>-----Original Message-----
>From: The Cunctator [mailto:cunctator@gmail.com]
>Sent: Thursday, March 8, 2007 02:48 PM
>To: fredbaud(a)waterwiki.info, 'Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List'
>Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Censorship: Speedy deletion of porn articles
>
>On 3/8/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)waterwiki.info> wrote:
>>
>>
>> >-----Original Message-----
>> >From: The Cunctator [mailto:cunctator@gmail.com]
>> >Sent: Thursday, March 8, 2007 02:07 PM
>> >To: 'Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List'
>> >Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Censorship: Speedy deletion of porn articles
>>
>> >Contrary to the snide response of Gerard, this is a real issue. Articles
>> >which pass muster in one language should not be blocked in another one.
>>
>> Cultures differ, what is not notable in one culture is a serious offense
>> in another.
>
>
>
>Since when are the different language Wikipedias supposed to defend
>nationalistic or cultural norms?
>
>You seem to imply that the NPOV varies from language to language.
>
>And here I was all this time thinking that it's a neutral point of view, not
>a culturally biased point of view.
>
>We really need the single user login.
>
There is no way we can impose European culture on the rest of the world. I live it, but...
Fred
Each Wikipedia is autonomous. So long as they fall within the very broad Wikipedia policies which apply to all language versions, they are free to conduct the matters you are discussing as they see fit. As to censorship, the English Wikipedia also regularly deletes objectionable material, but applies a different standard. We also ban users, but are much more careful. As a consequence we have some very nasty material that has been impossible to get rid of, and sometimes let users disrupt the site for months before we finally come to a decision to ban them.
We have to deal with thousands of people; thus there is no way to simply grok what needs to be done and do it. A smaller, more cohesive community may feel able to proceed in a more intuitive way, but as noted, mistakes can be make.
Fred
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Yonatan Horan [mailto:yonatanh@gmail.com]
>Sent: Thursday, March 8, 2007 01:32 PM
>To: foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>Subject: [Foundation-l] Censorship: Speedy deletion of porn articles
>
>Hi,
>
>It has recently (about two months ago) come to my attention that articles on
>the Hebrew Wikipedia are speedy deleted. I translated the Jenna Jameson
>article from the English Wikipedia and it was very quickly speedy deleted
>and I was indefinitely blocked due to being a sockpuppet of some guy (of
>course no checkuser request was done). By the way, I don't particularly like
>porn articles or anything of the sort; in fact, I don't believe I've ever
>edited a porn article on the enwp which I'm very active on. After a few days
>(during which I complained on Danny's enwp talk page and thus got the
>attention of a Hebrew Wikipedia admin and later spoke on the phone with
>another admin from hewp) I was unblocked. I'm guessing there have probably
>been other people who just gave up after they were banned and didn't return.
>
>The situation is basically that if a user who isn't well-known on the hewp
>(someone outside of a group of about 100 users) creates such an article he
>will probably be perm-banned and if anyone else does so, the article will
>probably just be speedy deleted. No rule has been passed on the Hebrew
>Wikipedia regarding this and even if it had been passed, it would be in
>violation of WMF (?) guidelines as Wikipedia is not censored. Some claim
>that a rule has been passed but many admins disagree with this. The "vote"
>was passed about two years ago and had 10-20 participants. In addition to
>this, the vote came at a time when the Hebrew Wikipedia was repeatedly
>vandalized by a certain user and many of the voters supposedly for the
>banning of porn articles referred only to this specific case (this is
>supported by their comments on the page).
>
>By the way, just so nobody corrects me, on the Hebrew Wikipedia *there are
>votes* since consensus is hardly ever reached and the total needed to pass a
>vote is a ridiculous 55%. Anyway, despite all the above, a few admins have
>said that they will speedy delete any porn articles created on the Hebrew
>Wikipedia. Currently there are a few porn articles which are about the movie
>Deep Throat and two other articles that I don't recall at the moment. This
>is a foundation issue because the situation right now is effectively
>censorship of articles that some people feel do not have a place on the
>wikipedia. I know I will probably have those who disagree with me be
>notified of this discussion at some point at which point the slandering will
>begin and I will be called a "snitch" and possibly other more colorful terms
>so I ask ahead of time for this discussion to remain civil. Although I hate
>to burden Danny, who probably has a lot of more important things to do, he
>is the only one who speaks both Hebrew and English and could take care of
>this issue since he is obviously a person trusted by most. Anyway I think
>I've written more than enough on an issue that should be pretty
>straightforward, that is, that wikipedia is not censored.
