[Foundation-l] Offering Wikibooks content for sale

Wed Jul 5 03:40:15 UTC 2006

Brad Patrick wrote in part:

>Licensing others to publish, from
>the WMF perspective is not a big step, and is to WMF's great financial
>advantage.
>
snip

>Robert, what would an efficient process look like to you, assuming the
>licensing component is a requirement?
>_______________________________________________
>  
>
This is a poor set of assumptions and I think gives a contrary 
impression to what is intended.

The FDL is specifically designed to allow anyone to modify the material 
and republish it in any form that meets the attribution requirements and 
the requirement that the FDL propagate to the recipient.   It 
specifically prohibits publishing in a form that does not include an 
FDL  for the recipient to republish the "free" content at will. 

This would seem to require that the content be kept separate from the 
Logos and Trademarks.  Essentially we could sell the right to use the 
logo and trademark in advertising and promotion efforts but not for 
packaging with the FDL material unless the Trademark and Logo were also 
released under the FDL.  

Assuming the content must be licensed from the WMF is a violation of the 
FDL and it could be argued an attempt to exploit the name brand 
recognition of the GNU FDL without meeting the responsibilities of its use.

It seems pretty easy to me to delineate that the trademarks and logos of 
the WMF may be licensed separately for use in advertising and sales 
promotion to any publishing effort using the FDL'ed material in ways 
mutually acceptable to the WMF and the publisher.   Any customer who 
purchased the content could in turn modify the content and the 
attributions appropriately and then republish without the use of the WMF 
trademarks or logos.

Clearly any licensing arrangement for the trademarks or logos should 
include a right to review and cancel the use of the trademarks and logos 
in inappropriate fashions.

regards,
lazyquasar