On 10/17/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote:
There's anecdotal evidence for this happening for
images. The
Wikimedia enquiry address gets a lot of requests to discuss licensing
for an image, generally assuming we're the copyright holder (but
sometimes asking directly for the author); money is certainly in the
air on some occasions, though I suspect most end up as "Sure, use it,
can you put my name on the flyleaf?"
Um. I've made a non-trivial amount of money relicensing my images to
folks who found them via Wikimedia projects... not enough to pay for
my equipment yet, but within a few years perhaps. ... but I'm just one
person with only a few commercially interesting images.
I certainly would believe that a large high-quality GFDLed collection
could generate real income by charging for releases under licenses
which are more comforting and standard to various industries. I doubt
that the income would be enough to offset the substantial cost of
digitizing and collecting such works.