[Foundation-l] Fwd: [cc-licenses] The FSF On FDL Derivatives

[Anthony]

On 5/9/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/9/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Derivative work is derivative work, no matter under what license. If
> > an article with a GFDL image is a derivative of that image, then an
> > article with a CC-BY-SA image is a derivative of that image too.
>
> There really isn't any reasonable dispute over if an article which
> combines images and text is a derivative at least not in the FDL
> space.   Some people in CC land have been proposing that almost
> nothing is a derivative of an image, and if they want to do that..
> fine, but they should update the license to reflect that.
>
I think there's far too much focus on the term "derivative" in terms
of the GFDL.  The GFDL says that, for an "aggregate", the GFDL "does
not apply to the other works in the aggregate which are not themselves
derivative works of the Document."  In most cases the text of an
article will not be a derivative of an image (except perhaps for the
caption), and in most cases the image will not be a derivative of the
text (maybe if the image was drawn to a textual description).  But in
both of those cases, the article is a derivative of both the image and
the text.  It *may* also be an "aggregate".  That's really the million
dollar question.

> Oh, an regarding "fair use" ... Truly "fair use" images have been
> considered okay for the same reason that we allow them in our projects
> at all: if they are honestly fair use they don't unfree the document
> as a whole substantially, and they could only really be replaced with
> nothing, in any case.
>
Well, I can think of plenty of cases of fair use which don't create a
free document.  But this is due to the fact that what constitutes fair
use is much much broader than what is allowed on Wikipedia.

Anthony