Commons-l March 2007

commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org

40 participants
37 discussions

PDF format issues Was: How non-free is Flash?
by Gregory Maxwell 06 Mar '07

06 Mar '07

On 3/6/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: > In a related question, how free is PDF? The format may not be altered > and still called "PDF", but everyone including the FSF can live with > that. There's plenty of non-Adobe PDF creators and readers. What there > is a lack of is editors, but it's essentially a write-once format in > any case. PDF is a mystery meat format. You never know exactly whats going to be inside, so you can't speak about PDF as a whole coherently. There is a subset of PDF which is free by almost any reasonable standard (as you note, most people don't regard the name control issue to be material). Subset PDF is effectively equal to gzipped postscript. It's been around forever, and shouldn't have any serious problems. With subset PDF I think the biggest freedom related risk is non-free authoring tools smuggling in non-free content without the authors knowledge. (We see this with SVG too, Illustrator loves to embed non-free fully hinted TTF fonts in the SVGs... At least they are easy to remove since our rasterizer ignores them anyways) However, PDF can be a *very* non-free format, and I would be surprised if some of the PDF's we host were not pretty much maximally non-free. First there is the patents issue. Modern commercial PDF plugins contain a JBIG2, and a Jpeg2k codec. Some of the open-source PDF readers can read these, but not all. JBIG2 clearly requires a patent, Jpeg2k is just an ambiguous ugly patent mess. There may be a other ways that non-subset PDF is a patent minefield, this is just the first that comes to mind. Non-subset PDF also includes encryption and digital restrictions management. The free software PDF tools includes support for the basic (old) PDF encryption and can be easily modified to ignore the restrictions. However, using such modified tools is illegal in the US as is distributing them, under the DMCA. There are also a TON of features in non-subset PDF that free tools don't support (acrobat forms), or which present other accessibility and security related concerns. Like I pointed out with flash, to really talk about these things we need to know the application. For imaged documents especially high resolution bitonal (black/white) documents, DjVu is a compelling alternative which is gaining adoption even outside of the world of free software. We have great support for DjVu in mediawiki, including on the fly transcoding which should dramatically reduce concerns related to client compatibility. http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Image%3AMozart_Sonate_%28man… Play with the page controls on the right side. :) For vector illustrations, SVG is a much better choice. But for PDF as a compatible version of gzipped PS is still a reasonable tool. We need better ability to check files for evilness. Ideally we could have a client side upload tool that knew how to transcode things into acceptable formats (using codecs built into your OS) and which could test for problems like the one I discussed for PDF.

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How non-free is Flash?
by Erik Moeller 06 Mar '07

06 Mar '07

How non-free do we consider Flash to be? The Gnash player appears to be making good progress. Would it be acceptable to permit useful Flash files which work in Gnash and don't require non-free codecs to be uploaded? I did not see any issues with patents mentioned in the relevant Wikipedia article. The old Macromedia Flash website lists a US patent on "creating gradient fills", but that seems so bizarre as to pose no real threat. (Let's keep this separate, for now, from the question when a format like Flash would be appropriate, content-wise. I'd like to fully understand the "freeness" first.) -- Peace & Love, Erik DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees. "An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open, free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic

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Re: [Commons-l] [Foundation-l] Commons Picture of the Year 2006
by Gregory Maxwell 04 Mar '07

04 Mar '07

On 3/4/07, Tim Starling <tstarling(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: > Bryan Tong Minh wrote: > > Dear Wikimedians, > > > > The Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year 2006 competition is now > > over, and the winner has been selected. Thank you for voting. > > Of the 662 Wikimedians who voted, 83 selected 'Aurora Borealis' [1] > > as the 'Wikimedia Commons Picture of 2006'. > > Has anyone attempted to contact the photographer, Joshua Strang? He > probably didn't even know it was on Commons; he might be interested to > know it was voted picture of the year. I can't wait to find out he created it while off-duty thus it isn't public domain... and that he expects licensing fees! :(

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Commons Picture of the Year 2006
by Bryan Tong Minh 04 Mar '07

04 Mar '07

Dear Wikimedians, The Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year 2006 competition is now over, and the winner has been selected. Thank you for voting. Of the 662 Wikimedians who voted, 83 selected 'Aurora Borealis' [1] as the 'Wikimedia Commons Picture of 2006'. Second was 'Sans Domicile Fixe' [2] with 78 votes and joint third were 'Blue Jay' [3] and 'Hoverflies mating in midair' [4] with 70 votes each. We congratulate the authors of these pictures for their exceptional quality. The full results are available on [5] Some user comments: * ''Fantastic! Love the earth.'' * ''Crazy. Wish I could vote for them all.'' * ''If I had to pic one thing I'd like to see, I'd go with that. Stunning.'' We are also proud to announce the release of an archive of all the 2006 Wikimedia Commons Featured Pictures. You can find more information on [6]. Thank you all for voting, The Commons Community [1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Polarlicht_2.jpg [2] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:P7032101_small2.jpg [3] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Cyanocitta-cristata-004.jpg [4] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Hoverflies_mating_midair.jpg [5] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2006 [6] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2006/archive

