License discussion (was: [Wikipedia-l] [robertocasiraghi at iol.it: Can Wikipedia articles be translated or "manipulated" to teach English?])

[Daniel Mayer]

>So Encyclopedia Britannica sucks in the 
>Wikipedia contents, locks them up and 
>improves upon them. Does that hurt me in 
>any way? Or anybody else for that matter? 
>I still have precisely the same amount of 
>freedom I had before they decided to to that. 
>Wikipedia is still free. If anything, I benefit 
>because more people get to read my material 
>and I get to read Britannica's improvements.
>
>Axel

At that point the /only/ thing you would be able to do is just read  
Britannica's improvements. 

Without the protections of the GNU FDL you would not be able to improve on 
their improvements. Thus Britannica improves and Wikipedia doesn't - the 
positive feedback cycle ends with the imprisonment of a version of the 
content. 

Thanks to the GNU FDL the content always improves and is always free.  
Britannica is more than welcome to incorporate our content but any changes 
they make would have to be licensed under the GNU FDL. Thus that gives us the 
/freedom/ to improve upon their improvements. Default copyright forbids them 
to use the content at all and the public domain only grants freedom in one 
direction. 

I for one would not contribute to Wikipedia if it were in the public domain.

--mav

WikiKarma:
The usual at [[February 25]]