Ich habe ein paar Fehler in der Rechtschreibung/Grammatik korrigiert.
Blöde Frage: Wieso wird das Ding nicht in der Wikipedia editiert? :)
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Dear Mrs. Imbert-Vier,
Some months ago I had asked you for permission to use the images of the
ESA image gallery in the popular multilingual free online encyclopedia
Wikipedia [1].
Some weeks ago I had read in the news that the ESA is considering
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?
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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?
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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)?
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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 images.
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
2
3
4
...
Yours sincerly,
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
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