On Sun, Aug 2, 2020 at 3:52 PM Samuel Klein <meta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't think we should mix NC with free-knowledge licenses . > I do absolutely think we should maintain an archive, visible to the public > with at most a simple hoop to jump through, of material that is offered to > us in any legal way but not yet free. Such an archive would _unavoidably_ "mix NC with free-knowledge licenses" -- because all collaborative and transformative work happening in the archive itself would be released under free knowledge licenses. Worse, any meaningful transformations of the archived works would result in derivative works that remain nonfree, directly enlisting volunteers in the creation of nonfree knowledge. In any event, why create an archive for works under borderline terms, while ignoring more restricted works that could be plausibly released under a free license tomorrow? Works that are nonfree for simple economic reasons (e.g., some old but useful textbook) may often be easier to "set free" than those which are nonfree for reasons of longstanding policy (e.g, the WHO example). Why amass the latter and ignore the former? I don't see how this would strengthen Wikimedia's free knowledge commitment, but I can easily see how it could weaken it considerably and very quickly, whether or not that's the intent. To be clear, I think creating free summaries and descriptions of nonfree works (from traditional textbooks and scientific papers to Khan Academy videos) is very much in line with the Wikimedia mission. I don't think it requires hosting the works. To the extent that there is concern about losing access to works that are currently available via public URLs, the use of Internet Archive enabled citation URLs provides a great example for how to avoid such link rot. I'm sure there are also plenty of tech and non-tech ways Wikimedia could support volunteers and chapters that work on outreach to set more educational works free, none of which require the creation of a nonfree archive. Warmly, Erik _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
