[Foundation-l] Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 11:37 AM, Noein <pronoein at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thank you for this deep analysis. While claiming that we should not
> compromise any of the principles, you didn't address directly the
> possibility that we won't reach everybody if we don't compromise.
> Reaching every human is a (currently and apparently) conflicting
> principle with free uncensored information. What is your vision about
> that? Wait for better times? Do you think that with time, the inherent
> virtues of our model will end convincing the reluctant or opposed people
> of today?

I don't know that reaching everybody was ever a stated goal. Being
theoretically available to everybody is a different matter...

In any case this issue has been specifically addressed here:

David (a real thought leader) Goodman wrote:
> If there is a wish for a similar but censored
> service, this can be best done  by forking ours; if there is a wish to
> abandon NPOV or permit commercialism, by expanding on our basis. We do
> not discourage these things; our licensing is in fact tailored to
> permitting them--but we should stay distinct from them. We have
> provided a general purpose feed and suitable metadata, and what the
> rest of the world does is up to them--our goal is not to monopolize
> the provision of information.

Kat Walsh wrote:
> Another principle to state related to this (that I've been trying to
> think about how to expand upon): no resource that is
> compatibly-licensed is our adversary, and we should encourage that
> sort of "competition".

Obsessively chasing every last reader, every last editor, regardless
of other factors is just as evil as the practice of chasing every last
dollar.  Diversity is good.

Insisting that our _project_, rather than just the benefits of our
good work, directly reach into the lives of each and every person,
regardless of the costs?   I'd call that megalomania.

That isn't to say that balancing audience vs other factors isn't an
important thing to do— the decision to run multiple language
Wikipedias rather than just teach everyone English was arguably one
such decision— but we _do_ have an answer for how we're going to help
the people who are inevitably left out.  We help them by being freely
licensed so that its easier for others to specialize in helping those
audiences.