Post under a nicer and more appropriate title
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Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
On 1/19/08, Gregory Maxwell
gmaxwell-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org wrote:
On Jan 19, 2008 12:25 AM, Mike Godwin
mnemonic-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org wrote:
I should think it apparent to pretty much everybody that the Kaltura collaboration is not convenient in the short term.
The choice of a partner which fundamentally requires proprietary technology, over alternative paths which use or create non-proprietary technology (which may currently be less mature or less adopted), is short term advantageous compared to other options.
Personally I think the situation is more nuanced than either of you
present
it as. The Wikimedia Foundation can be a influence for guiding towards what its mission is in many ways (and I regret our mission statement
still
does not make it explicit that we are for non-proprietary formats;
</ceterum
censeo> ).
Some routes are more frayed than others, though, and one needs must make an evaluation of what the best/most effective use of resources/good will/authority etc. is. Erik has clearly made one which you, Greg do not wholly agree with. That, I think, is fine. We should still respect
the fact
that evaluating that is what Erik is being paid for, and naturally Erik chooses whose opinion he relies upon, within the parameters set to him by the board (and here I remind the board, that it *does* have the
authority
to guide its employees _as a body_, though clearly not as individual
trustees).
Since you mention it, I wanted to clarify that we have drafted a file format policy. It has not yet been approved, some board member being willing to further discuss it with other individuals.
I think it relevant to copy this draft here. Comments welcome for all of you of course :-)
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Resolution:File format policy
Whereas an essential part of the Wikimedia Foundation's mission is encouraging the development of free-content educational resources that may be created, used, and reused by a diverse community, without restriction, and because we believe that this mission requires thriving open formats and open standards on the web to allow the creation of content not subject to restrictions on creation, use, and reuse, it is resolved that all material, text , multimedia, or software, on Wikimedia Foundation projects must be in a format that is: 1. Viewable or playable by existing free software tools 2. Able to be created or edited by existing free software tools. 3. Defined by an open standard, implementation, or specification not under proprietary control 4. 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. 5. Not encrypted or otherwise subject to technical protection measures incompatible with the permissions of free content licensing. where "free software" is software under any licensing terms that meet the Free Software Definition. Where an independently-used subset of the format meets these criteria, even if some files in that format do not (as with PDF and encrypted PDF), files in that subset qualify as acceptable formats under the text of this resolution.
Ant, your favorite sheep keeper
On 19/01/2008, Florence Devouard anthere@anthere.org wrote:
Resolution:File format policy Whereas an essential part of the Wikimedia Foundation's mission is encouraging the development of free-content educational resources that may be created, used, and reused by a diverse community, without restriction, and because we believe that this mission requires thriving open formats and open standards on the web to allow the creation of content not subject to restrictions on creation, use, and reuse, it is resolved that all material, text , multimedia, or software, on Wikimedia Foundation projects must be in a format that is:
- Viewable or playable by existing free software tools
- Able to be created or edited by existing free software tools.
- Defined by an open standard, implementation, or specification not
under proprietary control 4. 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. 5. Not encrypted or otherwise subject to technical protection measures incompatible with the permissions of free content licensing. where "free software" is software under any licensing terms that meet the Free Software Definition. Where an independently-used subset of the format meets these criteria, even if some files in that format do not (as with PDF and encrypted PDF), files in that subset qualify as acceptable formats under the text of this resolution.
FWIW: I also forwarded this to the FSFE discussion list, noting that it was a draft and asking them to check it for loopholes - the FSF is good at spotting loopholes.
- d.
On 19/01/2008, Florence Devouard anthere@anthere.org 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.
On 20/01/2008, Florence Devouard anthere@anthere.org wrote:
Resolution:File format policy
Whereas an essential part of the Wikimedia Foundation's mission is encouraging the development of free-content educational resources that may be created, used, and reused by a diverse community, without restriction, and because we believe that this mission requires thriving open formats and open standards on the web to allow the creation of content not subject to restrictions on creation, use, and reuse, it is resolved that all material, text , multimedia, or software, on Wikimedia Foundation projects must be in a format that is:
[...]
- Not encrypted or otherwise subject to technical protection measures
incompatible with the permissions of free content licensing.
Is this the anti-DRM clause? I think so, but I just want to confirm.
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.)
cheers, Brianna
Brianna Laugher wrote:
On 20/01/2008, Florence Devouard anthere@anthere.org wrote:
Resolution:File format policy
Whereas an essential part of the Wikimedia Foundation's mission is encouraging the development of free-content educational resources that may be created, used, and reused by a diverse community, without restriction, and because we believe that this mission requires thriving open formats and open standards on the web to allow the creation of content not subject to restrictions on creation, use, and reuse, it is resolved that all material, text , multimedia, or software, on Wikimedia Foundation projects must be in a format that is:
[...]
- Not encrypted or otherwise subject to technical protection measures
incompatible with the permissions of free content licensing.
Is this the anti-DRM clause? I think so, but I just want to confirm.
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.)
cheers, Brianna
That might change in the future though.
I have posted a version on meta
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File_format_policy#Reworked:File_format_polic...
I strengthened the definition, to clarify that this applied to wikimedia projects in their public definition; but did not include necessarily all of our wikis or generally, all software used by the organization.
Rationale is that whilst it seems reasonable to request that Wikipedia, Wikinews, Wikiversity etc... be extremely respectful to that policy since we want our resources to be reuseable without restriction... it does not seem so necessary to make an obligation to use only free format, free software and so on in our daily activity.
To be SUPER practical, some of us still use powerpoint to make presentations ("cause the free equivalent for mac is a pain in the a...), we still sometimes use Word to share text with business partners, we even use macintosh with mac OS rather than Linux :-) Afaik, the accountant is not (yet ?) using open source accounting software, toolserver appears to host non free software etc...
In short, in the first case, it should be a "requirement", whilst in the second case, it should be a "recommandation or guideline".
For this reason, I think both cases should be the object of two separate resolutions.
Ant
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org