[Wikipedia-l] Stallman on fair use

[Axel Boldt]

--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Lee Pilich wrote:
> >...
> >This is perhaps a little off-topic, but is there a 
> >quick and easy explanation of why the Wikipedia 
> >is released under the GFDL and not into the public 
> >domain? Somebody asked me the other day, and I 
> >realised that I didn't actually know.
> 
> So that Britannica, Encarta or another proprietary encyclopedia
> doesn't cannibalize the project by incorporating our material and 
> not making their modifications available under a free license. That 
> would break the chain of positive feedback that has gotten us so far.


...or so the story goes. EB could in fact take Wikipedia, make some
improvements (or not), and slap an invariant section on every article,
such as "Improvements by Encyclopedia Britannica (tm), the best
encyclopedia in the world, available from www.eb.com." 

Axel

> 
> Who would read or continue to contribute to Wikipedia if a
> proprietary version 
> was always snatching up the best parts? I wouldn't - what would be
> the point? 
> Any time we do something better than a proprietary encyclopedia all
> they have 
> to do is copy what we did. Then there is a proprietary fork. Forks
> are bad 
> and proprietary ones are really bad because they tend to tear appart
> the 
> non-proprietary communities. We would never be able to rise above the
> 
> proprietary crowd in quality and contributors will drift away. We
> would never 
> be able to beat Britannica because we would be assimilated into
> Britannica, 
> piece by piece.  
> 
> Short answer: The GNU FDL encourages people to share and discourages
> people to 
> be selfish. 
> 
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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