[Foundation-l] GFDL 1.3 Release

[David Gerard]

2008/11/4 Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>:
> On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 8:06 AM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Read the discussions on this list. We have people seriously saying
>> that we can't switch away from GFDL because they've promised
>> photographers "the GFDL only pretends to be a free license, it isn't
>> really" as if that's a *feature*.

> You've stated this a couple of times David, and I think it's unfair.


OK, not the entire story. But it does appear to be a feature in many
people's minds.


> Many professional photographers come to us and say  "I sell many of
> images for use as stock photography in commercial publications,
> textbooks, etc. I'll lose that if I give my works away!",  to which I
> (and many other people reply) "If you GFDL your image, then people can
> only build freely licensed works out of it.  This kind of tit-for-tat
> trade of free for free encourages the creation of more free works
> while preserving the market of selling to people who are printing
> non-freely-licensed works, which is most of the market anyways.  GFDL
> also requires attribution, and that redistributors ship along a copy
> of the license text so that recipients know their rights. So it's not
> equivalent to simply giving your work away."


Whether that's the legal case is entirely up in the air. Even the FSF
don't know, and I did in fact directly ask them.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reuse

"When using a photo placed under the GFDL licence as part of a larger
work, the larger work must also be released under GFDL for usage to be
within the license terms. (We asked the Free Software Foundation, the
creators of the license, for clarification of how much of e.g. a book
counts as the "larger work" in these terms; they responded that no
synopsis can substitute for what the text of the license says, and if
in doubt the reuser should seek a proper legal opinion.)"

So your claim that it always requires the larger work to be GFDL as
well is not necessarily correct at all. Selling people that
expectation to get their content is a misrepresentation.

The GFDL is so opaque that no-one, not even its creators, understand it.

[cc'd to licensing at fsf.org - your inability to explain what your own
license was even supposed to mean is a serious problem, and our
attorney is Mike Godwin and it makes even his head hurt so please
don't cut'n'paste a referral to our own attorney.]


- d.