On Sunday 01 June 2003 23:43, Erik Moeller wrote:
You see it this way we'll see what the lawyers from the FSF say about
this.
The lawyers from the FSF interpret the FDL in the favor of the FSF's ideology. They are not an independent authority. If you want a legal opinion on the FDL, hire a lawyer.
Sorry, but I trust a lawyer opinion more than non-lawyer statements and if you don't seem to trust the FSF then I ask myself why the GFDL was choosen?
[...]
I say I am disappointed if the last little freedom that copyright law grants us is taken away not by the content industry, but by overzealous, paranoid Wikipedians. What's next? DRM to protect our content against FDL violations?
Erik, I have the highest respect for you and your work, but this is below your standard. Please, I try to understand your point of view and I expect the same from you. Even if you might not believe it - we all here want the best for the Wikipedia project and we all want to keep "evil" away from Wikipedia. Thanks.
Wikipedia documents human knowledge.
right
This is impossible without quoting.
Sorry, wrong conclusion. You can always rephrase sentences. It is not neccessary to use quotes if you want to document human knowledge.
It is impossible without fair use. An encyclopedia that cannot cite directly what others say is not an encyclopedia.
Well, based on a wrong conclusion the statement does not get more true. You either define that an encyclopedia by saying that it includes citations (than your statement is trivial) or you say that an encyclopedia documents human knowledge, then your statement is wrong.
If this is or becomes official policy then Wikipedia is not free (in the sense of freedom) anymore. Then please also replace "Wikipedia the free encyclopedia" by something else, because it then becomes a lie :-(
I'm sorry to say so, but Mr. Stallman does not have any rights to the interpretation of the term "free". I'm sure he is equally sorry about that.
I am very well aware of the fact that "free" depends on the definiton of the term "free". The Wikipedia FAQ claims that Wikipedia is free in this very definition:
"Free content (or open content) works are those other than software which are licensed freely in the same (freedom) sense as Free software is licensed freely, see Free software definition. That is to say, recipients are given permission to use the content for any purpose, copy it, modify it, and to redistribute modified versions."
and even the announcements for the 100.000 article says that the content of Wikipedia is under terms of GFDL.
Therefore it is quite safe to say that everyone reading this and coming from the free software world will expect that "free" means free in the GFDL sense, no? Of course you can redefine "free" now. With the same argument Microsoft could say they are writing "free" software because everyone is "free" to use it. .
Can we nevertheless define "free" in this discussion in the canonical sense (as in free software). It is wildly accepted this way and otherwise it will be even more confusing.
It is the very first time that I heard that the statements above (that Wikipedia is "free") is not true anymore. As far as I understood it the project started as a "free" project. I consider allowing non-free content ("fair use" content) a drastic policy change. Was there any agreement on this change or was that done silently by someone (I don't say that s/he had bad intentions)?
best regards, Marco