[WikiEN-l] No derivatives (was: Would you like one of your videos posted on Wikipedia?)

[Stephen Streater]

On 19 Sep 2006, at 15:43, dmehkeri at swi.com wrote:

>> Who are you to say that we won't edit the video?  Maybe you won't,  
>> but
>> maybe someone else will, in a way that makes it more useful, and then
>> link that on Wikipedia.  That's the point of viral licensing and
>> ShareAlikes.  I'm afraid "you're not allowed to edit it" is a deal- 
>> breaker.
>
> Eh, why is that anyway? I understand why we would dislike it, of  
> course, but I'm
> not sure why, exactly, we would want to make it a deal-breaker.  
> (We, english
> Wikipedia, rather than say, Wikimedia Commons which has slightly  
> different goals.)

The idea is to encourage people to make more
free content. Some people (such as me) will do
this for some of their content. This free content will
accumulate over time.

I'm not sure this is so useful to content which
cannot be made free, though Kim Bruning was
keen not to have to check every piece of content
in Wikipedia before it could be re-used by only
allowing free content.

> At least, we could use some better documentation on this point.

I agree with this. Gregory Maxwell is almost
single handedly championing this idea which,
on reflection, is not so odd as it looks. It's all
about long term results rather than short term
expediency.