On 3/2/14, 5:31 PM, Chris McKenna wrote:
There seems to be a disconnect between what Commons sees as it's
mission: To be a repository of Free media; and what other projects see
as Commons' mission: To be a repository of media for use on Wikimedia
projects.
But since the other Wikimedia projects should be producing free-content
encyclopedias, this is no disconnect: Commons should host Free media,
and the other projects should include Free media. Otherwise the other
projects' content cannot be reused externally, and they are not
free-content encyclopedias.
There is a further disconnect in that Commons is taking an
increasingly ultra-conservative approach to the definition of "Free",
whereas most other projects are working to a definition of "Free for
all practical purposes". It is the latter interpretation that the
board, in consultation with the legal team, are recommending as the
way forward but is being resisted strongly by many on Commons.
This is more the crux of the issue, I think. I'm mostly familiar with
en.wiki, but on there the definition swings pretty far to the opposite
extreme, with a lot of content that is *not* Free for most practical
purposes. For example, a large number of our articles on 20th-century
artists cannot be legally republished in their home countries, or even
other English-speaking countries, without stripping the images, due to
the author having died less than 70 years ago. As a result, the
illustrated version of en.wiki is effectively Free only for *American*
reusers specifically; someone in the UK or Spain cannot legally
republish [[en:Pablo Picasso]].
One possible approach is certainly to choose a "representative" country
per language, and define freeness as only free in that country
specifically. So en.wiki's ambition is to be free only for Americans.
Perhaps es.wiki's goal will be to be free for Spaniards, and/or
Argentinians. de.wiki will be focused on freeness for Germans. etc. I
think that would be... suboptimal, though.
-Mark
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