Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
I have reviewed this website and it appears to violate the Wikimedia Foundation's trademark rights. I don't think the content is an issue, but the use of the Wikimedia Foundations trademarks and trading on the goodwill of the Foundation seems to impinge on its rights. We are also publishing College Level textbooks in Cherokee from Wikipedia content, however, we are not selling the textbooks, we are paying for the printings ourselves and donating the books to the Cherokee Nation language immersion programs and donating them to our schools of information technology.
Jeff
I am asking for some reasonable guidelines to be offered to Wikimedia users who do things like this so compliance with trademark issues can made in terms that can also protect the WMF. If you are suggesting that each Wikimedia user must have a lawyer before they do something bold like this, it defeats the whole purpose of putting the content available as free (GFDL) content. Clearly this user and any similar kinds of publishers of content like this would like to acknowledge the WMF as the source of the information, or at least the people that helped get the group together that wrote this content.
I'll say this again, the GFDL does not prohibit making a profit off of content like this, and saying that the content is free as in beer is not the point of the GFDL. I'm sorry that this one book is pushing the issue, but there seems to be a serious misunderstanding of what the GFDL is really all about here. If you can give away book because you have found some sort of philonthropic donor to help out in paying for the physical paper, fine. That is a very noble thing. But don't muddle up the waters here and confuse the issue. I can also make money off of content like this, as can you, Jeff, and everybody else. The GFDL mainly says that nobody has exclusive publication rights, and why it is called copyleft.