Marco-
You see it this way we'll see what the lawyers
from the FSF say about this.
The lawyers from the FSF interpret the FDL in the favor of the FSF's
ideology. They are not an independent authority. If you want a legal
opinion on the FDL, hire a lawyer.
>> As a consequence we have to emphasise that
_only_ the wikipedia article
>> source is free, _not_ the whole article. This is something which nobody
>> will expect if we call us "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia".
>
> What most people expect is that Wikipedia is free as in beer. We surprise
> them when we tell them that 90%+ of it are also free as in speech.
This is a nice interpretation, but has nothing to do
with what people that
come from the free software world expect. _I_ expect a 100% free (in the
sense of freedom) encyclopedia and to be honest I am very disappointed if
this becomes official policy.
Well, do you prefer it if it happens without being reflected in all our
policy documents? Because this is currently the case. You may say you are
disappointed if Wikipedia is not 100% free in the Stallman-sense. I say I
am disappointed if I can no longer quote articles, speeches, scientific
papers, and so forth. I say I am disappointed if all the work that has
been done in digitizing, converting and collecting small music samples
will be abandoned. I say I am disappointed if the picture of the Rumsfeld/
Hussein handshake will be removed because it is copyrighted. I say I am
disappointed if the last little freedom that copyright law grants us is
taken away not by the content industry, but by overzealous, paranoid
Wikipedians. What's next? DRM to protect our content against FDL
violations?
Wikipedia documents human knowledge. This is impossible without quoting.
It is impossible without fair use. An encyclopedia that cannot cite
directly what others say is not an encyclopedia.
I want Wikipedia to be a free learning resource. If small but important
parts that cannot easily be replaced with open content are not freely
modifiable because of copyright law, then that is acceptable to me. You,
Axel and Brion see a slippery slope -- I and Ray do not see this, and
Jimbo is in the middle.
"The license we use grants free access to our
content. That is to say, most
of Wikipedia content can be copied, modified, and redistributed so long as
the new version grants the same freedoms to others and acknowledges
Wikipedia as the source. Wikipedia articles (not all content) therefore will
remain free forever and can be used by anybody subject to certain
restrictions, most of which serve to ensure that freedom."
That is an improvement, but it is really better to refer specifically to
fair use content that can be part of articles, or fair use of images.
If this is or becomes official policy then Wikipedia
is not free (in the
sense of freedom) anymore. Then please also replace "Wikipedia the free
encyclopedia" by something else, because it then becomes a lie :-(
I'm sorry to say so, but Mr. Stallman does not have any rights to the
interpretation of the term "free". I'm sure he is equally sorry about
that.
Regards,
Erik