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daily-image-l (commons POTD) is all systems go
by Brianna Laugher 01 Mar '07

01 Mar '07

The daily-image-l mailing is now fully functional. :) To join and receive one daily mail with information about the Wikimedia Commons' Picture of the day, please visit http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/daily-image-l . It now has 100 subscribers. Of these 100 subscribers, their language settings are: ca: 1 cs: 1 de: 3 en: 82 es: 3 fr: 2 nl: 2 pl: 1 ru: 1 sv: 2 zh-cn: 1 zh-tw: 1 (the subscriber list is only available to the list administrator, myself) To find out more about how pictures become Picture of the day, or how to provide caption/mailman translations in your language, please see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Daily-image-l . regards, Brianna user:pfctdayelise

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Wikimania - would you like to present or review the submissions?
by Angela 01 Mar '07

01 Mar '07

Wikimania, Wikimedia's annual global conference for the community, has today released its call for participation. http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_Particpation We will shortly be accepting submissions for presentations, panels, discussions, posters, and more. I would like to encourage all community members to make a submission. Wikimania is the wiki conference aimed at the Wikimedia community, so it's essential that you are represented here. If there is something interesting about your wiki that you want to share with 400 Wikimedians in Taipei this summer, please respond to this call for participation. We are also looking for volunteers to review the submissions made and help us to choose what will be presented at Wikimania. Depending on what you would like to review, please contact one of the following people to let them know you would like to help. Wikimedia Communities presentations: Angela Beesley: http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Angela Free Content presentations: Phoebe Ayers: http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Brassratgirl Technical infrastructure presentations: James Forrester: http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jdforrester Posters and Panels (all themes): Jakob Voss: http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:JakobVoss Artistic artifacts, Workshops, and Birds-of-a-Feather (all themes): TzuChiang Liou: http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:TzuChiang_Liou Angela Beesley

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recent legal issues in France
by David Monniaux 01 Mar '07

01 Mar '07

Two legal changes in France, one working for us, one against us: 1) Wartime copyright extensions Before 1995, the normal duration of copyright in France was 50 years after the death of the author, or after publication in the case of collective or anonymous works. However, there were special extensions meant to compensate the world wars. Due to European "harmonization" of laws, the normal duration was extended to 70 years (following Germany, I think). The lingering question was whether the war extensions still applied. The French Court of Cassation <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_of_Cassation> said they didn't (at least in the case where extensions didn't start to elapse before 1995, but those who did will be over in 2009 or so). A yet unsolved question is the case of the 30 year extensions for authors killed in action (the only major author that comes to mind is Antoine de Saint Exupéry <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint_Exup%C3%A9ry>, of /Little Prince/ fame). Wikimedia France is having its counsel investigate the exact implications of this evolution. In any case, it seems that the situation is better for us. For the curious, the relevant articles are in the Code of intellectual property, L123-1, -8, -9 and -10, and in rulings 280 and 281 of the Court of Cassation, first civil chamber, for 2007. 2) Repression of 'happy slapping' The French parliament has just passed a law aimed at preventing delinquence. Among a gazillion of measures on diverse issues more or less related to delinquence, the Senate passed an amendment aimed at repressing 'happy slapping'. 'Happy slapping' is basically youngsters beating up people, filming the scene with cell phones, and broadcasting the movie in order to humiliate the victim. Unfortunately, the wording of the amendment was broad, and basically criminalized against filming or broadcasting the film of certain kinds of violences, unless one does so for gathering evidence for legal proceedings, or as part of the normal work of a *profession* whose goal is to inform the public. In short, they have outlawed normal citizens (not professional journalists) video reporting on certain kinds of violences. This could prove a problem for Wikipedia, Commons and Wikinews contributors; for instance, if reporting on police violence. Wikimedia France contacted officials, who claimed that this was not the intent; the only target was happy slapping, and that if we had called them earlier they would have the amendment altered. Now, several good things can still happen : * The opposition has had the law sent for constitutional review. It is possible that this article will get constitutional "reservations of interpretation" that will clarify the situation of non professionals. * The government will perhaps clarify the issue; that is, make it clear that the intent of this article is not to punish non professionals reporting on events with a goal to inform the public. * Even if the law is accepted as is, prosecutors may get orders not to enforce it against non professionals who merely meant to inform. * Judges may also decide the same, if they feel there is a superior need of freedom of speech. Finally, do not forget that there are legislative elections 3 months away or so, and this law may go 'pschitt' if the current opposition wins. In any case, I don't expect actual prosecution of "citizen journalists", though I envision as a credible possibility that overzealous police may want to get rid of undesirable reporters using this law. Even if you are prosecuted or sentenced in the end, being taken into police custody is intimidating enough. Wikimedia France tries to get informed on that issue.

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Commons-l March 2007