[Wikimedia-l] Licencing question

[Richard Symonds]

All,

I have a question for you which I am sure you will enjoy discussing. It's
about licencing.

Wikimedia sites do not use a 'byline' on their images - for example,
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page requires an image to be clicked
on before you can view the licence and the author information. The same
applies for Wikipedia, and the WMF (and WMUK) blogs.

The CC family of licences, and Commons re-use guidelines, however, say that
you need to have attribution using a byline next to the image, in the
fashion 'Horation Nelson/CC-BY-SA'.

It appears that opinion is divided on whether a hyperlink is acceptable as
attribution, therefore I'm asking the experts:

   - Does anyone have any input on this?
   - Has this discussion been had before, if so, where?
   - Should Wikipedia, Commons and the various Wikimedia sites use the full
   byline, or are we OK just using a hyperlink?

Your thoughts much appreciated!

Richard Symonds
Wikimedia UK
0207 065 0992

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