On 22/10/2007, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 10/21/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/21/07, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
What do you think the WMF should do if it *did* have a clear legal case? What if someone called their proprietary encyclopedia "Wikipedia Premium Edition"?
[snip]
Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I think that under the GFDL, anybody is free to take our content, repackage it and sell it for a zillion dollars without giving us shit as long as they also license it under the GFDL allowing another someone to sell it for a zillion dollars and not give them shit. Isn't that one of the reasons we don't allow "non commercial use only" and "Wikipedia only" licenses on images?
Indeed but the there are two key points you might be missing:
- They can take the content but only if they keep it under the GNU
Free Documentation License, as you noted, which pretty much precludes the 'proprietary' mentioned in the ancestor post.
Yes, I was actually thinking a situation where the content was original - like if Microsoft decided to rename Encarta to "Wikipedia Premium Edition" or something.
Personally I'd have no problem with someone taking Wikipedia, repackaging it, calling it "Wikipedia Premium Edition", and selling it for a zillion dollars, so long as they acknowledged that the content was GFDL. But that's a situation the WMF probably *would* sue over.
Okay, so WMF is willing to release all their content under a do-as-I-tell-you-to-or-else license, much of which is based on the many proprietary journals and newspapers which exist in the journalism/academic work, and it still won't let people write about it? Why doesn't Wikipedia only use GFDL licensed original sources? That would be the first step to take, not trash people who write about the site and give it more publicity.
Peter