On 5/9/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/9/07, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
Derivative work is derivative work, no matter under what license. If an article with a GFDL image is a derivative of that image, then an article with a CC-BY-SA image is a derivative of that image too.
There really isn't any reasonable dispute over if an article which combines images and text is a derivative at least not in the FDL space. Some people in CC land have been proposing that almost nothing is a derivative of an image, and if they want to do that.. fine, but they should update the license to reflect that.
I think there's far too much focus on the term "derivative" in terms of the GFDL. The GFDL says that, for an "aggregate", the GFDL "does not apply to the other works in the aggregate which are not themselves derivative works of the Document." In most cases the text of an article will not be a derivative of an image (except perhaps for the caption), and in most cases the image will not be a derivative of the text (maybe if the image was drawn to a textual description). But in both of those cases, the article is a derivative of both the image and the text. It *may* also be an "aggregate". That's really the million dollar question.
Oh, an regarding "fair use" ... Truly "fair use" images have been considered okay for the same reason that we allow them in our projects at all: if they are honestly fair use they don't unfree the document as a whole substantially, and they could only really be replaced with nothing, in any case.
Well, I can think of plenty of cases of fair use which don't create a free document. But this is due to the fact that what constitutes fair use is much much broader than what is allowed on Wikipedia.
Anthony