[Foundation-l] Wikinews Licensing

Wed Dec 8 23:50:30 UTC 2004

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>user_Jamesday wrote:
>  
>
>>Copyleft is only necessary when you want to limit the people who can
>>use the work. That's the antipathy of the objective of Wikinews, which
>>is to get the news published as widely as possible.
>>    
>>
>
>I don't disagree with much of what you said, but I wanted to add a
>different perspective to what copyleft does.  In many cases it does
>*not* limit the people who can use the work, but rather serves as an
>easy way to persuade them to make their own work available under a
>free license as well.
>  
>
I don't really see how it limits news companies either.  Nearly all of 
their news sources are not public-domain, but subject to much more 
restrictive licenses.  For example, if they want to republish Associated 
Press stories, they must pay the Associated Press considerable sums of 
money.  All copyleft asks is that if they want to republish our stories, 
that they allow us in turn to republish any modifications they make to 
them.  I don't believe it would require them to GFDL their entire 
newspaper, only the story that they're using from us.

-Mark