[Wikipedia-l] GNU/FDL and other copyleft restrictions.

Tue Jan 14 11:20:12 UTC 2003

Andre Engels wrote:
> I may be committing blasphemy here, but how much is Wikipedia
> 'married' to the GNU/FDL? The reason I'm asking is that I recently
> wanted to download a picture of the signing of the Treaty of Rome
> from the EU website. Only after I did so, I found that the pictures
> can be copied only for non-commercial purposes. And while Wikipedia
> itself would fall under that heading, the GNU/FDL does not forbid
> commercial use. And it's not the first time I've had that problem
> with texts or pictures either. The GNU/FDL allows a lot, which is
> good on itself, but also means that we cannot use any material under
> stricter copyleft restrictions.

I am open to thoughtful explorations along these lines, but I think
that we're pretty 'married' to GNU/FDL.  The viral nature of the
license makes it pretty impossible at this point to do anything about
nagging issues like this.

At the same time, though, I like the fact that there is no prohibition
on commercial uses of the Wikipedia.  Given my ultimate goal that
there be a free encyclopedia distributed at extremely low cost to
every person on the planet, permitting _nonproprietary_ commercial use
(as GNU/FDL does) is pretty important.

Someday a clever entrepreneur in, say, India, will realize that
although it's not possible to price Britannica/Encarta or a locally
produced conventional encyclopedia at a price point for the masses, it
*is* possible to price a derived version of Wikipedia that way.

--Jimbo