[Foundation-l] Mission & Vision statement updated

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro at gmail.com
Thu Apr 26 15:59:08 UTC 2007


On 4/26/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 4/26/07, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:
> > However the version of the mission statement linked from that post,
> > which you suggest adopting "without objection", is definitely _not_
> > the one you have now adopted officially.
>
> True - more edits happened after that announcement & we did some final
> tweaking on the Board-level (e.g. we had a brief discussion about
> whether we want "neutral" in there or not, and decided in favor).

In fact, I find it hard to say how anyone could claim that the further
emendations made were in fact made "in consultation" with the
community or had any serious review by it at all. So to me it appears
that those "edits" and "tweaking on the board-level" largely by-passed
approval by the community, even by ommission to comment, since they
were not submitted for even dissaproval after the call for instating
the unstable-mission statement as it then stood.


> > It still has the language "free licence" which I personally would think
> would
> > implicitly (if not explicitly) mean "free content available in formats
> under free
> > licences"
>
> There are plenty of open source decoders for patented file formats, so
> that wouldn't necessarily be clear enough. One can always make up
> phrases such as "unfettered file formats" and explain them elsewhere.
> I'm generally supportive of incorporating a free&open format clause,
> as I think the issue is becoming very hot with Windows Vista's
> built-in DRM malware, the MP3 lawsuit, and so on.

In my opinion this is simply not good enough. If you are of the
opinion that we do _not_ need to specify that we are *only* interested
in keeping the *content* under a free licence, why "clarify" the
sentence by adding that specific word "content" there, when a
reasonable reading - and I do think my reading is reasonable - will
contend that adding "content" in there is a specific disinclusion of a
requirement for free formats, and thus a radical shift in policy.

I genuinely hope you are not being disingenous in suggesting that we
"incorporate" language - in the future -  to say we are for free
formats. The language as it stood, if not clear, certainly supported
what was already long standing practise of our projects. So it is in
my view very much inaccurate to say that it would be an innovation to
add such language, when much simpler would be to not add the confusing
term "content" there in the first place.

I do infact urge the board to reconsider their position, and
specifically would urge the community to voice whether they wish to
*only* have free "content" or whether that is a too limited phrasing.




--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]



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