On 11/21/06, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
What are the odds of getting interested Wikipedians in to take the pictures instead? Contractors cost money, getting pictures taken for free in exchange for free licensing seems like a better deal for ESA. Lest one is concerned about amateur-quality work, I suspect that if ESA were to publicly announce inside access for ten photographers, unpaid but credited by name, they would have more than enough applications to be able to accept only the best.
Right, I am not soooo sure that the ESA (or any other organisation, NASA included, for that matter) will let any random Wikipedian hop on the next satellite to take pictures of <insert name of planet here>. I'd love too, but hey, I don't think this is going to happen any time soon.
I believe you will also understand the importance of monitoring what pictures get in and out concerning satellites, space shuttles and other highly technological objects.
I also think WP could do more to cynically play on European chauvinism than it has so far. 1/2 :-) A public statement by Jimbo, saying something like "we will not accept unfree ESA images in WP, and while we don't want WP to present a US-only view of space exploration, it's up to the Europeans to fix this", would likely get reported widely, and hopefully put some pressure on ESA to change what is at best a sloppy practice.
Let us not jump to conclusions too fast here. :-) What you call "European chauvinism" I will rather call "lack of means", "lack of human ressources to write the right contracts with the n number of national laws involved in the launching of this or that satellite and the building of this or that camera" etc. There are reasons for the ESA and other organisations not being able to release their pictures under a free license and they go far beyond a manichean "good people who release in the public domain what they produce with public money" vs "bad people who want to keep stuff for themselves". I don't think "pressure" as you put it, is the way to go.
Let me also try to maybe tone down the questions that David was trying to get through here and give a different angle.
The question is not that the ESA or these other organisations *do not* want to release their pictures for a wider use. As a matter of fact, it is the ESA who came to us (Wikimedia Deutschland and Wikimedia France) and asked us for advice on how to go about this, and how they could make their pictures (more) freely available. However, they have some conditions.
Some of our licenses (the one I use, for example) also add conditions (CC-BY-SA - share alike is a pretty drastic condition, when you think about it).
One of their condition is that those images can't be used for political propaganda, for example.
Now let me try and shift the debate a little here. Let us consider that the ESA, or whatever other organisation, comes up with a licence of their own. Let us imagine they allow free use of their images (in our free sense) *except* for political propaganda. Would that in any way be an acceptable thing to go by? Or is that definitely something we can't accept? It's a real question, I have no real opinion about this.
To bounce on something David said, there is much work to do in the evangelisation of those organisations, and a lot to explain about the pros and the cons of "free material". Most of their objections need to be understood in the light of what these organisations can do (with the restrictions that apply to them) and what they want to do. My take is that what they "want to do" can easily be changed, by patient, pedagogic and comprehensive explanations. What they "can do" is then another story altogether.
What I understand David was trying to say here is that maybe there is a mid-term agreement that can be reached, somewhere along the path. Are the Organisation X images worth us being just a tad less free (no political use of the images), are they not? It's a difficult question, but one that is worth debating.
One thing I am certain of is that saying "Organisation X must change their ways" is definitely not the right answer. I'd much rather have a stance that goes "How can we make organisation X change their way for everyone's best interest?"
Delphine