[Foundation-l] Board meeting in Rotterdam later this week

[effe iets anders]

Dear David,

knowing the Dutch language Wikipedia-community, I think almost everybody
will agree with me that it is no "easy" community. some communitymembers are
now trying to approve a non-free license on the Dutch language Wikipedia,
the CC-NC. This license is imcompatible with the GNU FDL, and I think that
it is, due to GFDL, not allowed to use it on Wikipedia on articles. It is
not something to have an opinion about really, it is or it isn't allowed by
GFDL. You can at most have another view on the license. I think it is very
very important that the Foundation makes it clear for once and for ever what
licenses are acceptable on the Wikimedia projects. It is very hard to
explain to people why one project thinks the use of NC (not to speak of fair
use) is allowed, and why other projects state it isnt. It's not even a
question of local law, it is about what is allowed by the GFDL license.

In the Dutch language community we have actually not a single expert on the
area of copyright and licenses. I doubt lot of other communities have. (With
an expert I mean someone who has studied law and is specialized in that
aera) So at the end people like you and me have to make this kind of
fundamental choises about licenses, even though we do not know what exactly
we are talking about, we are just guessing. (just assuming you are not one
of those experts, by coincidense) A lot of small communities are struggling
with this, and I think it would be very wise of the Foundtaioin to help
those communities, to help especially the Dutch language wikipedia-community
in this, as we have already enough to fight over, by getting a legal advice
with an expert, and make a choise in result of that. An advice would require
in my opinion a same amount of efford, so I really urge to "rules" from
above, although I am usually no big fan of that. So I second heartely Hay's
request, please bring some light in the darkness, and let the blind people
see again.

Lodewijk Gelauff / Effeietsanders

2007/1/10, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:
>
> On 10/01/07, Husky <huskyr at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Florence wrote:
>
> > > * Legal issues (saturday morning). Planning of the most urgent things
> to
> > > deal with, in particular but not restricted to, trademarks, licence
> > > inforcing, domain names, privacy policy...
>
> > I would like to suggest that it would be nice if the board could also
> > formulate an advice to the projects concerning the use of non-commercial
> > images? That has been endlessly debated on many projects (esp. the Dutch
> > Wikipedia) and any kind of advice would be immensly helpful.
>
>
> I think the current advice is "avoid, they're not free content."
>
>
> - d.
>
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