[WikiEN-l] Non-free images, there has to be a better way

Sat Jul 9 13:00:18 UTC 2005

> Well, it's rare to get permission for GFDL licensing or whatever; I've
> managed to get loads of replies which are happy to give Wikipedia a
> licence, but will not be able to license under GFDL/CC-BY/etc. - dozens
> and dozens of them.

Indeed. To get someone to license under the GFDL
you have to sell them a whole ideology which they
may never have heard of before. This is usually
not possible when the person on the other end
represents an organization (museum, laboratory etc.).

While many people are happy to give Wikipedia a
license they are hesitant to give out a general
license and often don't understand why we're
asking for one. This is understandable considering
that what we're asking would allow the images to
be used to e.g. advertise drugs or decorate political
propaganda. If you're not already sold on GNU ideology
you'll find this hard to swallow - much safer to dole
out permissions one by one.

What I think is probably most effective is not to
try to explain the GFDL or CC licenses and instead
ask them to agree to one of the following:

"Anyone can use this image for any purpose."

"Anyone can use this image for any purpose as long as
it is attributed to us."

"Anyone can use this image for encyclopedia articles
and other educational purposes."

"Anyone can use this image for encyclopedia articles
and other educational purposes as long as it is
attributed to us."

- - -

This is simple enough and clear enough for people to
agree to and it is still good enough for us and most
of our downstream users.

To use one of the examples I keep coming back to we
can probably get the [[Z machine]] picture under the
last license. We already have this:

"encyclopedia articles are fine. We only require a
credit in the form, 'Courtesy, Sandia National Laboratories,'"

I don't think we'll ever get it under a GFDL license,
though, or even a CC-BY license.

> Some of them, I noted, ended up just being grabbed
> and copied for fair use instead (by other users), which is more than
> just a little dispiriting.

I feel your pain.

Regards,
Haukur