[Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

Tue Jun 1 20:37:14 UTC 2004

Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>The ''only'' issue in the freedom of content
>>is the freedom of people to ''use'' that content.

>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.

It's all well and good to speak metaphorically of the "life"
of a work of art, or of an idea, or of a meme, and so forth.
But when I spoke of freedom above, I was speaking ''literally''.
Freedom is a property of living creatures like human beings,
not of inanimate things like encyclopaedia articles
(except, of course, in a metaphorical sense).
Similarly, it is only people that "deserve" free content;
abstract ideas do not "deserve" anything for themselves.
This is why organisations like the Free Software Foundation,
the Open Source Initiative, the Debian project, etc, etc, etc
define freedom of software code, manuals, documentation, and so forth
in terms of what ''people'' can do with them.

Now we are getting highly philosophical, perhaps.
So I will focus on your down-to-earth factual statement:

>If derivative works are not ensured freedom from
>proprietary control, then there is much less of a positive feedback loop
>improving that content.

And this statement is FALSE -- or at least not necessarily true.

I believe that it was Erik that argued that WikiNews
would not be picked up by newspapers that rely on wire services
(like Reuters, AP, etc) if it's GNU FDL or otherwise copyleft.
(Traditional news feeds are copyright and their subscribers must pay.)
Now, Erik may or may not be correct about this --
perhaps Internet news services are what really matter,
and perhaps they would be perfectly happy to put their stories
under the GNU FDL if that means that they can use WikiNews gratis,
perhaps it will even turn out that the New York Times will publish
copyleft stories in order to make use of WikiNews feeds,
once those become superior to the proprietary news services.
But it's hardly obvious (not to me) that Erik is wrong.
So let's suppose for the sake of argument that he's correct.

Then in one possible world, WikiNews is GNU FDL or CC-by-sa,
and (following Erik's fears) is not used very much by others.
When it ''is'' used, then the resulting derivative work is free,
and this creates a small amount of feedback for a day or two,
as readers not only return to WikiNews but also incorporate
the derivative works into the original WikiNews articles.
Then the news is out of date, and the feedback is over for now.
However, in another possible world, WikiNews is CC-by,
and (following Erik's hopes) is widely picked up by other news sites.
These other news organisations often use it to create derivative works,
which (thanks to the "by" provisions) mention WikiNews as a source.
Interested readers flock to WikiNews in droves for a day or two,
generating a great deal of feedback to the WikiNews articles,
even though their edits are limited to their own material.
Then the news is out of date, and the feedback is over for now.

The upshot of this hypothetical situation is this:
There are ''two'' components (at least) to the level of feedback.
One is whether every derivative work can be fed back,
and a copyleft insures that this condition will be met.
But another is whether the original work receives a wide audience,
and freer document (in the strict literal sense of what people
are allowed to do with it) will generally lead to wider distribution.
Which of these effects is greater will depend on the circumstances.

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

There won't be much of a black hole with WikiNews.
This wouldn't be like Microsoft's habit of incorporating
free (but noncopyleft) BSD code into proprietary Windows code,
which causes Microsoft's best work to be unethically derived
from the free/open software community (or so RMS charges).
After a day or two, a WikiNews article would be worthless
to a black hole like MSN.  This is not to say that there is no problem,
but it does not build up like encyclopaedia articles or literal black holes do.

I do not want to argue that WikiNews would be better of with CC-by.
I'm not in a position to judge that, and it's only hypothetical now.
In fact, I don't believe that ''anybody'' is taking such a strong position.
And since I have no intention of working on WikiNews in the first place,
I really doubt that I'll even be involved in that discussion.
The point is, we don't have to decide now.
But we should not set Wikimedia policy ahead of time
to say that copyleft licences are better,
because after due consideration, that may not turn out to be so.

>>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).

That's obviously not an absolute statement;
the English term "like" is very vague.
You might as well argue that the GNU FDL
is written by the Free Software Foundation,
so anything "like it" must also be written by the FSF
(which the CC-by-sa, of course, is not).

I assume that what you mean is that, IYO,
the copyleft feature of the GNU FDL is vitally important,
while the written-by-FSF feature is not vitally important.
In contrast, I would say that even copyleft is not vital,
while the free (in the strict FSF sense) feature is vital.

Anyway, since you're now saying that Wikimedia policy
should require all Wikimedia works to be copyleft,
you're now in disagreement with (if I'm remember correctly
how this conversation went) me, Erik, Andre, and Anthère.
Since they're probably not all paying attention anymore --
we took many detours to discuss theoretical issues --
I'll bring this to their attention (after checking
that I've got the correct people), so we can stop you. ^_^

-- Toby