Dear Mrs. Imbert-Vier,

Some months ago I asked you for permission to use the images of the ESA image
gallery in the popular multilingual free online encyclopedia Wikipedia [1],
which you refused.

Recently I read in the news that the ESA considers changing their picture policy
with respect to the release of the images of the Huygens probe on Titan. So I
contacted Mr. Bernhard von Weyhe on ESOC some days ago and he suggested to me
mailing again to you and to summarize in short the essential facts about
Wikipedia and why we think, that a release of ESA pictures under GNU FDL licence
would be beneficial for you, too.

1. What is Wikipedia?
-----

Wikipedia is a free (free in the meaning of "free speech") encyclopedia. It
depends on free content that is edited by volunteers from all over the world.
Behind Wikipedia is a non-profit organisation called the "Wikimedia Foundation"
[2] (placed in Florida/USA), headed by the Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales.
Wikipedia is now in its fifth year and keeps exponentially growing. Independent
newspapers have repeatedly stated, that Wikipedia is a serious and over all
reliable alternative to traditional encyclopedias like Encyclopaedia Britannica
or Microsoft Encarta.

2. What is the GNU Free Documentation License?
-----

Wikipedia is licensed as so called "Free Content" under the GFDL [3] with very
similar using conditions as the the popular GPL licensed Linux operating system.
Hence we are unable to embed content that is licensed for non-commercial use
only as it is with your very high quality images.

3. What if ESA pictures would be released under GNU FDL (or equally free)?
-----

Although we are not able to use your images within Wikipedia, we are very
interested in doing so, as we have lots of articles about space science, the ESA
and its projects. At the moment we can use the images of NASA (and we use them
very extensively) as they are forced by US-American copyright laws to publish
their content within the public domain. So NASA images are far more widespread
than ESA images and thus there is no balance in the representation of space
science in Wikipedia. ESA certainly deserves an even more increased popularity
especially outside the EU and the key role play the pictures.


So I plead for a free release of the ESA images. You won't lose anything with
this step - in contrary, you will get in return a lot for free:
* A visual and educational more attractive representation within Wikipedia
  (Wikipedia is also used a lot by journalists for quick information retrieval).
* Increased use of ESA images in the mass media and lots of good PR and more
  interest from the public.
* A big media echo, as you would be a precursor of the free knowlegde movement.


This petition is officially supported by the Wikimedia representatives, namely

1 <name>, <official position>, <email>
2
3
4
...

Yours sincerely,
Daniel Arnold - a Wikipedia contributor

[1] http://www.wikipedia.org
[2] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/About_Wikimedia
[3] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#FDL