On Sunday 01 June 2003 23:43, Erik Moeller wrote:
> 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.
Sorry, but I trust a lawyer opinion more than non-lawyer statements and if you
don't seem to trust the FSF then I ask myself why the GFDL was choosen?
[...]
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?
Erik, I have the highest respect for you and your work, but this is below your
standard. Please, I try to understand your point of view and I expect the
same from you. Even if you might not believe it - we all here want the best
for the Wikipedia project and we all want to keep "evil" away from Wikipedia.
Thanks.
Wikipedia documents human knowledge.
right
This is impossible without quoting.
Sorry, wrong conclusion. You can always rephrase sentences. It is not
neccessary to use quotes if you want to document human knowledge.
It is impossible without fair use. An encyclopedia
that cannot cite
directly what others say is not an encyclopedia.
Well, based on a wrong conclusion the statement does not get more true. You
either define that an encyclopedia by saying that it includes citations (than
your statement is trivial) or you say that an encyclopedia documents human
knowledge, then your statement is wrong.
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.
I am very well aware of the fact that "free" depends on the definiton of the
term "free". The Wikipedia FAQ claims that Wikipedia is free in this very
definition:
"Free content (or open content) works are those other than software which are
licensed freely in the same (freedom) sense as Free software is licensed
freely, see Free software definition. That is to say, recipients are given
permission to use the content for any purpose, copy it, modify it, and to
redistribute modified versions."
and even the announcements for the 100.000 article says that the content of
Wikipedia is under terms of GFDL.
Therefore it is quite safe to say that everyone reading this and coming from
the free software world will expect that "free" means free in the GFDL sense,
no? Of course you can redefine "free" now. With the same argument Microsoft
could say they are writing "free" software because everyone is "free"
to use
it. .
Can we nevertheless define "free" in this discussion in the canonical sense
(as in free software). It is wildly accepted this way and otherwise it will
be even more confusing.
It is the very first time that I heard that the statements above (that
Wikipedia is "free") is not true anymore. As far as I understood it the
project started as a "free" project. I consider allowing non-free content
("fair use" content) a drastic policy change. Was there any agreement on this
change or was that done silently by someone (I don't say that s/he had bad
intentions)?
best regards,
Marco
--
Marco Krohn
Theoretical Physics
University of Hannover