[Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

Mon May 31 00:17:00 UTC 2004

"Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> schrieb:

> > What is the difference between free and copyleft?
> > Fundamentally, a document is free if ''it'' may be used freely:
> > freely read, freely copied, freely modified, and freely distributed
> > (see <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html>
> > or <http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines>).
> > A document is copyleft if ''its derivatives'' may be used freely.
> 
> When I say 'free' I mean free as in cost and free as in freedom. 

Well, then the non-copyleft free licenses should fall under that
definition as least as much as copyleft ones. There's no difference
in cost (the only difference would be non-commercial licenses, which
neither of you seem to be advocating), and in freedom they're more
free.

> >... 
> > We can have this argument, but let's be clear about what we're arguing over.
> > AFAIK, ''nobody'' is advocating that Wikimedia publish non-free articles.
> > (There is the issue of incorporating fair use items ''within'' articles,
> > such as quotations and images, but that is a different discussion.)
> > The question is whether their freedom must be protected by copyleft.
> 
> I'm advocating the full use of the word free (no cost and copyleft). 

Then you have a strange meaning of 'free'.

"You may do with it what you want, provided you mention my name" is
more free than "You may do with it what you want, provided you mention
my name and give others the same rights and obligations".

Andre Engels