Steve Bennett wrote:
On 8/1/06, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
Every nonfree image cuts into our status as a free resource; it also
Can you explain that a bit more? I don't know what it means to be a "free resource" or why exactly we want to be that.
Well, the free part means that everybody can use it without paying. A while back I had a USDA guy calling me up about one of my date palm photos, because apparently there aren't that many photos on the net showing the fruits while on the tree, and I was happy that he wanted to use mine rather than paying for commercial stock with my tax dollars.
What makes one more or less "free"? Is an image resource with 10,000 free images and 1000 fair use less free than one with 9,000 free and 0 fair use?
I would say so, because the 1000 mean that I can't freely use the whole body of work, I have to pay attention to which is which.
affects downstream and commercial reusers of content, who likely can't afford to track down the copyright holder of every single nonfree image and license them, so they just filter them out en masse. So "nonfree" ends up becoming "no picture at all".
That sounds like a technical problem. Sounds like we need a way to gracefully degrade from non-free to free. Maybe a template that can specify which image a content reuser should fall back on if they don't want to use non-free images.
But why go to that much trouble though? We're not trying to enable coffeetable art books after all. Sure it would be nice if we had the professional's pretty blue sky over the Bulgarian town, but the purpose of showing the town is still served by the amateur pic with the glary white haze.
Stan