Marco-
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 didn't choose the FDL, and I wouldn't. If it wasn't so hard to change licenses, we might have already switched to Creative Commons style copyleft or something similar. I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that the FDL is unsuitable for online publications. Even the Debian project rejects it. For my own textual projects, I use the public domain. The GNU project should stick to software licenses.
Sadly, because of Wikipedia, the FDL will continue to enjoy popularity because people will choose it for their projects in order to be compatible with us.
[...]
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.
I stand by my words. *Limiting* or *modifying* fair use is debatable. Eliminating it entirely is not. It would be completely paranoid. I think Mr. Wegrzanowski's recent comments illustrate the connection quite well. And from that paranoia, it is only a small step to wanting the security of additional "enforcement". The GNU project with its cult-like ideology and its constant threats against supposed GPL violators reminds me a lot of those who *defend* "intellectual property". I'm not opposed to copyleft per se, but the danger of using copyright against copyright is the same as when playing with fire -- you might start to like it.
This is impossible without quoting.
Sorry, wrong conclusion. You can always rephrase sentences.
Sure, you can always rephrase sentences. But information and emotion tends to get lost on the way. You are no longer saying what a person said, you are saying how you understood that person.
"I have a dream." Martin Luther King said that he "had a dream". King emphasized that he had a dream. In the middle of his speech, King remarked that he had a dream. King spoke of a dream he had. It was a dream, King said, that motivated him .. It must have been at some point in his sleep that the idea came to him .. King claimed, without presenting evidence, to have a "dream". With tears in his voice and his hands shaking, King spoke valiantly of the dream he had ..
Citations become interpretations. That is acceptable in some contexts, especially where purely factual information is concerned. But as a standard for the whole project, it is unprofessional and non-encyclopedic.
It is not neccessary to use quotes if you want to document human knowledge.
It is necessary if you want to create an encyclopedia.
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.
An encyclopedia documents human knowledge as precisely and accurately as possible. By having a requirement to paraphrase all quotes you lose the ability to do this. I can't believe we're even discussing this. This must be some joke that I fail to understand.
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:
<snip>
My point is this: If you think that Wikipedia is no longer a "free" encyclopedia because there's some fair use content in there, then you're using an "ideologically pure" definition of free that is not identical to mine, and not identical to the current policy on the English Wikipedia.
I have already explained to you in detail why fair use is compatible with the FDL when properly separated. All that remains to be done is to modify the software in accordance with our discussion, and to clarify some policy pages. We may have to build the transclusion feature I mentioned, although I personally don't care enough to do so. "Intellectual property" does not exist, after all.
Regards,
Erik