On Dec 2, 2007 12:59 AM, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Robert Rohde wrote:
On Dec 1, 2007 3:32 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 12/2/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Greg will of course correct me if I'm wrong - but I suspect the problem is that lots of people want CC-by-sa because it's easier to reuse stuff ... but that GFDL makes it hard to reuse stuff is considered a *feature* by many, e.g. photographers who license work as GFDL but also sell it privately. That is: the thing that makes GFDL a pain in the backside for a wiki is precisely why they like it, and they want it to stay a pain in the backside for that reason.
Worst possible reason to like a license, ever. :-)
Let's make a strong copyleft license that appeals to photographers.
In my opinion, that is only possible if the copyleft provisions unambiguously transfer to text written to accompany the image. Anything less, is little better than CC-BY. Most people that use photographs do
so
for the purposes of illustration rather than for the purposes of making derivative images. Hence copyleft provisions that apply only derivative images, and not to the text being illustrated, are intrinsically weak
and of
little impact.
-Robert A. Rohde
Is not the liberal use of Wikicommons to host images (which can be embedded in dozen of text pages afterwards) a bit inconsistant with this concern anyway ?
Yes, it is inconsistent, but that reflects a problem with Commons. There is nothing wrong with creating a free image repository, but using that repository to mix copyleft licensing is potentially problematic since these versions of "free" are arguably incompatible.
Wikipedia doesn't allow the inclusion of CC-SA text, but does allow CC-SA images under a theory that images and text can be understood as "seperate and independent" elements of a collection rather than part of single, unified article. Frankly, I think doing so relies on a strange interpretation of the plain language of the licenses. To put it bluntly, I think mixing CC-SA images in GFDL Wikipedia articles is already a copyright violation.
However, as far as I know, no copyright holder has ever complained about this mixing, and in the absence of a real ruling of law there is enough ambiguity that one can at least argue the issue. At a philosophical level, most people willing to license CC-BY-SA probably won't mind image use in Wikipedia, but we really ought to ensure compatibility in law and not just compatibility in spirit.
I assume that addressing the dubious compatibility between the two major avenues of copyleft is a central goal associated with the recent Foundation Resolution and the efforts underlying it.
-Robert A. Rohde