Commons talk:First steps/License selection

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I am going nuts trying to figure out license options. There is too much information and too many links to this page and that for a beginner. The IRC chat was not helpful. Two long waits and no response.

I want to upload a chapter from a medical text book that the author and publisher are giving me permission to use. The choice of licenses and links to license are conflicting. The only adopter who indicates experience with copyright is on vacation.

There is a note that multiple licenses can be used. Need help to understand how that applies.

LadyP

You simply need to ask the publisher and the author on which of the free licenses they are willing to publish this chapter. Most appropriate would by {{CC-BY-SA}} or {{GFDL}} (or both). You cannot decide for them. --Nux (talk··dyskusja) 11:55, 5 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How can this page be improved?

To those of you who have had trouble with understanding licenses, or those that just have a good idea for the page: how can it be improved? Which parts need to be clarified or augmented? Lucis 03:12, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I'll try. The fact that I know nothing at all about the subject doesn't help. And it may not be this page that needs improving, there are several pages here giving information about licences.

I get the impression that when we do an upload, we are encouraged to specify two types of licence. One type (I am guessing) is more liberal and covers how the material can be used within Wikipedia. The other type can be more restrictive and covers what can be done with it by people who copy it from Wikipedia. This page gives a list of possible type-2 licences, with links to descriptions of how they work.

Four things that would be useful:

  • Something that either confirms, or (more likely) clearly contradicts, my description above about the two types of licence.
  • A list of the more plausible type-1 licences, a statement of their order of restrictiveness, and descriptions of what they mean.
  • Ditto for the more plausible type-2 licences.
  • An account of how, once we have chosen a licence of each type, we can specify our choice when we do an upload. (This seems to have got easier: the list in the list box of the upload form now looks like it handles double licences, but it didn't a few days ago. My thanks to whoever made that change.)

I will add that the licensing fog almost deterred me from uploading anything at all. Maproom 21:07, 11 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

First, let me clarify what this website is. Wikimedia Commons is a central hub of free media for all Wikimedia projects, not just Wikipedia. While images can be uploaded to specific projects, files uploaded to the French Wikipedia, for example, cannot be used on the English Wikiquote; Commons is an attempt to make sharing media between projects easier. An important thing that sets Commons apart from Wikipedia is that only free media can be uploaded here. By free I mean free to use, free to distribute. Most images online are copyright with the author holding all rights to his/her creation. These cannot be uploaded to Commons (though they may be uploaded to specific language versions of Wikipedia under a fair use rationale, which is hairy business). Content owners have the right to license their media in any way they see fit. Options include public domain in which all rights are released, the Creative Commons licenses which offer varying degrees of restrictions, the GFDL, etc. I cannot write with in-depth knowledge of each license, but choosing the recommended multi-license GFDL and CC-BY-SA is a great choice. Multi-licensing allows more flexible usage, though it isn't required. I hope this helps, and I will try to describe each license with more detail. Lucis 04:21, 12 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the explanation. I had completely overlooked the distinction between Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. I also see that there is another set of problems for someone who has "found" an image and wants to put it on Wikimedia Commons. My confusion was merely about choosing a licence/set of licences when uploading images whose rights I own. I can see that you have quite some task ahead of you if you aim to provide all the information that various people are likely to need, in such a way that they are likely to find and understand it. Maproom 10:45, 13 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a point I definitely find confusing (though I have stopped caring about it). When we choose a licence, almost all the choices offered have "GFDL" in them. According to wikipedia, "the GFDL was designed for manuals, textbooks, other reference and instructional materials, and documentation which often accompanies GNU software. However, it can be used for any text-based work, regardless of subject matter". Doumentation/text, not images, right? Yet the assumption here seems to be that people will be uploading images, not documentation, and if I click on "Random File", it seems that everything here is in fact an image. Maproom 13:16, 21 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The GNU GFDL applies to images as well. Honestly, it doesn't matter much to Wikimedia Commons which license you choose. All of them are acceptable. Some require different things, but they all allow more freedom than "All rights reserved". So don't be afraid to just pick a license at random, they're all good. ;) Lucis 02:36, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've expanded the page a bit and added a table with explanations for various jargon words. Tell me what you think. Lucis 14:57, 23 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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