>
>Thanks,
>Yonatan
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
¿Te está costando hacer las cosas que sabes que debes hacer? ¿Tiendes a postergar las cosas, y a seguir postergándolas?
Hay una salida, y ésta empieza en tu mente.
http://www.trafford.com/06-2842
"Todo lo que la mente puede concebir; todo puede crear"
Si no lo crees, sólo mira la máquina donde estás leyendo ésto. Dale una oportunidad a la Vida. Quita la mediocridad y vive la excelencia. PERDER la oportunidad, IGNORARLA o NO INFORMARLA es CASTIGADO como el PEOR DE LOS PECADOS. "Como es arriba, es abajo"
TODO LO RECAUDADO SE VUELCA A LA O.N.G "ANTES QUE SEA TARDE". Por favor tener en cuenta que con la compra de 1 (uno) libro; nosotros compramos el equipamiento escolar para 1 niño.
NO EXISTE EL ÍNDICE DE NIÑOS EN SITUACIÓN DE CALLE: EXISTEN NIÑOS EN LA CALLE
this is not an official announcement
==========
I thought it would be nice to offer a little update with regards to the
organisation, in particular from a "person" perspective.
I outlined the various areas of activities of the Foundation, to try to
identify in which areas we were staffed and in which areas we were
either understaffed or not staffed at all.
By staff, I do not necessarily mean "employee" as it may be volunteers
from the community, interns, pro-bono help, contractors etc...
But the fact is, when an area is under-staffed, the job either is not
done at all, or poorly done by other staff members (on top of their
regular activity), or poorly done by board members (who can not take
care of what they should take care of). These under staffed areas or not
staffed areas should be a focus of attention.
When I accepted to become chair of the board, I indicated that one of my
priorities would be to work on the organization of the Foundation. I
renewed that wish early 2007, making it a top priority along with
"quality", "recognition as a charity" and "outreach".
I also wanted to give you a feedback on what has been achieved in terms
of organization since then, and what is currently still not satisfactory.
----------
I have identified several areas
* Corporate and Financial issues (finances, accounting, audit)
* Fundraising/Grants
* Business development
* Legal
* Press/messaging and Communication
* Events
* Chapters
* Software
* Hardware/network
* Charity activity
* "Human resources"
And I was trying to identify which "departments" needed more work and if
so, of which sort.
----------
Financial issues
First, strictly speaking corporate issues.
We updated the bylaws at the end of 2006, first major update since the
first version written by Alex Roshuk and approved by Jimmy Wales. The
new version mostly intended to reflect the reality of our organization
mission, activity, organization etc...
The second version was largely written by Brad Patrick, with some
comments by the board. I believe these new bylaws will stand for a long
time.
We have drafted a new vision and mission statement, which hopefully will
be agreed upon soon.
We are also now listed as charity on GuideStar.
We successfully finished the audit of our 3 first years of operation at
the end of 2006. This was a major work. We will go on having our
statements audited in the future.
I must say that the new year is beginning slowly on audit matters, but I
am not worried about that and think we have more pressing issues at
hand. Audit company made us several recommandations for improvement, and
a lot has indeed improved in the past few weeks. I'll plan an update for
you on such matters after next board meeting.
Carolyn, our COO, is given us frequent financial updates (do not worry,
we will not close in 3 months), and a part time bookeeper is currently
being added to the team. We have set up a conflict of interest policy,
confidentiality agreement is on its way. A lot has been done in the past
few months. I wish that you understand how very important this area is,
even though it is largely away from your eyes. As a charity, we have
some obligations to respect. Since most of our revenue comes from
donations, we also have a duty to be as transparent as possible. There
were huge progress on this side.
On the less positive side, we were unable to provide at the end of the
year a public annual report (too much to do).
We still do not have the 990 documents perfectly fixed and they are not
uploaded on the Foundation side. It is on its way though.
There are still many internal controls to set into place as well (such
as record keeping policy, reimbursement policy etc...). A large part of
this should be done by the board itself.
