On 2012-08-05 17:31, David Mabiria wrote:Big ups @Abbas so far for that initiative &
representation, if they are
to outsource the job, why not suggest they give it to wikipedians due to
our extensive expertise in this field! Thsts ma thought, regards.David,
As with all other (outsourced) projects undertaken by the Kenya ICT Board, a tender will
be transparently advertised on their
website(http://www.ict.go.ke/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=404:tenders&catid=76:hot-topic&Itemid=205)
and the best bid will be selected. (I can't officially speak on behalf of the Kenya
ICT Board, but this is what I expect to happen).
RegardsAbbas.
From: abbasjnr(a)hotmail.com
To: wikimediake(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2012 05:53:07 +0000
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia Kenya] Kenya News Agency archive
Asaf,
See my responses inline:
From: abartov(a)wikimedia.org
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 08:55:55 -0700
To: wikimediake(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia Kenya] Kenya News Agency archive
On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 3:01 AM, Stephen Wanjau <stevewanjau(a)wikimedia.or.ke> wrote:
Thats tremendous progress Abbas!
Yes, thanks, Abbas, for this report, and I applaud your decision to share it in this
manner with the WMKE membership!
Thanks!
One point I'd like to highlight is that we should be quick to offer mass volunteer
effort _for the commercial repository_.
Indeed. Right now, it is not yet clear if we'll need more manpower, but yes, I'll
definitely consider calling in more volunteers as and when needed.
We should generally stand for the principle of "cultural artifacts created with
public funds should belong (and be made accessible) to the public", and (at least
somewhat) resist the commercialization of these old photos.
True. I can boldly claim that I tried by very best to preach non-commercialization (along
with my colleague from Creative Commons). But really, we were less 10% of the quorum that
were talking about this, and I can only hope that our cries did not fall into deaf ears.
However, on the bright side, I appreciate that we were invited to talk about
non-commercialization -- and this shows that they were interested in us, and would
consider our option. Moreover, I can say that the Kenya ICT Board is becoming a supporter
of Creative Commons, and they are even considering licencing the Kenya Open Data
Initiative under a CC licence, so I don't expect that much resistance from them :-)
We should also remind everyone that at least the pre-colonial ones are no doubt out of
copyright and _do_ in fact belong to the public.
Ha! I didn't know about this. Is there a law or something that I can use to back this
argument? At the workshop, we did talk about the legal stuff and copyright infringement --
so this is definitely something I will raise in our next meeting.
Of course, if it's either a commercial repository or no digitization at all, it's
certainly better to have a commercial repository, to at least ensure the survival of this
material given the deterioration of the physical sources. But it is not in our interests
to provide free labor to commercial enterprises.
Precisely. If all the work will be outsourced, then there is no need to involve
volunteers. However, depending on how much content will be donated to Commons, we might
need some volunteers to do the work from our end.
One way to go about it would be to do our best with the "small subset" of images
that would be donated to Wikimedia, per Stephen's excellent suggestions quoted below.
After a while, we could present glowing results with the small subset -- improved
metadata, dating, setting in context, etc., -- and contrast them with the inert digital
objects in the commercial repository. Perhaps that would make our point and convince
decision-makers to free up additional content.
+1.
Thanks for the feedback,
Abbas.
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