[Wikipedia-l] selling Wikipedia and licensing

Wed Mar 5 21:11:38 UTC 2003

> (Chuck Smith <msochuck at yahoo.com>):
> > We can
> > probably get away with it, since we have an
> > educational goal, no
> > commercial interests, and are not an attractive
> > target for lawsuits,
> > but selling (extracts from) Wikipedia in any form is
> > made almost
> > impossible by these fair use landmines.
> 
> From what I understood.  I could go out tomorrow,
> print Wikipedia as an 20-volume encyclopedia set and
> start selling it tomorrow, without having any legal
> problems.  Am I wrong here?  Perhaps a CD-format would
> be more practical though.  ;-)

You're not wrong; that's probably well within the confines
of both the GFDL and fair use.  However, the FTC might have
something to say about marketing a non-saleable product...

> Also, could someone direct me to a page that
> illustrates why being under the GFDL license is better
> than simply being public domain.  I've pretty much
> ignored all the discussions before about it, but now
> I'm involved in a few projects and we're thinking
> about our license policies, so...

There's really only one reason: more people are willing
to contribute to copylefted projects than to PD projects.
It's purely a human emotional response: some people feel
cheated if their generosity is used in other ways, and so
they are more willing to work for a project that enforces
that. (Though others, like me, would say that it wasn't
really generosity in that case).

-- 
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC