[Foundation-l] Offering Wikibooks content for sale

Tue Jul 4 02:02:04 UTC 2006

Of all the books to come out of print-on-demand, this one is possibly the  
most problematic. I am certainly not a lawyer but, as I see it, not only is it  
using the name of the Foundation without the explicit permission of the  
Foundation (and hence, in violation of  our trademark), it is attributing  the 
content to the Foundation. This, in turn, could make us liable for any  copyvios 
in the book (text and images). Despite numerous requests from Print on  Demand 
publishers (including Lulu), the Foundation has consistently avoided such  an 
arrangement for precisely these reasons.

Furthermore, the content was developed as a result of a grant made to the  
Foundation with the stated goal of creating *free* content. After considerable  
discussions with them, we have made it clear that we intend to keep the books  
online and not take them to print. This is precisely what we said we will 
*not*  do, and it is timed perfectly to coincide with negotiations to get a  
considerably larger grant from that same foundation to expand the  Wikijunior 
project. 

This is not commendable. It is the bad result of people acting unilaterally  
on behalf of the Foundation without fully understanding the implications of 
what  they are doing.

Danny