On 04/08/07, Nilfanion nilfanion@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?