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

[Michael Snow]

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> 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.
>   
Right, that's why I focused my comments on people who are in a position 
to choose the license.

--Michael Snow