On Jan 19, 2008 6:51 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
If no free formats exist for some medium, we'd probably prefer to encourage the creation of free formats for it.
Sure, but should be ban the use of it in the mean time? I don't know...
You're sort of deep into hypotheticals there. ;)
So hypothetically: There is a type of material which can't be represented in a free file format, and we see a need to host that kind of material.
Should we ban the use of it until someone produced a free format for it?
I think if that case were to ever arise it would be reasonable to not use it until the foundation had a chance to consider it and pass an exemption (or not). That kind of decision should be a strategic one, made intentionally and on a case by case basis. The implications could be very different for for different cases. Does that make sense?
Of course, since we can't currently think of a good example for this...
Brianna Laugher wrote:
Is this the anti-DRM clause? I think so, but I just want to confirm.
I think I'd call it a no-DRM clause: It sounds similar to the DRM related clause in the Creative Commons licenses: "You may not impose any effective technological measures on the Work that restrict the ability of a recipient of the Work from You to exercise the rights granted to that recipient under the terms of the License." (cc-by-sa-3.0-unported)
An anti-DRM clause might say that we wouldn't allow a format which could, in some mode, use DRM.
It might make some sense to separate out the requirements into "the format must" and "the file must". I don't think WMF needs to forbid formats which merely support some kind of DRM (and the subset clause at the bottom would already avoid that), but files should never be DRMed. So 5 would apply to the files, but not necessarily the formats.
The rest of the terms seem to apply mostly to formats, and then only to files by extension.
Is it right to include "software" in relation to this? Does it mean software that runs on our servers? (Because the projects don't really host software, except for mediawiki.)
I think "on Wikimedia Foundation projects" says the materials we keep on the site, and it seems that it's now been revised to make that really clear.
I think it makes sense: What the servers (or staff) use internally is a separate issue from what we send out to users, so it should be governed by a different policy (and I thought there was one, but I can't seem to find it right now).
My own view is that WMF's format policy should be a lot more freedom-strict than a policy for what runs on the servers: What we send to people has a huge impact since it will influence their own software use, while what we use internally has a much less direct impact. (Although there are a lot of good reasons that there should be a strong preference internally.)
As far as 'software' goes, there is software the sites distribute to users: source-code attached to articles on computer science subjects and client-side components (JavaScript, etc) that are used by the site, for example. While there may not be too much of it today today it's probably good to also be forward looking in these things. ;)
Geni wrote:
- Not itself subject to material patent-related restrictions on use
that are incompatible with free software, nor only able to be authored or viewed by software so restricted.
Problematical because it fails to make clear that such any patents that have had restrictions waved for the time being need to have had their restrictions waved until the patent expires.
Your ability to spot odd corner cases always impresses me. I thought about this policy all evening and didn't come up with *that*.
I think the text "incompatible with free software" manages to avoid all sorts of issues with incomplete wavers (waived only for web use, waived only for non-commercial use, etc), but yea, I guess "waved only for the next two years" is arguable, even if the intent is clear. It's almost not a hypothetical: there are a number of video coding patents currently waived for the next couple years, although only for web use.
Since you pretty much can't patent things retroactively, this can be addressed with a simple change:
4. Not known to be currently or eventually subject to material patent-related restrictions on use that are incompatible with free software, nor otherwise only able to be authored or viewed by software so restricted.
The inclusion of 'known' also makes sense because you can often not be absolutely certain about non-infringement, you can be reasonably confident one way or the other, but it's usually much easier to be confident about infringement than non-infringement.
Alternatively, the lead could be revised to throw in a "perpetually" that covers all the requirements, but the patent case is special in that it will frequently be possible to see future problems since the patent must pre-date the format or else the patent will not be valid (and thus not material).
...
All in all it sounds pretty good to me.