MediaWiki talk:Licenses/ownwork

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Recommendation[edit]

Just a question, why do we recommend copylefting images? -- Bryan (talk to me) 14:15, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean, why do we recommend "GFDL|cc-by-sa-2.5,2.0,1.0" in particular? since GFDL and CC-BY-SA be themselves would be copyleft...
I think we just put this because there is disagreement about which is the better copyleft license, and dual-licensing saves that argument. The earlier versions of CC-BY-SA are necessary because those versions didn't automatically allow for any later version of the license as well. or something like that. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 00:31, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No, I was wondering why we recommend users to li8cense their images under copyleft licenses, instead of attribution only or public domain. We shouldn't recommend them anything, should we? -- Bryan (talk to me) 08:24, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
When the usability of our wikis was studied uploading was singled out as the hardest task. The hardest part of uploading was getting the images included in articles, but selecting a license was also cited as being confusing and difficult The recommendation was made to remove all mention of licensing.. duh.. well we can't do that. So, alternatively, it is best from an ease perspective to provide a single clear recommendation. Since the license grant is not really reversible we wouldn't be being fair to uploaders if we took advantage of their inexperience by suggesting they use the most permissive licensing possible. With that in mind it would probably make sense to ask them to just release as cc-by-sa-2.0 (2.0 because with 2.5 loses attribution if their content is uploaded to a site which revokes it via their terms of service). Then once the user gains experience they can add more permissive releases if they wish... But even with cc-by-sa, their works are license incompatible with GFDL works, so true derivatives combining them can't be legally created if someone really cares about the licenses. Since the GFDL is even more restrictive than the cc-by-sa (mostly as a side effect of being more focused on pure educational works like documentation than on content more generally) I wouldn't expect anyone willing to release under cc-by-sa to reject releasing under the FDL except with the intention of creating a gratuitous incompatibility. ... so we end up with the recommendation. If you'd like to go around encouraging folks to choose more permissive grants I'd see nothing wrong with that, but I think having a single clear recommendation which isn't more permissive than our minimum requirements is important.--Gmaxwell 06:01, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, I now understand why we recommend copyleft. -- Bryan (talk to me) 16:15, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Also, attribution-only and public domain material can become unfree further down the line, because they don't have this "share alike" "viral" restriction. That's the clause that keeps open source going, and will keep open content going too, IMO. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 02:26, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

german translation[edit]

  • Ideale Lösungen
    • self|GFDL|cc-by-sa-2.5,2.0,1.0|Eigenes Werk, Copyleft (Mehrfachlizenzierung GFDL, jegliche CC-BY-SA)
    • PD-self|Eigenes Werk, jegliche Rechte abgegeben (gemeinfrei oder GFDL für den Fall, dass die Gemeinfreigabe ungültig ist)
  • Bessere Lösungen (Mehrfachlizenzierung)
    • self|GFDL|cc-by-sa-2.5|Eigenes Werk, Copyleft (GFDL, CC-BY-SA-2.5)
    • self|GFDL|FAL|Eigenes Werk, Copyleft (GFDL, Free Art License)
    • self|GFDL|cc-by-2.5|Eigenes Werk, Namensnennung (GFDL, CC-BY 2.5)
  • Gute Lösungen (Einzellizenz)
    • self|GFDL|Eigenes Werk, Copyleft, Namensnennung (GFDL)

there it is...[edit]

(much of it is not translatable, actually..)--Speck-Made 12:05, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

✓ Done -- Bryan (talk to me) 12:19, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"GFDL if the PD release is invalidated"[edit]

{{Editprotected}}

What's that about? {{Pd-self}} doesn't mention anything about the GFDL. Surely it should be something like "no restrictions", or just left out altogether. the wub "?!" 16:07, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done if the PD is invalid then GFDL takes over. For example in countries where PD is legally not allowed. --Steinninn ♨ 04:18, 3 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Then we do what it says on {{Pd-self}}: "I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law." which unlike GFDL, is functionally equivalent to the author's intentions. the wub "?!" 15:43, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please indent license selector to the left. Or shorten the length of longer entries[edit]

At the "my own work" upload page I can't read all the options in the dropdown license selector. Some of the options extend past the right side of the screen and there is no way to scroll to the right to read those options. My monitor resolution is currently at 1024 by 768 pixels.

Maybe the license selector can be indented to the left. Since it is also the most important part of the form it might help to make it stand out this way.

Or maybe the long entries in the list could be shortened. Please see also:

Or best of all maybe the menu could be made to drop down to the left instead of to the right as it does now. --Timeshifter 08:14, 11 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like the problem has been resolved. The longer dropdown menu entries have been shortened. See the discussion here:
MediaWiki talk:Uploadtext/ownwork#License selector needs to be indented to the left --Timeshifter (talk) 00:27, 14 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

GFDL should not be included in the recommended license[edit]

GFDL is a really bad license for photos, audio and video. I think there is no good reason to add GFDL to new uploads. It only makes things more complicated.

I therefore suggest that we remove GFDL from the suggested licenses. At least we could one of the licenses without GFDL the "(recommended)"

If someone really really want to add GFDL they can add it manually. But I doubt that any re-user will ever chose GFDL if there are other options. --MGA73 (talk) 11:56, 15 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@MGA73: Can you explain what is made more complicated if I allow my works to be used under GFDL in addition to CC BY-SA 4.0? --bjh21 (talk) 20:08, 15 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Bjh21: Hi! The GFDL template is very complex because of the license migration and files still show up in Category:License migration candidates and Category:License migration needs review. I have tried to empty it for more than 10 years now. I think the best way to minimize the problem is to stop adding GFDL on Commons and all Wikipedias and other Wiki-projects. Wiki-projects often look to Commons so we should lead the way.
If you license your works under {{Cc-by-sa-4.0}} then there is no chance that anyone would ever want to use your works under {{GFDL}}.
My question could also be why don't we recommend a combination of licenses like {{Artistic}}, {{DSL}} and {{Flora License}} with cc-by-sa version 1.0, 2.5 and 4.0 but not 2.0 and 3.0? If I suggested that I'm sure that everyone would agree that it was just silly on useless. We also have {{WTFPL}} (The "Do What the Fuck You Want To Public License") and I'm sure I could think of some crazy and useless licenses to add along with Cc-zero or another good license: For example "The old shoe license: You may use my works freely if you eat one of your old shoes" or "The holy Klingon: You may use my works freely if you translate the holy bible to Klingon and read it backwards". Even if that could be funny it would probably never be used and it would only confuse re-users.
The only reason we have GFDL is because of historical reasons. GFDL was a good license when it was invented but it should have been killed 15 years ago. --MGA73 (talk) 20:47, 15 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@MGA73: As far as I can see, new uploads using the recommended multi-licence ({{self|cc-by-sa-4.0|GFDL}}) will end up in Category:License migration redundant, so they don't contribute to the backlog in the two categories you mention. Having just reviewed a few of them, it seems that the vast majority are imports from other Wikimedia sites, mostly uploaded over a decade ago, so they wouldn't be affected by a change to our licensing recommendations. So I don't think you've demonstrated an actual difficulty caused by the current recommendation.
An obvious reason why someone might want to use a work under GFDL is to combine it with another GFDL work. We have quite a lot of GFDL-only files, and as far as I know GFDL is not compatible with any CC BY-SA licence, so by allowing both I allow my work to be combined with both GFDL-only and CC-BY-SA-only works.
As for why we don't recommend ridiculous combinations of licenses, I think you've answered that yourself: "it would probably never be used and it would only confuse re-users". --bjh21 (talk) 22:58, 15 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Bjh21: Yes I agree they should end up there and license migration should be over 10 years ago. Since many GFDL files have been migrated to also include Cc-by-sa-3.0 then I do not thing the actual number of GFDL only files is that high. Anyway I just do not see the point of recommending GFDL anymore. I can only hope other users agree :-) --MGA73 (talk) 06:34, 16 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Bjh21: (and anyone else of course) There are 60 million files on Commons and 5 million are licensed GFDL (Category:GFDL).

Many of those are also licensed with cc-by or cc-by-sa version 3.0 or 4.0. I tried to find out via petscan how many are GFDL only but it did not work. Perhaps because there are so many files on Commons.

You can’t just use the numbers in Category:License migration because it is a mess. So some files are for example added in "Not eligible" when they should have been in "Redundant"

For example 4.3 million files are marked as redundant (Category:License migration redundant). It means that relicense is not needed because the file have a cc-license version 3 or 4 added by the uploader or because of the license migration. And 0.6 million have license migration complete so 5 million minus 4.3 million minus 0.6 million = 0.1 million. So you would expect that the 0.6 million is the total number of files that was migrated but the number of migrated files are 1.3 million according to Category:CC-BY-SA-3.0-migrated and 0.1 in Category:CC-BY-SA-3.0-migrated-with-disclaimers.

If we instead look at the number of files in Category:License migration candidates‎, Category:License migration needs review‎, Category:License migration not eligible‎ and Category:License migration opt-out‎ it is about 0.1 million and that is the number of all files that could not be license migrated.

Out of the 0.1 million files some are either eligible for a relicense or they already have a good cc-license but is marked with "Not eligible" when they should have been in "Redundant". But until we can get the number from petscan or otherwise lets just say 0.1 million files.

So what we are talking about what if someone wants to reuse one of 0.1 million files and wants to combine it with a newly uploaded file? I do not think it will happen very often. --MGA73 (talk) 11:51, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@MGA73: Assuming your numbers are correct, you've demonstrated that your proposal will cause only a small amount of harm. I don't think you've yet demonstrated any benefit that will come from it, though, so it still seems to be on balance negative. --bjh21 (talk) 14:56, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Bjh21: yeah I think most ppl don't care about the license migration. Well perhaps in another 10 years I will have made some progress lol. --MGA73 (talk) 15:39, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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