We lack a proper bank, which would fit our needs.
We also would need help from professionals to advise us on international
issues.
-----------
* Fundraising/Grants
We just finished our biggest fundraising ever. The donor management has
been greatly improved thanks to David Strauss. Thank you letters were a
significant part of the office activity for a while.
On the not so positive side, we should be able to raise much more than
we are currently doing, in particular from big companies and big
charities. Afaik, no grants were seeked in the past months. And no
formal feedback was offered in regards to last fundraising.
I am not entirely sure we currently have sufficient team on this. More
volunteers may be of great help certainly.
We may find benefits in getting help from a fundraising professional
(either as temporary contractant, or even better, pro-bono).
Currently, we do only online soft fundraising, but we may decide for a
more aggressive fundraising policy in the future (in particular in the USA).
------------
* Business development
Lot's of work has been done on this in the past few months. We got some
new sources of funds, a brand new contract for datafeed, more customers.
The income from this source is still pretty limited, but it is a big way
to the future.
Most of our business development is of two kinds. Either services (such
as setting up datafeed and getting paid for this), or brand use (such as
getting royalties when a third party sell a DVD with Wikipedia logo on it).
Datafeed require more technical development, in particular to propose a
wap feed which we do not have yet (tech volunteers here ?)
Brand require
1) fixing trademarks issues
2) brand strategy
I do not think we will hire more people in this very specific area in
the next few months. However, I hope that we can get some pro-bono help
to help us explore our brand strategy and brand marketing.
Business will increase our revenus in the future, but right now, it is
costing a lot from a legal, administrative and technical perspective.
------------
* Legal
A lot has been done, a lot is still to be done.
Our legal needs are of several types.
Litigation and conflict resolution (for all the various ongoing legal
threats related to our projects content - this part is the most visible
for you)
Negotiation and drafting of contracts (such as job contract, datafeed
contract)
Intellectual property issues (such as trademarks)
Various legal counseling issues (such as confidentiality agreement,
corporate issues, investment, chapter agreements...)
Our main problem on legal issues is coordination. We get propositions
from various pro-bono lawyers, and legal interns. The legal area we
cover is very vast, and needs close attention in the coming months.
------------
* Press/messaging and Communication
The area is getting more organized since the arrival of Sandy, who also
receive some help from many many volunteers (comcom, various press
contacts and interns). Press has become a huge issue in the past months,
eating up a lot of volunteer time. Translation is only taken care of by
volunteers, under the benevolent coordination of Aphaia.
There are many needs in this area, but a lot of it may be done by
volunteers. Hopefully, the volunteer coordinator will bring much help on
this.
------------
* Events
Right now, it is essentially Wikimania. At the board retreat, it was
suggested we should do more events. Which is fair, but in all honesty,
we can not absorb more than Wikimania. Doing events is probably more the
job of local chapters, and I suggest we should have a common place where
all events organised by chapters should be listed.
Events are very largely managed by volunteers. Last year, Delphine was
paid for being Wikimania organiser. This year, KJ is paid part time by
Wikia to help, and an administrative assistant will probably be paid by
the Foundation to give an hand. All others are volunteers and we should
give then a big thank you, because it is a lot of work to do, in rather
stressful conditions. No staff member on this, but Theodonarian and
several others are doing a fabulous job.
-----------
* Chapters
The area is getting more organized since the arrival of Delphine, who
also receive some help from many many volunteers.
Big commons areas betweeen Foundation and chapters is
1) promotion of projects (which involve setting up of promotional
material in common)
2) press
3) business development (such as DVD or datafeed)
4) events
We are currently on defining guidelines for chapter creation, chapter
recognition, brand use authorization. The hot potatoe is commercial
brand use authorization.
----------
* Software
* Hardware/network
To put it simply. We currently have 4 developers employed. Others are
volunteers. The websites work with a handful of people, which is a true
miracle. In the past months, Brad has worked hard so that we have better
prices and contracts. So, on the bright side, lot's of work has been
done, and contrarywise to other areas, that shows (the site is working
smoothly).
On the less bright side, we have several software development for
example, which have been pending for a long time. Mix of lack of people
and poor strategy and priority management. Hopefully, more developers
and in particular a CTO should come to strengthen the team in the coming
months.
