Talk:FAQ

Logos

re: What about logos? Why do all open source free content-supportive organisations currently have copyrighted logos?

To my mind, the "main" or "proper" use of a trademark is to enable to "customer" to know who he is dealing with. Allowing a free for all use of trademarks and logos would negate these benefits to the customers" (I will try and word this better later.

I have pondered recently the possibility of dual trademarks, one freely usable and one protected. Text versus graphic or logo based. So if you forked project foo, you could still call yours foo, but you would need to develop a new logo or graphical trademark.

Does anyone see any merit to this idea at all? --Zotz 01:23, 10 May 2006 (CEST)

I have added a few paragraphs in the FAQ itself. I hope nobody minds. Also, I apologize for the likely English mistakes in those additions! --Antoine 04:23, 10 May 2006 (CEST)

How Will People Make Money?

There are two logical errors in the argument that Freedom prevents people making their fortunes like they all do under proprietary culture. :-)

The first is that very few people make any money under proprietary culture. Even relatively well-known artists and musicians will not make a living off reproduction rights or sales of their work.

The second is that Freedom is more important than maximising profit for middlemen.

It is good to tackle the question of making money, but it is not good to concede the grounds of the debate to the middlemen whose usurous control of "content" is challenged by Freedom.

--Rob Myers 19:55, 14 June 2006 (CEST)

Some ways to make money: via knowledge services such as being paid to do translations, localisations, remixes, and other derived works, distribution (e.g. on alternative media to people without Internet access), packaging and selling collections of free resources and offering professional services (e.g. training and support) - all the resources and enhancements remain free/libre. [Kim Tucker 30 Oct 2006].

What about logos? Why do all open source free content-supportive organisations currently have copyrighted logos?

For the same reason the FSF think it's acceptible to have invariant sections in documentation: they think it serves their agenda, which is freedom within a particular domain. Software, not trademarks.

And they may have a point. Identity and reputation may be important, and may trump certain other freedoms. Trademarks should be covered by extensive Fair Use, which may require legal reform rather than licenses. There should also be a Free trademark license, just one copyleft one or perhaps a BSD-style one as well. But no NonCommercial or NoDerivs ones.

--Rob Myers 20:04, 14 June 2006 (CEST)

I too have commented on this above: trademark, used properly, should be for the protection of the "buyer" in the market. So that a person can know who they are dealing with. Please comment on the two trademark idea, one free which rides with the project, on not-free which rides with the developer group.

--Zotz 15:29, 05 Mar 2007 (CEST)

What about Logos? While it is true that Logos can, and ideally should, be free, the issue of identity need to be given serious thought. In this case I would envisage a Licence which AFAIK is very absent from the choice of pre-fab licences currently available. This would remove the freedom to use, but would allow the freedom to copy and modify. This might sound like a contradiction at first, but makes sense for the specific case of logos. Essentially it would allow you to use the logo in all the ways that a free Licence would, except as a logo identifying an activity other than that for which it was designed. If say, the CC logos where licensed in such a manner it would make the logo I designed Media:CC-BY-SA.svg acceptable (BTW, should those be removed from this site, or do they constitute fair use by way of a bad example). Whether such a theoretical Licence would be "free" is a matter for discussion. But, until using a free logo of a free project to pass off another project with different aims as one and the same becomes illegal under a "Digital Identity Theft Act (2097)" some form of protection will be needed. As unfortunate as it might sound Sometimes freedom is best served by restricting it (e.g. prison. Lets hope such measures are only temporary, even if long term.

This is not to say that the definitions logo should not be PD. The message sent by this choice is strong, and is wroth the risk of some confusion, when (rather then if) someone tries to use it for some pass of another project which is detrimental to our aims as this very project. BUT, I do think it would be counter-productive if this definition implied that ALL publicly visible content ought to be free, no matter what ones personal beliefs on the matter are. The freedom to do the "wrong" thing is an important freedom too (of course with the associated consequences)

(see also Talk:Definition#.22god-like_creators.22.3F)

--Inkwina 18:30, 14 May 2007 (CEST)

What about other kinds of commons, like grains, electromagnetic spectrum, genetic information ? They need a "freedom" definition, too.

See the Science Commons and the Open Knowledge Definition. But spectrum is different from grains (seed rights, which could do with a license) and genetics (which is basically data) as it is a limited resource.

Moral rights

The issue of moral rights has come up several times on Wikimedia Commons. Can somebody please add an FAQ entry to discuss whether and how much moral rights restrict freedom and what the effect on the ‘free’/‘not free’ status of a work is? —xyzzy_n from Commons 09:04, 19 April 2007 (CEST)

Broken link

I tried to click on the link to http://www.robmyers.org/weblog/2006/11/08/why-the-nc-permission-culture-simply-doesnt-work/ [1] but I got a "404 Not Found" error squawk. I also was not able to access (30-Jul-2008) the web site http://robmyers.org/ [2]; In fact, I googled [2], and the first "hit" was [2], but even the "cached" copy seemed to be a broken link. What is going on? (does my browser have the flu? It is Firefox 3.0.1). Thanks, Mike Schwartz 17:21, 30 July 2008 (EDT)

By the way, http://web.archive.org/ does have some copies of some info from http://www.robmyers.org/weblog/ , [see e.g. http://web.archive.org/web/20070630005855/http://www.robmyers.org/weblog/], but I was not able to find the content that the link called "[1]" above is supposed to be pointing to. Maybe User:Rob Myers could find it. Either it is not out there, or (INclusive or) I am an inept searcher... Mike Schwartz 17:26, 30 July 2008 (EDT)

Well, I did finally find a copy of the "de-reference"; it was in the google cache at http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:uauKh1wctwEJ:www.robmyers.org/weblog/2006/11/08/why-the-nc-permission-culture-simply-doesnt-work/+rob+myers+weblog+2006+11&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us ...however, since it might not stay there for long, I also "cached" it on my hard drive. Is there a place on the web, that would be better to link to? (than [1]?) cheers, Mike Schwartz 18:31, 30 July 2008 (EDT)

Attributing this definition

I notice the "who wrote this" queston is blank. Some of the authors and collaborators are listed at History, but I'm having a hard time citing this definition in an academic text - or rather, the authorship component. Normally, for a collaborative, wiki text, I will cite the site (ie Wikipedia, Meatball) - but what should I do here? Cormaggio 04:10, 21 November 2008 (EST)

Free Content and Expression Definition???

Is it on purpose that the original name of the definition ("Free Content and Expression") is still in use here ? Pierre M 20:23, 14 January 2009 (EST)

Who administers this site?

Okay the initiators of this site here are Benjamin Mako Hill and Erik Möller. It's important to know where this project stands. If it was created with the ideas of wikimedia and FSF in mind, why not go ahead and write it in the FAQ? -- The previous unsigned comment was made by Yamavu 01:15, 31 January 2009 (verify)

Hello, Yamavu. Currently I am the most active administrator here, but I am focused on technical maintenance (vandalisms, spam, test edits...) Nevertheless, the questions you raise do require the attention of the project founders and policy makers. Cheers, →Spiritia 07:27, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

How does the Definition compare with the Debian Free Software Guidelines?

The Debian project [in]famously takes freedom very seriously, and thus the Free Software Guidelines are quite strict.

How does the DFCW relate to the DFSG? Is it more strict, less strict, or incomparable? In other words: is a DFCW-free work necessarily DFSG-free, is a DFSG-free work necessarily DFCW-free, or are things more complicated (and if so, how)?