[Licom-l] Opt-out?

Thu May 28 15:23:04 UTC 2009

That seems like a reasonable solution. BTW, the total number of GFDL
1.2-only media on Commons stands at 13,000 files currently. It will be
interesting to see how much this number grows over the next two
months.

Ryan Kaldari

On 5/27/09, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> 2009/5/27 Robert Rohde <rarohde at gmail.com>:
>> On this issue the WMF would be within their rights to be prescriptive.
>>  (Whether they want to be is a separate question.)  The relicensing
>> provisions require an overt act by the Foundation, so the WMF could
>> choose to exclude certain works.
>
> Yes, it could; however, really prescriptive high-level decisions are
> typically made by the Board of Trustees only when necessary, which I
> think would be a slow process to conclude. I'm also not sure it's a
> good idea to do so here. Specifically regarding media files:
>
> If we let people re-license stuff at will to GFDL 1.2-only where it's
> currently not, that could potentially open the door to thousands of
> media files being re-licensed over the coming two weeks.  Moreover,
> people might be under the impression that GFDL 1.2-only files will
> continue to be treated the way they are now, when all indicators so
> far seem to be that the community is moving towards phasing out that
> license for media files. This would potentially make such a decision
> much harder to execute, as thousands of articles could lose their
> media as a result. Finally, it could trigger confusion about people's
> ability to "opt out" of the text part of the migration.
>
> In general, I think any opt-out process that is potentially unlimited
> in scope (even if it has a deadline) is too disruptive. Instead of a
> two week opt-out period, I'm in favor of a committee recommendation to
> apply common sense and courtesy during and immediately after the
> transition. Rather than inviting people to explicitly opt out if they
> want to, I think the community ought to consider it if they request
> it, or if they try to actively implement it on their own.
>
> Erik
> --
> Erik Möller
> Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
>
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