Brianna Laugher wrote: > The suggestion was also made that Wikimedia should revisit its > restriction on NC material, and it was written down too, although I > think I was thinking the same thing as every other Wikimedian in the > room...
For Wikimedia I think the lack of non-commercial material is relatively arbitrary. For open source software development, developers have it in their interests to allow commercial use since they usually end up getting paid by the companies that use their free software. And for the GLAM sector, a non-commercial restriction makes sense because they want to encourage dissemination in the cultural sphere, while recovering some costs from the commercial sphere, which is more able to afford it and has a sense of reciprocity or corporate social responsibility. Wikimedia's justifications seem weaker to me. We say that commercial dissemination will aid our mission, but so far, such commercial use has been underdeveloped. The only kind of commercial reuse that is fully developed is the thousands of out-of-date mirrors run by SEO professionals, who make little contribution to our wider goals. But I think there is a value in consistency. Now that we have this vast encyclopedia illustrated with images that are free for commercial use, it would be a pity to destroy that potential benefit by adding a handful of images that are non-commercial only, with commercial use to be negotiated directly with the institution. That would create a landmine for commercial reusers and would discourage them disproportionately. So I think we should continue to negotiate with our content sources to have them release their content without a non-commercial restriction. And I think we should try to be more effective at encouraging commercial use which supports their goals and ours, so that we have a better answer to the question when it inevitably comes up. -- Tim Starling _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
