[Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

Sat May 29 19:17:01 UTC 2004

--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Take the Wikinews project as an example. If successful, Wikinews will not  
> only compete with CNN but also with AP and Reuters. That means that  
> newspapers, magazines and websites may be interested in using our content  
> instead of the expensive AP feed. 

Would it not be much more important to make sure that Wikinews text can be used
to *update* the corresponding Wikipedia articles? I've been very skeptical of
the Wikinews idea due to the fact that it may reduce the rate at which
Wikipedia is kept up to date. But placing Wikinews text under a license that is
incompatible with Wikipedia is way over the top. 

> But the FDL with its long license text  
> and complicated terms is not very practical for that. 

Then let's work on reducing the FDL down to its essentials, call that the FCL,
have the FSF adopt it and create a FDL 2.0 that allows direct compatibility
with invariant-section-free FDL content and the FCL (the FCL would in turn be
compatible with the CC by-sa). 

> There is even the  
> question if we really want to force Wikinews users to copyleft their  
> content, or if the public domain or an attribution license wouldn't be  
> more practical in this instance.

Then that project would not be free content. Free content licenses protect the
content from proprietary control and ensure a positive feedback loop which
continually improves the content. Public domain and non-share-alike attribution
licenses encourage mutually incompatible content forks where improvements that
create derivative works cannot be re-incorporated back into the original - 
meaning there is no positive feeback loop. 

Not to mention the fact that a non-FDL Wikinews article could not copy anything
more than a fair use amount of background text from Wikipedia.  

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 