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

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

Michael Snow wrote:
> 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.
>
>   

While I completely agree with you, the situation is somewhat
different if you are downloading a work that has been previously
published under GFDL. Then the decision is not whether to
choose the GFDL license, but the decision is whether to download.

I suggest the decision should be to download.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen