[Foundation-l] Status report on logo copyright issues at Swedish Wikipedia

[Mike Godwin]

On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 5:27 PM, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:

>
> Finally, I'd like to quote something that you said and make a comment:  "My
> experience has been that those who object to this haven't given adequate
> attention to the GFDL and Creative Commons licenses we operate under --
> neither license is "free,""
>
> Umm, WTF?  The GFDL and CC licenses aren't free?  What's that whole thing
> about Wikipedia being "the free encyclopedia", then?  Did I misunderstand
> the context in which you said that or did you misspeak or something?
>

What I mean is that "free" in the context of "free licensing" doesn't
precisely mean "free as in free speech" any more than it means "free as in
free beer." Whether you're talking GFDL or CC-BY-SA or any other "free
license," you're talking imposing downstream obligations on re-users that
are more onerous than those imposed on (for example) re-users of public
domain works.

Properly understood, we know exactly why we're imposing these downstream
obligations, and we believe that doing so supports a larger sense of
"freedom," but we must remember that free licenses are themselves tools
designed to invoke rights in copyright and impose obligations relating to
rights in copyright, even as they also provide rights to re-users.


--Mike