On 04/08/07, Nilfanion <nilfanion(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
Why exactly is this template on the Commons?
Obviously, it is an attempt to
make commercial use as difficult as possible. Arguably it does that, and the
image ultimately is freely licensed so there is no issue with it being on
the Commons.
However, this style of template is contrary to the goal of free content. Any
non-commercial user who uses an image to make a derivative is almost
certainly going to pick the non-commercial CC license instead of the GFDL
(as its easier to use); it will be rare that they will care about the free
content mission enough to choose the "nasty" GFDL. This means that any
derivatives will not be free content and furthermore due to the SA term any
further derivatives will be locked in a non-commercial state.
If people have qualms about the commercial use of their image, then they
should not be uploading it as "free" content. I think any images tagged with
this template should be moved to GFDL-only licensing, Commons should not
allow ever non-free licensing even as part of a dual license
Something I've seen on enwp, and I suspect it's probably around
quietly on Commons as well - people licensing their images and then
adding (pre-emptively) a note saying "by the way, if you want to use
it for X or Y, go ahead with no strings attached, don't feel the need
to ask me permission".
That's a clearly nonfree license - should we prevent people doing this
as well? If not, where do we draw a line?
There are also the edge cases of "licenses that may not be completely
free" - witness the CC 3.0 debate, and there will no doub be similar
undetermined cases in the future. It seems vaguely sensible to allow
people to dual-license with these whilst we figure out the details...
I do feel it's helpful to our reusers - Commons serving to provide
free content to the wider community as well as WMF - to list all the
possible criteria under which an image can be used, to give them
flexibility. Perhaps what we need to consider here is *emphasising*
the free license[s] - the one we use it under - and having a clearly
secondary "other reuse licenses" line?
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk