Commons:License Migration Task Force/Licensing change by uploader

In accordance with the Licensing update and associated WMF Board Resolution, Wikimedia projects will be exercising its rights under GFDL 1.3 to dual license existing GFDL content — text and images — under CC-BY-SA 3.0 (Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0) starting June 15th, 2009.

What it means to you

Images already uploaded with dual-licensing (GFDL + CC-BY-SA) will not be modified. Any images that are licensed under GFDL 1.3, or any earlier GFDL version with an "or later versions" clause will be switched over. If you have uploaded images which falls into this category, you can wait for a bot to complete the task automatically.

However, there are over 14,000 images in Commons alone (and some others that remain in local projects) which are licensed with GFDL 1.2-only and we need your help! If you have uploaded images with GFDL 1.2-only, please consider update and dual-license them.

Why should I dual-license/switch the license on the image?

• The Creative Commons licenses are used by hundreds of thousands of authors world-wide, having quickly become the most widely used legal tool to release rights on works other than software. This interoperability barrier with other non-profit organizations and online communities who share knowledge freely is therefore counter to Wikimedia's mission.
• The GFDL includes some potentially onerous provisions, such as the requirement to include the full license text with each copy. These requirements impede re-use of both text and multimedia (spoken or printed versions of articles, prints of images, etc.). Wikimedia is committed to the widest possible dissemination of free knowledge. While our terms of use have always allowed for lower barriers to re-use, their inconsistency with the license text leads to fear, uncertainty, and doubt about what is legal and what is not. It advantages those re-users who can afford legal advice and research over those who cannot. This is counter to Wikimedia's mission.

How can I help?

Switching/dual-licensing is easy. Simply go to the GFDL 1.2-only images that you uploaded and replace {{GFDL-1.2}} with:

1. {{GFDL-1.3}} or
2. {{GFDL-1.3}} and {{CC-BY-SA-3.0}}