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On Wed, 22 Feb 2006, Christian Hattemer wrote:
> The problem is that Wikipedia also requires these rights. It states (in
> german, english licensing conditions are different): "Wikipedia will und
> darf nur v=F6llig freie Inhalte enthalten. Das hei=DFt, jeder darf die In=
halte
> der Wikipedia benutzen, weiterverbreiten und ver=E4ndern, auch kommerziel=
l."

Yuck, "no!"
Just because you write about something doesn't give you a right to own it.
Even if you are Wikipedia or think this is a nice thought otherwise.

While I don't have a problem of Wikipedia taking the bits & bytes and=20
spreading them to their liking, this does not automatically unbind them=20
and third parties from the license, which does include #2.2 and #4 as you=
=20
point out.

As such, I'd say the license imposed by Wikipedia is not useful for=20
talking about works owned by others.


> For me this makes the logo license imcompatible with Wikipedia. It seems
> that the logo had to be relicensed as GFDL to comply with all this, which
> has not been done for good reasons.

Indeed.


> An option may be to declare the image as trivial work, so that the image
> itself has no copyright. Trademarks and further rights are no affected by
> this. For an example see
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:ARD_Corporate_Design-duet%21.jpg

I'm not convinced this works. As legal owner, The NetBSD Foundation is=20
interested in protecting its trademarks, which include the NetBSD logo.=20
Handing an image to Wikipedia and say "do what you want with it" would=20
strongly contradict this, and I doubt any other owner of comparable=20
intellectual property will do likewise, e.g. the owners of the ARD-logo=20
you quote.

If I'm missing something and there's some prior art that maintains both=20
NetBSD's and Wikipedia's interests, I'd be interested to hear about it.

Looking at the Coka-Cola page, they avoided the problem there by posting=20
pictures of the logo in some context. As a working solution, I'd say

  * add a link to the official logo at the bottom of the entry
  * find a picture (photography) of the logo, and ask the photographer
    if it's ok to include that (with all the IP handover Wikipedia.de
    demands). I didn't find one from a quick look, I only have this one
    with the old logo: http://www.feyrer.de/NetBSD/netbsd_hubertf1.jpg,
    and I'm not the photographer of it. (I don't know who made it)

Out of curiosity, what does the english license of Wikipedia state as=20
requirements, as you mention it's different from the german one?


  - Hubert
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