-----------
* Charity activity
Now, I am thinking very very hard. Hmmmm. Not sure what we really did here.
The website is working ?
Being listed in GuideStar ?
Some of us were contacted by Unesco and participated to some talks ?
Well. We did things, but these were not part of a clear strategy :)
-----------
* "Human resources"
I apology for the ugly term.
The office in St Petersbourg is now only populated with Wikimedia
Foundation staff (Wikia staff has moved somewhere else).
We have a dozen people in the office or Tampa area.
Carolyn (COO), Danny (Grants, business), Barbara (essentially office
assistant), Brion (our tech god), Sandy (communication). We also have
nearby Brad (General Counsel) and Rob (hardware).
We also have half a dozen interns (some of them can be found on irc
sometimes). We get pro-bono help from Lin, a lawyer working in the same
building.
Not in the office, but contractors elsewhere in the world, Tim Starling
and Mark (tech), Delphine (chapters).
Several positions are planned in the near future (from tomorrow to 6
months).
A part-time bookkeeper in the office (ongoing), to second Carolyn.
More developers and in particular a Chief Technical Officer.
One or two volunteers coordinators (announcement just made)
An executive director
A few more words on executive director. We hired a search firm to help
us on this path. Current step is "interview of board members and staff
to better identify what the Foundation is really looking for". I will
inform you of the next steps so that community members may have the
possibility to candidate.
On this very topic, let me clarify that the board asked that as much as
possible, a priority be made for community members to be hired rather
than "unknown people". As recently mentionned on this very list, this
conflicts a bit with having our office in St Petersbourg.
More positions might be opened in the future, but are not clearly
outlined for now.
Amongst the two big issues we need to solve with regards to the people
we employ are
* as an employer, we still do not provide any benefits (such as
healthcare). I have asked Carolyn to help on that, so that we propose
more interesting opportunities for those willing to work for us.
* we wish to involve people from all over the world, not restricting
employees to USA only. Currently, those working "offshore" have to be
their own employers (they are contractants). This is not sustainable in
the long run, so we have to explore more international employment issues.
The fact of dealing with "online" employees put certain issues in
perspective, such as traceability of what they effectively do.
We are still a bit in limbo regarding committees. Roughly, the techco,
the comcom, the chapcom, the transco are working quite well. The fundcom
had hard days, but is recovering. The spcom is basically dead etc...
We need to work more on this, and I believe the volunteer coordinator
may be a great part of the answer :-)
Second, board itself.
The new bylaws and a relevant resolution caused major changes in the way
board members are nominated or elected, numbers, terms etc...
I am happy to say that our current board is pretty good and well
balanced. Whilst there are sometimes disagreements and tensions, we are
much more efficient than before, thanks to various personal
and professional profiles. There is still improvements to bring, but
overall, this is a very good working board.
In next june, 3 of our current board members will finish their terms and
new elections occur. One suggestion recently made was to clarify the
skills we more specifically need on the board, and it is not entirely
impossible that seats open for election be related to a certain set of
skill rather than not. This will be discussed at the next board meeting.
---------
I apology if this was a bit long and possibly a bit confusing for some
of you. I mostly meant to share with you some thoughts I had of some
priorities to work upon. It is quick, but may ring bells.
If you guys know a professional fundraising person: raise your hand
If you guys know a professional in international employment: raise your hand
If you guys know a brand strategist, raise your hand
If you guys wish to be candidate on the next board and want to discuss
the "skilled-oriented board membership", raise your hands
Just food for thoughts
ant
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rob Smith <nobs03(a)gmail.com>
Date: Mar 7, 2007 3:22 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Is editing for payment a fundamentally a problematic
conflict...
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rob Smith <nobs03(a)gmail.com>
Date: Mar 5, 2007 10:44 AM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Is editing for payment a fundamentally problematic
conflict of interest?
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
There are various techniques in the Internal Revenue Manual that could be
employed; for example, reviewing the edit contributions of an employee of a
non-profit organization, a reasonable estimate of manhours allocated by that
non-profit organization over a given period of time would meet standards of
proof to establish income from paid editing, as well as the activities of
the employer, not to mention possible conflicts of interest, or violations
of Wikipedia's internal policies.
