On Dec 1, 2007 7:12 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
We could, for a transitional phase, allow photographers to change license templates on media they hold the copyright to from an (arguably or not) permissive copyleft license, to an explicitly strong copyleft license.
[snip]
The GFDL covered works are already under a strong copyleft license, the GFDL.
Obviously Wikimedia itself has no legal standing to change the licensing for works for which is it merely a licensee.
I am not aware of any other widely used strong copyleft license for still illustrations. Revising the GFDL in this regard may result in there being no strong copyleft license for content.
People interested in making a work only available for use in free works will either be left trying to claim their work is available only under FDL-1.2, but the confusion created by the change will likely leave them in a position of having to constantly fight with reusers who think GFDL != CC-by-sa, or they could instead choose to use CC's nearest approximation for this purpose: CC-By-NC-SA.
Since the NC licenses are CC's most popular by far it seems likely that people would choose to go that route.
[snip]
And this has exactly been our interpretation of the GFDL -- this is
This may have been *your* interpretation of the GFDL, but Wikimedia has not taken a position on this and Wikimedia board members have specifically told people in the past that their FDL licensed images could not be used in non-free works without an additional license grant.
Then again, board members have previously static that Wikimedia could not change the licensing of works written by others but Wikimedia is now claiming pubcally to do exactly that.
There are certainly many cases where it is clearly untrue.