On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 2:40 PM, Mina Theofilatou <theoth(a)otenet.gr> wrote:
Again, that's beside my point. There's a huge
distance between companies
using/benefiting from opensource, and the same companies coming out and
saying more or less "The Opensource Community meets the Academic Community.
Brought to you by Facebook".
(Replace "Opensource" above with Open-content to describe Wikimedia, and
"Facebook" with the multinational for-profit organisation of your choice.
There you have it: an emerging trend.)
Just because you labour for free does not mean your content cannot and is
not usurped for commercial purposes. Wikimedia content is intentionally
created with the intention of allowing and encouraging commercial
repurposing of it. This is not really an emerging trend either, but one
that has been going on since at least 2000 or so when AOL and other online
service providers usurped fan communities, developed relationships with
officially licensed content producers to host non-paid fan labour under
their auspices.
There are issues at play here that are probably important, but they speak
to larger issues regarding the state of employment in the United States
where people are expected to labour for free as an internship. I believe in
the USA there was high level litigation regarding this labour related
issue.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/the-court-ruling-that-c…
has
some details but I have not followed up much on it since.
--
twitter: purplepopple
blog:
ozziesport.com