Richard Stallman wrote:
(Jimmy Wales wrote: We are faced with an issue of
convenience versus
freedom when we talk
about licensing images. Because we are a nonprofit charitable
organization with an educational mission, we can easily get non-free
licenses to use images.)
This is easily done, but doesn't achieve the goal of building a free
encyclopedia. There is no help for it; to make a free encyclopedia,
one must stick to materials that are free.
I totally agree.
(Jimbo again: Because we are a nonprofit charitable
organization with an educational mission, we can make heavy use of the
doctrine of "fair use" in the US.)
When applicable, this may be a good solution.
(Clause 7 of the license permits us to combine
independent works, even proprietary works, and this clearly includes
aggregating images and articles stored on the same server.)
This is permitted in the sense that it won't violate the GFDL.
No disrespect intended, but as far as I know, RMS is not a lawyer. By
promoting the concept of copyleft, he has certainly had a significant
effect on law, but he did have the help of a lawyer, Eben Moglen, to
write the licenses. I would not use this as a legal interpretation. For
one thing, I think RMS would concede he's not an expert in the details
of international copyright law, though he may have learned more about it
than most. Also, may I point out that in software and programming, his
real area of expertise, fair use is a much less significant concept than
for us. So I don't think we should count on RMS to tell us when it's
"applicable" that fair use is "a good solution", especially with the
non-US implications.
RMS is a good person to ask about the spirit of GFDL, and that is
important. To keep that spirit, as he says, we should use free images if
we want to make a free encyclopedia.
--Michael Snow