[Foundation-l] Board meeting in Rotterdam later this week

Wed Jan 10 22:56:16 UTC 2007

On 1/10/07, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear David,
>
> knowing the Dutch language Wikipedia-community, I think almost everybody
> will agree with me that it is no "easy" community. some communitymembers are
> now trying to approve a non-free license on the Dutch language Wikipedia,
> the CC-NC. This license is imcompatible with the GNU FDL, and I think that
> it is, due to GFDL, not allowed to use it on Wikipedia on articles. It is
> not something to have an opinion about really, it is or it isn't allowed by
> GFDL. You can at most have another view on the license. I think it is very
> very important that the Foundation makes it clear for once and for ever what
> licenses are acceptable on the Wikimedia projects. It is very hard to
> explain to people why one project thinks the use of NC (not to speak of fair
> use) is allowed, and why other projects state it isnt. It's not even a
> question of local law, it is about what is allowed by the GFDL license.
>

No we deal with that issue by useing the collective work clause (not
it's proper name). Articles with images in are a collection of
diffferent works thus the images can be under any lisence as far as
the GFDL is concernded.

> In the Dutch language community we have actually not a single expert on the
> area of copyright and licenses. I doubt lot of other communities have. (With
> an expert I mean someone who has studied law and is specialized in that
> aera) So at the end people like you and me have to make this kind of
> fundamental choises about licenses, even though we do not know what exactly
> we are talking about, we are just guessing. (just assuming you are not one
> of those experts, by coincidense) A lot of small communities are struggling
> with this, and I think it would be very wise of the Foundtaioin to help
> those communities, to help especially the Dutch language wikipedia-community
> in this, as we have already enough to fight over, by getting a legal advice
> with an expert, and make a choise in result of that. An advice would require
> in my opinion a same amount of efford, so I really urge to "rules" from
> above, although I am usually no big fan of that. So I second heartely Hay's
> request, please bring some light in the darkness, and let the blind people
> see again.
>

FSF publishes a list of lisences and describes them. While we
dissagree over CC wikipedia tends to follow the defintions fairly
closely:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html

Translations into a number of languages are linked to at the end.
-- 
geni