[Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

Tue Jun 1 17:32:14 UTC 2004

--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> >Yes, but that deals with the freedom of your use, not the freedom of the
> >content
> 
> The ''only'' issue in the freedom of content
> is the freedom of people to ''use'' that content.
> It may well be that this limitation on freedom is justified,
> given the substandard world of incompatible licences
> (and the even more fundamentally substandard world
> where proprietary control is possible at all),
> but we're only deluding ourselves if we pretend
> that it's not any limitation on freedom whatsoever.

I disagree and maintain that the expression of knowledge in content almost has
a 'life' (metaphorically speaking) of its own and deserves to be free from
proprietary control. If derivative works are not ensured freedom from
proprietary control, then there is much less of a positive feedback loop
improving that content.

Much of our effort would be used to feed a black hole instead of being
continually reused and expanded.

>...
>  I don't know if that problem is significant,
> and we certainly don't have to decide Wikinews now.
> But remember why this conversation started (this time):
> the Wikimedia Foundation is supposed to have a policy
> requiring that Wikimedia works be covered by a "free" licence
> "like the GNU FDL".  We need to decide what "free" means here.
> And the last thing that you've said about that in this thread
> is that you want to use "free" in the nonstandard sense
> that includes «copyleft» in addition to «free» in the sense of GNU.

The GNU FDL is copyleft, so IMO anything 'like it' must also be copyleft (such
as the CC by-sa).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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