[WikiEN-l] Image permissions, a case study

[Haukur Þorgeirsson]

Dear colleagues,

One of my primary interests on Wikipedia is
to increase and improve coverage of matters
related to Iceland, my native country. Recently
I've become interested in the fauna of this
barren land - which consists mostly of birds.

I came upon a webpage by a countryman of mine
which has a number of good bird pictures in
high resolution. I thought it would be nice
to include some of them in Wikipedia since
some of the species are currently not illustrated
and many only have a low resolution picture.

The web page in question is here:

http://www.simnet.is/jakobs/birds/birds.html

I contacted the photographer and asked him if
he was willing to license the pictures under
the GFDL or CC-BY so they could be used on
Wikipedia. He took the matter under consideration
and told me that he felt those licenses were
too broad, but he was willing to license the
pictures for use on Wikipedia.

I told him that Wikipedia doesn't currently
accept exclusive licenses and added a squirt
of ideology. As a last resort I asked him if
he'd be willing to license his pictures with
the following notice:

"© 2005 Jakob Sigurðsson. Anyone can use this image
for encyclopedia articles and other educational
purposes as long as it is attributed to me."

He agreed.

Is this "free enough" for Wikipedia or will any
images I upload with such a notice be deleted?

Regards,
Haukur