Hello Robert,
thanks a lot for your efforts in trying to get free content for
Wikipedia. Work such as yours is absolutely essential for us, and much
underrated (it's easier to count edits than e-mails). I agree that this
is a wikipedia-l issue.
I completely understand your frustration that the image you contributed
is now considered non-free. However, Timwi is correct. There has to be
an informed consent before we can claim that an image is under a
particular license. Otherwise we could be sued for damages if someone
else, in the belief that the image is free content, uses it in a way
that the person giving it does not approve us (e.g. by selling it).
Instead of using the GFDL, which is a complicated mess even for a
license geek, I suggest pointing people to the CC-BY-SA 2.0, which is
acceptable on Wikipedia for images. You could use a wording like this:
Wikipedia is the world's largest encyclopedia, built by thousands of
individuals in every language and written from a neutral point of
view. All our content is available to anyone for any purpose, free of
charge and free of advertising.
Would you be willing to donate an image to the general public for
royalty-free use, so it can be used on Wikipedia? The photo would
always have to be attributed to you, and modifications could only
be made if they are made available under the same conditions --
see
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ for details.
I would much appreciate it if you could contribute to this effort.
This, I think, is about the minimal level of complexity we can safely use.
Best,
Erik