I wish to propose that images available under *some* of the Creative Commons licenses, that offer equivalent (or even more permissive) use than the GNU FDL, be permitted to be used in Wikipedia.
The licenses are the:
By-attribution license: * http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
The only requirement to use works create by this license is that you must give the author credit.
The Attribution-ShareAlike license: * http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
Like the by-attribution license with the additional requirement that any derivative works must be made available under the same terms as the original work.
As I understand things, the consensus is that including these works in the Wikipedia doesn't present any legal problems, as combining works with different licenses is permitted under clause 7 of the FDL, the aggregation clause.
I also believe that the CC by-sa license is very similar in spirit to the GPL and FDL, and the CC attribution license is even more permissive than what we allow. Therefore, philosophically, there is no reason not to allow such images on the Wikipedia.
I know there are others who wish to allow images using some of the other CC licenses on to the Wikipedia. While there are arguments on both sides to that one, it's a seperate debate.
My motivation for this is simple: I am in negotiation with a body that has a very large database of images that would be useful for the Wikipedia, many of them unobtainable from any other source. However, the individual whom I am discussing this with is a little hesitant about taking the GNU FDL to his bosses, as it is so hard to interpret. This will make it much harder to get permission. Having a simpler, easier-to-understand, and functionally equivalent license they can use would make the task easier. Others on the list have mentioned the same problem.
What do you all think?