On 10/17/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
There's anecdotal evidence for this happening for images. The Wikimedia enquiry address gets a lot of requests to discuss licensing for an image, generally assuming we're the copyright holder (but sometimes asking directly for the author); money is certainly in the air on some occasions, though I suspect most end up as "Sure, use it, can you put my name on the flyleaf?"
Um. I've made a non-trivial amount of money relicensing my images to folks who found them via Wikimedia projects... not enough to pay for my equipment yet, but within a few years perhaps. ... but I'm just one person with only a few commercially interesting images.
I certainly would believe that a large high-quality GFDLed collection could generate real income by charging for releases under licenses which are more comforting and standard to various industries. I doubt that the income would be enough to offset the substantial cost of digitizing and collecting such works.