Dear David,
knowing the Dutch language Wikipedia-community, I think almost everybody will agree with me that it is no "easy" community. some communitymembers are now trying to approve a non-free license on the Dutch language Wikipedia, the CC-NC. This license is imcompatible with the GNU FDL, and I think that it is, due to GFDL, not allowed to use it on Wikipedia on articles. It is not something to have an opinion about really, it is or it isn't allowed by GFDL. You can at most have another view on the license. I think it is very very important that the Foundation makes it clear for once and for ever what licenses are acceptable on the Wikimedia projects. It is very hard to explain to people why one project thinks the use of NC (not to speak of fair use) is allowed, and why other projects state it isnt. It's not even a question of local law, it is about what is allowed by the GFDL license.
In the Dutch language community we have actually not a single expert on the area of copyright and licenses. I doubt lot of other communities have. (With an expert I mean someone who has studied law and is specialized in that aera) So at the end people like you and me have to make this kind of fundamental choises about licenses, even though we do not know what exactly we are talking about, we are just guessing. (just assuming you are not one of those experts, by coincidense) A lot of small communities are struggling with this, and I think it would be very wise of the Foundtaioin to help those communities, to help especially the Dutch language wikipedia-community in this, as we have already enough to fight over, by getting a legal advice with an expert, and make a choise in result of that. An advice would require in my opinion a same amount of efford, so I really urge to "rules" from above, although I am usually no big fan of that. So I second heartely Hay's request, please bring some light in the darkness, and let the blind people see again.
Lodewijk Gelauff / Effeietsanders
2007/1/10, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
On 10/01/07, Husky huskyr@gmail.com wrote:
Florence wrote:
- Legal issues (saturday morning). Planning of the most urgent things
to
deal with, in particular but not restricted to, trademarks, licence inforcing, domain names, privacy policy...
I would like to suggest that it would be nice if the board could also formulate an advice to the projects concerning the use of non-commercial images? That has been endlessly debated on many projects (esp. the Dutch Wikipedia) and any kind of advice would be immensly helpful.
I think the current advice is "avoid, they're not free content."
- d.
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