User:MGA73/GFDL

Restricting GFDL-licensed uploads

Why GFDL is impractical for visual media

This is a proposal to make some restrictions on uploading new files licensed {{GFDL}}-only.

GFDL was originally designed for software manuals and it is not good for media because it makes it difficult to re-use the material (see comic to the right). Motivated by the the wish of making it easier to re-use files in compliance with the world-wide wiki-vision the Wikimedia Foundation Board decided in 2009 to stop using GFDL as a sole license while allowing importation of text without the GFDL license. The Wikimedia Foundation Board did not forbid GFDL for media files but encourages people to use licenses other than GFDL, for example CC licenses.

The Wikimedia Foundation Board explicitly mentioned that each wiki could restrict the use of GFDL. The English Wikipedia has removed GFDL from MediaWiki:Licenses and MediaWiki:Licenses/en-ownwork but it is still possible for users to add it manually.

In September 2018 is was suggested to deprecate the GFDL license but at the time no consensus could be formed to limit GFDL on the English Wikipedia.

Some of the arguments against the restrictions were:

1. We have a lot of non-free files so why should we not allow GFDL?
2. If we find media that is licensed GFDL we won't be able to copy it to Wikipedia.

Re 1) The idea of a wiki is to share knowledge freely. That is the reason we have Wikipedia! Non-free content is an exception per the licensing policy. It is something a community may decide to have (not must) but the use must be minimal. So while we have non-free files that is not a reason to allow anyone to license their uploads with a license that isn't quite in the spirit of sharing free knowledge. We also don't allow CC BY-NC or CC BY-ND.

Re 2) Technically true, but the use of GFDL for media files is virtually (if not completely) nonexistent outside Wikimedia. When files are uploaded as GFDL in 2021 it is either because it is a copy or a derivative of another file from another wiki-project or because the uploader has specifically chosen to use GFDL.

Several projects already have restricted the use of GFDL, for example Japanese Wikipedia, Commons and Wikivoyage. Other projects are likely waiting to see what English Wikipedia does.

The suggestion is this:

GFDL is not permitted as the only acceptable license where all of the following are true:

• The content was licensed on or after 1 July 2021. The licensing date is considered, not the creation or upload date.
• The content is primarily a photograph, painting, drawing, audio or video.
• The content is not a software logo, diagram or screenshot that is extracted from GFDL software or a GFDL software manual.

The above does not restrict non-free usage of content. If a work that is not a derivative work with a GFDL license is used under a non-free rationale, it doesn't have to be scaled down but other non-free limitations will still apply. The theoretical possibility of future GFDL-licensed content that would be eligible for non-free inclusion has been brought up as an argument in the past and this is a compromise that will hopefully mitigate that.

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