On Tue, 24 Feb 2004, Richard Stallman wrote:
B - getting the right to use this picture only on official Wikipedia server/ mirrors, CD-Roms & official Wikipedia books (a special new licence) C - getting the right to use this picture with a redused quality and size D - creating a non public pay per view area inside the wikipediaIf Wikipedia did any of these things, it would no longer be free. We would need to start another project to be the free encyclopedia. It makes no sense to put completeness above freedom. Wikipedia should do as good a job as it can do while remaining free.
I would assume that what Jimbo meant with point C here is that we got the copyright owners to put a version of the image of reduced quality and size under the GFDL (or a compatible license).
Scaling down an image is a lossy operation, so the owner needn't worry that we we (or someone using Wikipedia material) scaled that image back up - the quality wouldn't improve, and certainly not match the requirements of the customers professional photographers usually pander to.
But it would still be very useful to us, certainly better than nothing, and Free / Libre.
I see it is quite likely that photographers would agree to something like this. With proper attribution, it might even turn out to be profitable for them.
Or am I missing something?
-- Daniel