[Wikipedia-l] Re: What would Richard Stallman say?

Sat Feb 21 04:51:11 UTC 2004

Andre Engels wrote:

>Having said that, I think requiring that the image must be usable for
>anyone might be overdoing it. I would say, the article including the image
>should be usable for anyone. That is, having the image with a text equal
>to or derived from the Wikipedia text should be ok, just taking the image
>alone out need not be.
>
Sorry, but if we start conceding that in effect, we are combining an 
article with an image into a single document under GFDL, downstream 
users have to be able to use the image alone. We are licensing them to 
modify the document, and potential modification includes stripping out 
all the text and just leaving the image. We cannot restrict downstream 
modification--that's essential to copyleft.

--Michael Snow