[Foundation-l] Mission & Vision statement update

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

On 4/26/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 4/26/07, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 4/26/07, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > > I do not think anyone can reasonably claim that the change came as a
> > > total surprise. The issue of updating the mission statement has been
> > > mentionned as early as october 2006.
> >
> > Quite the contrary, I most specifically claimed that the specific
> > emendation of "free licence" to "free content licence" was made in a
> > fashion that did not observe the niceties of feedback from the
> > community in any reasonable form. That "change" is the only *change*
> > that I am challenging, and _yes_ I do think it is reasonable to claim
> > that it will have not been reviewed by any great section of the
> > community in any significant way.
> >
> Am I the only one who is confused as to what the significance of the
> change from "free license" to "free content license" means?  I've read
> the discussion by you and Erik on this, but I still don't get it.
>
> Erik says this is a clarification.  What was unclear which is being
> clarified?

I think this is the crux of the matter. If the intent is to uphold the
longstanding stance we have been keeping, as attested by numerous
postings on the list by many figures of stature within wikimedia
operations, that we do infact take a clear stance against encumbered
file formats, this is not a clarification at all, but can be (perhaps
contrivedly, but nevertheless) interpreted as retreating from support
of formats that are unemcumbered. If that is the gloss put on the
change of language by those outside our community, that would be sad
indeed.

> Jussi-Ville says that the change eliminates "content in formats that
> are under free licence".  What would be an example of such content?
> Does this mean the WMF would support non-free content under an open
> format?  Or are you saying that the new language allows for free
> content in non-free formats?

No, to be precise, I don't think the change eliminates content, but it
does remove explicit commitment to formats under free licence. If it
did not, why would Eric state that "adding" coverage of the same would
be something we could envision in the future.

My understanding is that "free licence" covered also the file formats
being unencumbered, and specifying that *only* the content need be
freely licenced is a backtracking of a serious significance.


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