Andre Engels wrote:
I may be committing blasphemy here, but how much is Wikipedia 'married' to the GNU/FDL? The reason I'm asking is that I recently wanted to download a picture of the signing of the Treaty of Rome from the EU website. Only after I did so, I found that the pictures can be copied only for non-commercial purposes. And while Wikipedia itself would fall under that heading, the GNU/FDL does not forbid commercial use. And it's not the first time I've had that problem with texts or pictures either. The GNU/FDL allows a lot, which is good on itself, but also means that we cannot use any material under stricter copyleft restrictions.
I am open to thoughtful explorations along these lines, but I think that we're pretty 'married' to GNU/FDL. The viral nature of the license makes it pretty impossible at this point to do anything about nagging issues like this.
At the same time, though, I like the fact that there is no prohibition on commercial uses of the Wikipedia. Given my ultimate goal that there be a free encyclopedia distributed at extremely low cost to every person on the planet, permitting _nonproprietary_ commercial use (as GNU/FDL does) is pretty important.
Someday a clever entrepreneur in, say, India, will realize that although it's not possible to price Britannica/Encarta or a locally produced conventional encyclopedia at a price point for the masses, it *is* possible to price a derived version of Wikipedia that way.
--Jimbo