Erik Moeller wrote:
Update of /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/includes In directory sc8-pr-cvs1.sourceforge.net:/tmp/cvs-serv14307/includes
Modified Files: DefaultSettings.php Parser.php Log Message: new config option: $wgAllowExternalImagesFrom motivation: people want to remove the wikimedia logos, which are non-free, from commons. using this, we could move them to a trusted directory on the wikimedia servers, and access them from all wikis using absolute URLs.
This will break static HTML dumps and any other offline usage. Can't we just change Commons policy instead?
-- Tim Starling
Tim Starling:
This will break static HTML dumps and any other offline usage. Can't we just change Commons policy instead?
I'm not getting into the discussion on whether we should change the policy. I do think that *if* we're going to delete the logos from Commons, a viable alternative should exist to have them easily usable in a Wikimedia context without re-uploading them to many wikis. Having a
http://upload.wikimedia.org/nonfree/
directory might be one way to do that. Static dumps, when viewed online, should still work if they are generated using the same settings. For offline viewing, the dumper would have to mirror the nonfree directory.
I'm happy if the few new lines of code are removed if the vote is in favor of keeping the images on Commons, though the whitelist ability might be useful in other contexts as well, e.g. Intranet use.
Erik
Tim Starling wrote:
This will break static HTML dumps and any other offline usage. Can't we just change Commons policy instead?
Can't we just make those images free instead?
What's with Wikimedia being all free, and all the people having say and everything? It just doesn't make any sense. It's like a government trying to tell everyone their goal is peace, and then going to war with Iraq.
Timwi
Timwi wrote:
Tim Starling wrote:
This will break static HTML dumps and any other offline usage. Can't we just change Commons policy instead?
Can't we just make those images free instead?
What's with Wikimedia being all free, and all the people having say and everything? It just doesn't make any sense. It's like a government trying to tell everyone their goal is peace, and then going to war with Iraq.
Trademark protection is necessary to prevent forks or other encyclopedia projects from claiming to be the real Wikipedia.
-- Tim Starling
On 10/29/05, Tim Starling t.starling@physics.unimelb.edu.au wrote:
Timwi wrote:
Tim Starling wrote:
This will break static HTML dumps and any other offline usage. Can't we just change Commons policy instead?
Can't we just make those images free instead?
What's with Wikimedia being all free, and all the people having say and everything? It just doesn't make any sense. It's like a government trying to tell everyone their goal is peace, and then going to war with Iraq.
Trademark protection is necessary to prevent forks or other encyclopedia projects from claiming to be the real Wikipedia.
The issue is not trademark protection, it's copyright protection. Wikimedia claims copyright over the images and won't license them under a free license, I don't think anyone would have an issue with them still protecting it as a trademark if they would do so.
Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
Trademark protection is necessary to prevent forks or other encyclopedia projects from claiming to be the real Wikipedia.
The issue is not trademark protection, it's copyright protection. Wikimedia claims copyright over the images and won't license them under a free license, I don't think anyone would have an issue with them still protecting it as a trademark if they would do so.
They received legal advice that the trademark might be difficult to defend in court if they had granted a license which conflicts with the common law restrictions placed on use of trademarks. The GFDL is such a license, it explicitly specifies that one may use the licensed content in any way, making no exception for use of an image in identifying an unaffiliated product.
In other words, someone may well have an issue with them still protecting it as a trademark, specifically the courts and the trademark infringer.
My idea for dealing with this situation is described at http://tinyurl.com/85cae#Suggestion .
-- Tim Starling
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org