[Foundation-l] Mozart's works released

[Andre Engels]

2006/12/14, Pat Gunn <pgunn at dachte.org>:
>
> In case anybody missed it,
> Mozart's complete works were recently published on the
> internet by the (Austria-based) International Mozart Foundation.
>
> http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2006-12-11T185118Z_01_L11804081_RTRUKOC_0_US-ARTS-MUSIC-MOZART.xml
>
> I'm not sure what license it's under. If it's a free one
> (or PD-equivalent), then it's similar in a sense to several
> ideas raised in Jimbo's idea drive sometime back.


Unfortunately, I went to the website, and you cannot even get into the
website without answering 'Ja' to the statement " Ich erkläre ausdrücklich,
dass ich diese Website nur zum persönlichen Studium verwende und Kopien nur
zu meinem eigenen privaten Gebrauch anfertige." (my translation: "I declare
that I will use this website only for personal studies and only make copies
for my own private use"). In other words, the material is free only as in
beer.


> A thought:
> If it is freely licensed, to what extent should the foundation
> consider republishing its content on WMF projects? Should WM
> avoid possibly stepping on the toes of other projects, avoiding
> duplicating any free conttent they make, or should it try to
> collect everything (and possibly give prominent credit) that falls
> under its mission? The general question may apply to other groups
> like Project Gutenberg's works.
>

I think the latter is too broad and the first too narrow. What I think
should answer the question is: Does copying to Wikimedia give any
substantial gains? I think we should restrict ourselves to two groups of
works in this perspective:
1. What we ourselves need, so that whatever we are already doing (Wikipedia,
Wiktionary and Wikibooks in particular) is done even better. This would for
example include many photographs, because we can use them in articles/books.
2. What can benefit from the specific capabilities and expertise of
Wikimedia. Our main specific capability is community involvement. If there
is a clear advantage of putting the material in a wiki or something similar
to putting it on a 'normal' website or in an FTP directory, then it is
something that would probably be good to put it on Wikimedia. Others (like
Project Gutenberg) are usually better if the main goal is to get existing PD
material onto the web. But when the project involves commenting on parts of
the work, creating some kind of low-level indexing or combining various
works and/or new additions into a new work, then Wikimedia's background is a
great plus.


-- 
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels