[Foundation-l] Two questions about the licensing update of media files

[Michael Snow]

Marco Chiesa wrote:
> Commons accepts materials that are free according to
> http://freedomdefined.org/Definition GFDL works fall within that
> definition, so they're free. We have lived eight years with GFDL and
> we've called Wikipedia the free encyclopedia all the time, so we
> cannot just dismiss GFDL now only because we've found a license that
> works better for us. The interincompatibility is probably the worst
> feature of copyleft, but we've lived long time with that and there's
> no reason to stop doing it.
>   
In terms of our policy, I agree with this. That being said, for anyone 
deciding what license to choose when contributing to Wikimedia Commons - 
I cannot fathom why you would limit media to being released only under 
the GFDL unless it was designed specifically for incorporation into a 
GFDL work. It's a documentation license, not a media license, and when 
applied to radically different contexts it will still be free in the 
dogmatic sense, but it may no longer be all that useful.

--Michael Snow