On 3/7/07, Mercenary Wikipedian <mercenarywikipedian(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> What does any of this have to do with Wikipedia? There are already
> policies
> in place regarding NPOV and NPA, and there are multiple dispute resolution
>
> processes in place to handle serial/chronic non-compliance. What
> protections
> does _anyone_ have against defamation on Wikipedia? Well, if they are the
> subject of an article there is WP:BLP. If they are just an editor and not
> the subject of the article there is the policy mandating No Personal
> Attacks. What makes you think these won't work if people are getting paid?
> Is this an issue of scalability? If so, it seems a little late to be
> worried
> about whether or not the idea of Wikipedia is scalable.
>
> MW
>
> **********
>
> The point here is paid employees of a non-profit entity with an agenda
> evidenced by initiating internal processes of dispute resolution. This is
>
> something not addressed in any policies anywhere. ( 1 ) They are agents
> of
> a non-profit entity; ( 2 ) volunteers in dispute have no disclosure as to
> *
> whom* they are in dispute with; ( 3 ) the dispute may not be initiated for
>
> the purposes of improving articles or writing an encyclopedia; ( 4 ) what
> protections do volunteer editors, acting in good faith, have against being
> targeted and publicly defamed by a non-profit entity with a political
> agenda?
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Mortgage rates as low as 4.625% - Refinance $150,000 loan for $579 a
> month.
> Intro*Terms
>
> https://www2.nextag.com/goto.jsp?product=100000035&url=%2fst.jsp&tm=y&searc…
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
None is addressed in current policies. And there is evidence Wikipedia is
being used for purposes *other than* writing an encyclopedia, i.e. to target
certain individuals and smear their character. The Daniel Brandt episode is
one such case. Stephen Kinsella and the Ludwig von Mises Institute is
another. The Free Congress Foundation and Paul Weyrich is a target for much
questionable content being added, as well as an anonymous editor who
identified himself as a professional journalist and friend of Weyrich
received a community ban for efforts to instill NPOV & fairness in those two
articles.
By contrast, User:Katefan0, aka Kathryn Wolfe of *Scripps Howard* did
precisely the samething as Weyrich's friend, admitted a conflict of interest
prior to initiating official Wikipedia Dispute Resolution Policy, was
promoted to Admin, presented evidence before Arbitrators admitting her
conflict of interest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Rangerdude/…
yet the Arbs used her evidence against an aggrieved party. There are
numerous other instances to be cited where a pattern is established that the
intent of some parties, acting as agents of others, are using Wikipedia to
pursue their own aims and not constructively contribute to the encyclopedia.
All,
Index Data, maker of free software tools for
bibliographic data exchange (in particular through the
[[Z39.50]] protocol) has started indexing several open
content projects, including Wikipedia:
http://www.indexdata.dk/opencontent/
The integration with Wikipedia is very basic, however,
and the only useful article metadata that can really
be extracted at this point is the article title. I'd
like to suggest that we consider allowing the
association of Wikipedia categories with something
like [[Library of Congress Subject Headings]] (I think
something like this was going to be an eventual fruit
of WiktionaryZ). Though doing so would not
immediately enhance Wikipedia functionally, it would
help Wikipedia conform to the very established
standards and tools in the library sciences world and
therefore enhance its availability to the many people
doing their research primarily through such
mechanisms.
-----------------
Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2007 09:12:34 -0500
From: Sebastian Hammer <quinn(a)indexdata.com>
Subject: [Yazlist] Open Content and SRU/Z39.50
Hi guys,
this is a follow-up to an earlier announcement on this
list. We've now
completed the initial setup of our Z/SRU targets for
several open
content sites, specifically the Open Content Alliance,
Wikipedia, DMOZ,
and Project Gutenberg. Our hope is that exposing these
resources through
open information retrieval protocols will allow
libraries and others to
more easily integrate them into applications, portals,
and internet sites.
More details are available at
http://www.indexdata.dk/opencontent/ .
To keep people abreast of new developments, and to
stimulate discussion
about the use and sharing of open content resources in
this way, we have
created a new mailing list. Signup information at
http://lists.indexdata.dk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/oclist/
. We will be
using this list to announce the availablility of new
targets, changes to
setups, etc.
