It strikes me that, for those of us who are not Richard Stallman, GFDL is quite poor for any purpose you'd care to name. But we're stuck with it, I suppose.

G'day Eugene, Excuse me, but does that pass WP:RS? <snip/> It strikes me that, for those of us who are not Richard Stallman, GFDL is quite poor for any purpose you'd care to name. But we're stuck with it, I suppose. Cheers, -- Mark Gallagher "'Yes, sir,' said Jeeves in a low, cold voice, as if he had been bitten in the leg by a personal friend." - P G Wodehouse, /Carry On, Jeeves/

Precisely why are we stuck with it? If it were an article it would be up for deletion.

> We have a choice: > > a) Drop the GFDL and pick a better license (ABL). ...

> b) Live with it.

or: c) since all existing articles are licensed under "Version 1.2 [of the GFDL] or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation", lobby the FSF to make the next version of the GFDL _be_ that better licence.

Or phase it out. Deprecate its usage, stop allowing it on new images (where the real problem lies) when they're uploaded.

On 11/06/07, K P &lt;kpbotany(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: We have a choice: a) Drop the GFDL and pick a better license (ABL). The problem here is that we cannot legitimately use anything that is licensed under GFDL, unless we convince its author(s) to relicense their work under ABL. Net effect: 98% of Wikipedia articles or so - including virtually every single significant one - have to be abandoned and started again from scratch. We'd only get to keep the ones where we could contact all the contributors (well, all as of a certain revision whose material had not been removed in that revision, and you might have fun arguing that last clause) and get them to relicense their work - in effect, only single-author articles by currently active users. b) Live with it.

GFDL is at the very best a confusing and not very good license for images. At worst it is positively prohibitive -- unless you are publishing a large work as GFDL it is not a good license, and unfortunately most potential usages of Wikipedia images other than complete ports of Wikipedia don't work that way. But this is not news -- people have been advocating using CC-SA-BY for images for a long time, as it doesn't require stapling an entire copy of a license to reproduce it in, say, a newspaper or something like that. You just need to indicate what the license is and maybe provide a URL. Good enough for me. Personally I always license mine a CC-SA-BY (always attributing to Commons, not myself personally) and then include the additional clause that if someone is using it for educational purposes they can use it without any conditions at all (basically PD-self). As a result my diagrams get pretty good representation in course lectures and handouts, which I find pretty flattering! I also always encourage those who want to use them in somewhat different licensing arrangements to contact me for other arrangements, and have gotten about a half-dozen requests to have my images in books and handouts and other sorts of arrangements -- again pretty flattering! And well, well within the spirit of the free content movement. And always linking back to Commons. FF On 6/10/07, K P &lt;kpbotany(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: > > Would someone please explain to me (I've asked before, so I'm pretty > sure no one can/will, and it won't matter) how the GNU Free > Documentation License can possibly apply to images? It seems that, by > the words of the license, you have to modify the image itself to > conform to the license, because none of the images have the copyright > attached to them. Then, once you've attacked the copyright notice, > why the hell would you want to use the image, other than to > demonstrate how it can't possibly be applied to images, in which case > images uploaded under GNUFDLBLAHBLAHBLAH are completely worthless, > because no one else can ever use them except under limited and > crippling conditions. > > > 2. VERBATIM COPYING > You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either > commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License, the > copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies > to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and that you add no > other conditions whatsoever to those of this License. > > So, you copy a tiny image of the Internet and you have to add 3 pages > of licensing text? That's BS. It means essentially that for all the > uploaders generosity in uploading the image it can't be used by anyone > else because it can't meet the requirements of the license because > meeting the requirements would destroy the usability of the image: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sweetbay1082.jpg > > Why are images uploaded under a license that obviously doesn't apply to > images? > > Is this one of those cases where I should know to just ignore the > title and the words because they mean something else, in which case > the license is meaningless.... > > KP >

According to the above logic, a link to the GFDL wherever the image is

Do you have a real-life example where it is impossible for you to comply with the license?

Licensing images under GFDL was a neccessity in the beginning, as it was the only copyleft license for non-software documents available at the time.

I think its use as the only image license will decline. Personally, I dual-license all my files on commons GFDL and CC-BY-SA-2.5, to give the user the maximum of choices.

So... does that mean if you take a picture in your house with the GFDL picture in the background, its a derivative work and you have to glue a 1 pt font copy of the GFDL on the back of the 5x7s you are sending out in your Christmas cards? :)

On 6/11/07, K P &lt;kpbotany(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: If you hang it on your wall at home, you don't have to add anything to it. If you /redistribute/ it, then you have to give the license. Though strictly not legal, I doubt anyone will come after you if you settle for license name and link in the image credits. If you're going to mass-print GFDL-based picture catalogs, you'll probably have a page ot two for the license anyway :-)

So you personally know "everyone else"? Or do you have any usage statistics?

Do you have a real-life example where it is impossible for you to comply with the license?

Licensing images under GFDL was a neccessity in the beginning, as it was the only copyleft license for non-software documents available at the time. I think its use as the only image license will decline. Personally, I dual-license all my files on commons GFDL and CC-BY-SA-2.5, to give the user the maximum of choices. Magnus

On 6/11/07, K P &lt;kpbotany(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Who said the license had to be on the picture? I appreciate the ridiculous idea, but it isn't very helpful in a discussion.

That's just it. It's not practical to distribute a booklet along with images in many cases. No magazine would ever use a GFDL image if they had to distribute a booklet with it, or even print a copy of the license with it. The requirements of the license make re-use a hinderance unless the entire work is already being licensed under GFDL. Which is not a strategy which encourages re-use by any except those who are already totally sold on the free-content idea.

On 6/11/07, K P &lt;kpbotany(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: > On 6/11/07, Magnus Manske &lt;magnusmanske(a)googlemail.com&gt; wrote: > > On 6/11/07, K P &lt;kpbotany(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: > > > So, I should print it out, frame it nicely, then glue the GFDL to the > > > bottom of the frame before hanging it on my wall? Imagine there's a > > > world outside of cyberspace.... > > > > If you hang it on your wall at home, you don't have to add anything to > > it. If you /redistribute/ it, then you have to give the license. > > > >

> > settle for license name and link in the image credits."

That is not what I said. Please read carefully what others write before putting words in their mouth. In case you need a summary: * Legally, you have to give the license * Practically, many authors wouldn't mind you using their GFDL images with an "abbreviated" license. If your income really depends on using GFDLd images, have you considered asking the author to release the image under CC as well?

So noone if using GFDL images at all? Hard to believe, somehow.

Who said the license had to be on the picture? I appreciate the ridiculous idea, but it isn't very helpful in a discussion.

Again, please don't put words into other people's mouth. It is neither nice nor helpful. Magnus

Don't put words into my mouth, it isn't helpful in a discussion, I didn't say it had to be "on" the picture. I said it has to accompany the picture, which is what the license says.