[Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects (fwd)

[Andre Engels]

I have been put words in my mouth here that I never said. I was only
reacting to Mav who claimed that free meant copyleft, thus claiming
that CC-BY or PD is _not_ free, or at least _less_ free than copyleft.
NEVER did I claim that copyleft was NOT free. All I claimed was that
things that are NOT copyleft can still be free.

Andre Engels


"Toby Bartels" <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> schrieb:
> Andre Engels wrote in part:
> 
> >Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:
> 
> >>I'm advocating the full use of the word free (no cost and copyleft).
> 
> >Then you have a strange meaning of 'free'.
> 
> >"You may do with it what you want, provided you mention my name" is
> >more free than "You may do with it what you want, provided you mention
> >my name and give others the same rights and obligations".
> 
> The Free Software Foundation would argue that the final condition
> is not a significant restriction on the downstream user's freedoms.
> Thus they would say that CC-by and GNU FDL ''are'' free, period.
> And certainly the latter condition makes it more certain
> that future derived works will in fact be free at all.
> 
> I think that it's healthier to take a less absolute stance.
> There is (or was, I don't know the latest developments)
> a big debate in the Debian project about whether the GNU FDL
> is free when it's combined with Invariant Sections.
> (For example, the FSF's own GNU emacs manual has an IS.
> Certainly the FSF believes that this is free,
> but many people in the Debian community disagree.)
> What they ''should'' be able to agree on, to get started,
> is that the GNU FDL is ''less'' free when used with an IS;
> then they can start discussing whether it's free ''enough''.
> But since most debaters take an absolutist position
> on the criteria for freedom, they can't even get started.
> 
> So an unlicensed copyright is less free than GNU FDL with an IS,
> and GNU FDL with an IS is less free than GNU FDL without an IS,
> and GNU FDL without an IS is (arguably [*]) less free than CC-by-sa,
> and CC-by-sa is less free than CC-by, and CC-by is less free than PD.
> But on the other hand, there are ''reasons'' for each of the restrictions,
> including reasons that restrictions that may increase freedom overall.
> So the question for any project (GNU, Debian, Wikimedia, etc)
> is not "free or not free" but "how free is free enough"?
> GNU and Debian are answering this differently, and that's OK.
> Within Wikimedia, Wikipedia and Wikinews may answer this differently too!
> 
> [*] This has to do with the "overbroad DRM clause" in the GNU FDL.
> It is a subtle point that only the extreme anti-FDL people care about;
> but even so, people should be able to agree that it makes a difference
> to ''relative'' freedom.
> 
> 
> -- Toby
>