We sincerely hope that you will find these resources
useful, and that
you'll discover new ways to integrate this exciting
content into the way
you deliver services to your users.
All the best,
--Sebastian
--
Sebastian Hammer, Index Data
____________________________________________________________________________________
We won't tell. Get more on shows you hate to love
(and love to hate): Yahoo! TV's Guilty Pleasures list.
http://tv.yahoo.com/collections/265
Hi all - this is to let you know that there will be an IRC meeting
about Wikiversity research this Saturday (10th) @ 22:00 UTC in
freenode channel #wikiversity. This is in advance of the board's
meeting about Wikiversity (scheduled to take place the following
Friday, 16th), and is a crucial aspect to Wikiversity's move out of
its "beta phase". Board members are, as ever, particularly welcome.
:-)
Further details of the meeting are at:
<http://beta.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:IRC_meeting_about_research>.
Links to relevant work-pages to be edited and discussed can be found
there. For info on timezones, see:
<http://worldtimeserver.com/current_time_in_UTC.aspx> and/or
<http://www.worldtimezone.com>.
Hope to see you there - if you can't make it, and want to add
something to the agenda, please do so at the page given above.
Cheers,
Cormac
http://cormaggio.orghttp://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:Cormaggio
How non-free do we consider Flash to be? The Gnash player appears to
be making good progress. Would it be acceptable to permit useful Flash
files which work in Gnash and don't require non-free codecs to be
uploaded?
I did not see any issues with patents mentioned in the relevant
Wikipedia article. The old Macromedia Flash website lists a US patent
on "creating gradient fills", but that seems so bizarre as to pose no
real threat.
(Let's keep this separate, for now, from the question when a format
like Flash would be appropriate, content-wise. I'd like to fully
understand the "freeness" first.)
--
Peace & Love,
Erik
DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic
[Crossposted on many lists]
Hello,
The press team of the Foundation is currently building a press list file and
gathering contact information of journalists and editors of all the major
media (newspapers, magazines, radio, tv) around the world. The aim is to
improve our communication and be able to reach people from all over the
world (not only people from the US and not only people from English-speaking
countries).
We are requesting help from the whole community to gather this information.
We have the chance to have a global community of users and volunteers and we
need to take advantage of this chance. Please help us by sending contact
information of journalists and editors you know or from your country.
The basic information are :
Name of the journalist:
First name:
Email:
Name and type of the media: (for instance "CNN, worldwide news TV channel")
Any other information about each contact is welcome (area of concentration,
coverage, schedule...).
Please send the information you have got to: press at wikimedia dot org and
*do not answer this email*, I will probably not get the emails since I am
not subscribed to all lists I have posted to.
Thanks for your help!
--
Guillaume Paumier
[[m:User:guillom]]
http://www.wikimedia.org
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foundation-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org escribió:
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> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
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>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. How non-free is Flash? (Erik Moeller)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 09:39:25 +0100
> From: "Erik Moeller" <erik(a)wikimedia.org>
> Subject: [Foundation-l] How non-free is Flash?
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"
> <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, "Wikimedia Commons Discussion
> List" <commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <b80736c80703060039y498cc1d7o47796e80e7578c60(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> How non-free do we consider Flash to be? The Gnash player appears to
> be making good progress. Would it be acceptable to permit useful Flash
> files which work in Gnash and don't require non-free codecs to be
> uploaded?
>
> I did not see any issues with patents mentioned in the relevant
> Wikipedia article. The old Macromedia Flash website lists a US patent
> on "creating gradient fills", but that seems so bizarre as to pose no
> real threat.
>
> (Let's keep this separate, for now, from the question when a format
> like Flash would be appropriate, content-wise. I'd like to fully
> understand the "freeness" first.)
Greetings,
Adobe licenses the flash format specifications to others who are willing
to create programs that export to Flash. However, the format itself is
not free as in freedom.
Also, Adobe doesn't allow those licensed users to create software that
would play Flash, Gnash is most likely a reverse engineered player. And
Adobe could change the rules of engagement at any time leaving us with
all the Flash content, a player who isn't free and waiting for the Gnash
people to work on an update.
With all that being said, a full end to end implementation of SVG should
offer the same benefits Flash provides plus it would be free.
Regards,
Damián
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