Hallo Daniel,
ich bin mal über Deinen Entwurf rübergegangen und hab ihn etwas getrafft und gegliedert. Sicher ist das noch nicht optimal (vor allem mein Englisch nicht :-), aber es geht mE schon in die richtige Richtung. Wichtig ist, dass wir den Benefit, den die ESA von einer "Kooperation" hätte noch deutlicher heraus stellen. Auch eine weitere Straffung wäre vorteilhaft.
so long ...Zinnmann
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 ( http://www.wikipedia.org ).
Now - some weeks ago - I had read 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 summarize the essemtial 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 speach") encyclopaedia. 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" (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 an serious and over all reliable alternative to traditional encyclopaedias like Encyclopaedia Britannica or Microsoft Encarta.
2. What is this GNU Free Document License? ------------------------------------------
As Wikipedia is licensed as so called "Free content" under the GFDL similar to the popular GPL licensed Linux operating system we are unable to embedd 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? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At the moment we can't use your images within Wikipedia but are very interested in doing so, as we have lots of articles about space science and the ESA and its projects. At the moment we can only use the images of the NASA (and we use them very extensive) as they are forced by the US-American "Freedom information act" to publish their content within the public domain. So at the moment there is no balance in the representation of space science content in Wikipedia. ESA certainly deserves it to have a more appealing public representation and one big point are the images.
So I pledge for a free release of the ESA images. You won't loose anything with this step in contrary you will win and of course will get more interest from the public.
This petition is supported officially by the Wikimedia representatives, namley
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Yours sincerly, Daniel Arnold - a Wikipedia contributor