[Foundation-l] Offering Wikibooks content for sale
Brad Patrick
bradp.wmf at gmail.com
Wed Jul 5 14:53:19 UTC 2006
On 7/4/06, Michael R. Irwin <michael_irwin at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> Brad Patrick wrote in part:
>
> >Licensing others to publish, from
> >the WMF perspective is not a big step, and is to WMF's great financial
> >advantage.
> >
> snip
>
>
>
> Assuming the content must be licensed from the WMF is a violation of the
> FDL and it could be argued an attempt to exploit the name brand
> recognition of the GNU FDL without meeting the responsibilities of its
> use.
I have never suggested such a thing.
It seems pretty easy to me to delineate that the trademarks and logos of
> the WMF may be licensed separately for use in advertising and sales
> promotion to any publishing effort using the FDL'ed material in ways
> mutually acceptable to the WMF and the publisher. Any customer who
> purchased the content could in turn modify the content and the
> attributions appropriately and then republish without the use of the WMF
> trademarks or logos.
Bingo.
Clearly any licensing arrangement for the trademarks or logos should
> include a right to review and cancel the use of the trademarks and logos
> in inappropriate fashions.
It's not extortion of free content. It's being smart about marketing and
endorsements. Managing licenses implies quality control; that is not the
same thing as instituting a requirement for every single book composed of
WMF-project related content.
I wasn't around for Big Cats. Going forward, I hope we can achieve clarity
with minimal transactional friction from the community and publishers. We
aren't here to be obstructionist.
--
Brad Patrick
General Counsel & Interim Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
bradp.wmf at gmail.com
727-231-0101
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