The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Hey guys,
Many wikimedia projects including wikipedia provide SQL dumps of their SQL databases, for offline browsing, as part of the GPL licence.. I couldn't find such dump for the ur-quan wiki, so I assume there isn't any.... I would REALLY like if you could do that - it's not that hard , and instructions are provided in the wikipedia site..

Hope to hear positive answers :)

I would like to get ANY comments....
At least , the E-mail of the Wiki administrator..

I really don't want to download the site with crawling software such as HTTrack, since they put heavy load on the servers..

That would be me.

I actually wrote a reply but decided on a cool-down period. So I'll post a friendly version now.

Anyone who asks can have a copy, no questions asked.

Now,  just so you know, deception and not doing your homework don't get you points around here. Your reasons are obviously fake, our wiki (content) has got nothing to do with the GPL, and you already let loose your crawling software on the site.

You can still get a copy though.

Serge van den Boom

Look pal,
I didn't come to fight anyone (particularly not the admin), so I'll just ignore your irritating (and 100% false) remarks about my honesty, my knowledge , etc.
I'll ask again, where can I download a SQL dump of the database, which is perfectly legal as part of the Creative Commons License (BTW - about the GPL remark - since I participate in Wikipedia for a considerable time, I just got used to the GPL, and since the Ur-Quan Wiki looks almost the same as wikipedia, I just hadn't notice it's CC and not GPL).

Have a nice day,
GNU

The legality of downloading an sql dump is not the issue. Meep-eep has kindly offered to provide one for you, but it is not stated anywhare in the CC-BY-2.0 liscense that one must be provided. In fact, I don't recall this being a component of the GFDL either (the license used by wikipedia).

I would also give credibility to his claims that you were crawling the wiki- he can see the IP adress you post from, and compare it to whatever bot he noticed crawling the wiki.

I don't see the point of arguing...I'll just wait for Meep-eep to do what he said he can, and probably leave the way I came after that.

Let me put it this way: you try to convince me to make an SQL dump for you based on arguments that do not make sense. As those cannot be the real reasons, your real reason must be something else. I call that deceptive.

• "for offline browsing": You really think Wikipedia offers their 35GB of data "for offline browsing"? I doubt it.
  
• "as part of the GPL license": You make it sound like there's some legal requirement to provide you with SQL dumps. There isn't.
  
• "many wikimedia projects": The reason that many others do something is supposed to be an argument for us to do it too? You want me to go running MS Windows too? Besides, I suspect many more wiki projects don't offer SQL dumps.
  
• The logs clearly show that the IP that was used to leech the site is the same  as you have used in your first posting. It's a proxy, but the information that the proxy sent along shows that the address behind the proxy is the same too.
  
  I have my doubts about the "GNU" you use as a handle here too. It suggests that you are in some way representing GNU. At first I thought that the real reason for asking for SQL dumps could be found here. Perhaps you would just want an SQL dump available out of some "information should be free" principle. Or perhaps you don't want to be dependant on us (if you're afraid we would suddenly drop of the face of the Earth). Now I think deception because of principle is particularly dubious, but I can understand such reasons.
  I would expect that someone from GNU would be more interested in trying to convince us that providing SQL dumps are a good thing (they'd probably call it "ethical"), instead of using "the end justifies the means" tactics. But what I would really expect of someone from GNU is to know the difference between the GPL and the GFDL (which is what Wikipedia really uses).
  So if you're not actually representing GNU, why would you use the handle? Is it supposed to give extra weight to your arguments?
  
  Anyhow, I've put up an SQL dump made earlier today on http://www.stack.nl/~svdb/sc2/ultronomicon-sql-dump-20050628.sql.bz2.
  
  Now that you've got your dump, and I can't take that back, I'm rather curious to know what you are planning to do with it, if you care to tell me.
  

First of all, sorry for the late response, I have been busy lately.
Second of all, thanks for the dump.
And here are answers to your questions -

1) Wikipedia DOES provide SQL dumps, and yes- although it's more than 20 GB - look in http://download.wikimedia.org/

2) Never said it's illegal to not provide the SQL dumps. I already mentioned that I was confused, and I know that Ur-Quan wiki is CC-Licensced. I did say that there's nothing illegal in providing the SQL dumps, though. Still, It's a choice of the admin, not obligation.

3) I mentioned other wiki project as an example only. Never said you must do anything because others do it. Don't turn my words into something they're not.

4) In fact, I'm representing only myself. Richard Stallman (The co-founder of GNU) has no connection to me or to what I do. GNU is only my nickname.

5) I wanted the SQL for me only, for curiosity and fun (I want to run my own private wiki server. don't worry - it'll be offline). Since Ur-Quan is a mid-size wiki project, and since I'm a big fan of this game, I thought it is a good option for first try (and I could use the wiki whenever I play, and don't have live internet connection).

Finally , I didn't came to argue, so I really don't understand your negative reaction to me. BTW, if anything I did violeted your robots.txt rules, let me know.

I don't dispute the statement that they provide SQL dumps. Just that they do it for offline browsing. As you're bound to notice, it will be hard to use dumps like this for offline browsing. (See below.)


How am I to  take "provide SQL dumps [...] as part of the GPL license" then?


It's not going to be that easy. You've only got the tables relating to the actual textual content of the Ultronomicon. If you want, I can also give you some other tables (which for humans would generally not be very interesting), but I'm not going to provide the tables that contain user-specific data. And I don't know to what degree the MediaWiki software will work without those, without preprocessing.


My negative reaction stems from the dubious wording of your initial posting (I'm not alone in this btw). Perhaps it's just due to careless formulation, but to me it just reads like a salesman on commission trying to sell me something.
You haven't violated any robots.txt; just etiquette.