish parts of my
blog on planetpg, but i can't remember that i or most of the other
planet posters did include the permission for other usage.
Kind regards
--
Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum
German PostgreSQL User Group
On Tue, 2008-05-27 at 09:50 +0200, Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum wrote: > > > Not sure what you mean by this? EVery article I looked at does link back to > > the originating blog. All the links in my article, for example, still work > > exactly as I wrote them: > > > > http://swik.net/PostgreSQL/Planet+Postgresql/Greg+Sabino+Mullane%3A+DBD%3A%3APg+advanced+tracing+options/b3sdf > > > > or: http://tinyurl.com/54lg28 > > Every article which in original comes from planetpg is copied and > linked into this wiki. Links to external websites are fine. I think there is some confusion here. When I click the link above it takes me to the "teaser" of the article. The teaser then points directly to the source article. I don't see this as any different than what search engines do. In fact what it appears they are is a super aggregator. They are trolling the web looking for feeds tagged PostgreSQL and bringing them into a central portal. Look here: http://swik.net/PostgreSQL As far as their license: All original text is available as Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike The text from the feeds isn't original text. Unless someone can point out something specific that I don't see, I think we should thank these fine people for providing yet another way to find information about PostgreSQL. Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake
On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 9:35 AM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote: > Unless someone can point out something specific that I don't see, I > think we should thank these fine people for providing yet another way to > find information about PostgreSQL. +1 JD - if you end up chatting with them, I would enjoy hearing a report back. Otherwise, I'm happy that my content is being linked there. -selena -- Selena Deckelmann United States PostgreSQL Association - http://www.postgresql.us PDXPUG - http://pugs.postgresql.org/pdx Me - http://www.chesnok.com/daily
On Tuesday 27 May 2008 12:29:48 Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum wrote:
> By the way: RSS feeds are for read, not for republish the content
> without permission. I granted Devrim the right to publish parts of my
> blog on planetpg, but i can't remember that i or most of the other
> planet posters did include the permission for other usage.
>
To this end you (and all planetpostgresql bloggers) should realize that planet
already violates this idea, because it makes it's own aggregate rss feed
available, which is then re-published to multiple locations
(www.postgresql.org for example), all without explicit permission of the
individual bloggers. So if you really don't want your blog to be re-published
beyond planetpostgresql, I would kindly suggest you ask for your blog to be
removed from planetpostgresql.
--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL
* Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum <adsmail@wars-nicht.de> [080501 00:00]: > As example: > > http://swik.net/PostgreSQL/Planet+Postgresql/Selena+Deckelmann%3A+PostgreSQL+Conference+East+-+buckets+of+awesome%21/b3non > > The full text appears as written in this wiki, even the link "Return to > Planet PostgreSQL" in the upper right corner is a link back into this > wiki and not back to planetpg. > Fine, the "read more" links back to the original article, but this link > is very small, given all the other links on this website. An aggregator > (like planet) links the article back to the original blog site, this > wiki links all posts into his own wiki and just adds this small "read > more" link. In otherwords, it *is* aggregating, with 1 other "page" in between, that "page" being the published entry content. Pretty much like Google Reader, Akregator, etc... > What makes me think? I found out because i searched for something which > i know it is on planet (sorry, it's almost 4 days ago, don't know the > keyword anymore but i wanted to wait until i spoke Devrim) and this > wiki was the number one hit, even before planetpg. Google pagerank is to thank for that, well, that and the fact that PlanetPostgreSQL.org publishes a RSS/XML/ATOM feed for others to view and read... > > They are simply parsing the RSS feed, and they *do* link back to planetpostgres, > > <a href="http://swik.net/PostgreSQL/Planet+Postgresql">Return to Planet > Postgresql</a> > > I see. And the problem here? You're burried levels into the SWIK agregator, and it's a link back up 1 level in their agregator... And if your at that page, the link is "Return to PostgreSQL", where you find lots of other information SWIK and their users have collected... > They are not just "simply parsing" the feed, they publish the > content from the feed without asking anyone and they try to hold you > in that wiki as long as possible by rewriting all planetpg links. As > others stated out: we make an effort to unify all PG blogs and they > undermine this attempt. What's wrong with "simply parsing" the feed, > publish the headline and then link back to the original article like > others do? It's actually works the same way most as of the agregators I know. They "suck" the feed, parse the published articles, display them (and all the ones I use display them separately from the main list of articles, this "try to hold you in that wiki as long as possible by rewriting...." you talk about. Many feeds that intentionally want to "pull" the user back to the website only publish a "summary", or "teaser" in the feed. In fact PlanetPostgreSQL does that too, and even kicked someone off recently for not "sumarizing" his articles... I'm not sure I see what all the fuss is about. If you (as in the community providing content for pp) want to force people to use that content only through accessing http://www.planentpostgresql.org/ you shouldn't be providing that content in a RSS/XML/ATOM feed, which are standard protocols to allow the content/blogs/articles be "aggregated" and read by others without having to go to the original-content website. a. -- Aidan Van Dyk Create like a god, aidan@highrise.ca command like a king, http://www.highrise.ca/ work like a slave.