On 9/14/05, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
Forbidding such images for no practical reason smacks of fascism to me. So once the technical issue I mentioned is fixed, I see no valid reason for us to not be more permissive on image licensing in the user namespace (within the limits of WP:NOT a personal web page provider)
-- mav
Practical reason #1: The submit button and accompanying text referring to the licensing of submissions are identical. We'll have to change those. #2: Inertia and lack of differentiation between user space and the rest of Wikipedia. People already expect to be able to take items from all of Wikipedia under GFDL license. #3: License hell as described in the next paragraph.
If we make an arbitrary exception, I think it could ONLY apply from whatever point we choose going forward. Current content has already been submitted under the old terms. Deletion of previous content is really just a courtesy to whoever requests it, as mirrors already have the previous content. If the original owners / authors / photographers submitted it, they've already granted the license. If they weren't the original owner / author / photographer, then we delete since if the submitter couldn't legally grant the license agreed upon submission.
This all seems like a lot of work and fuss to avoid telling someone to host the information they don't want to license on any of a vast number of free webhosts. We don't have to be nasty about enforcing our policy, but since mirrors exist, it is probably a good idea to reaffirm what people have agreed to upon submission and strongly suggest that they have their content removed if that license was not their intent.