Subject: Re: The NetBSD Logo at Wikipedia
To: Hubert Feyrer <hubertf@NetBSD.org>
From: Christian Hattemer <c.hattemer@arcor.de>
List: netbsd-advocacy
Date: 02/22/2006 12:00:58
Hello Hubert,

On 22.02.06, you wrote:

> To my understanding, #2.1 ("Non-commercial use") applies for Wikipedia 
> (unless I've missed something substantial :), and as such I don't think 
> there's a problem.

Yes, that part would be fine. However there's also #2.2 about commercial use
and #4 forbidding modification.

The problem is that Wikipedia also requires these rights. It states (in
german, english licensing conditions are different): "Wikipedia will und
darf nur völlig freie Inhalte enthalten. Das heißt, jeder darf die Inhalte
der Wikipedia benutzen, weiterverbreiten und verändern, auch kommerziell."

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.

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

There are other images in Wikipedia with simmilarly unclear licences, but
it's probably only a matter of time until they are deleted.

Bye, Chris