Hallo Liste,
Ich habe jetzt den Text an einigen Stellen noch geglättet und gestrafft und im
Gegenzug die Vorteile, die die ESA von einer Freigabe hätte herausgestellt.
Schaut mal was ihr dazu sagt:
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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].
Now - 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 using 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 the NASA (and
we use them very extensive) 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 loose 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