So Encyclopedia Britannica sucks in the
Wikipedia contents, locks them up and
improves upon them. Does that hurt me in
any way? Or anybody else for that matter?
I still have precisely the same amount of
freedom I had before they decided to to that.
Wikipedia is still free. If anything, I benefit
because more people get to read my material
and I get to read Britannica's improvements.
Axel
At that point the /only/ thing you would be able to do is just read
Britannica's improvements.
Without the protections of the GNU FDL you would not be able to improve on
their improvements. Thus Britannica improves and Wikipedia doesn't - the
positive feedback cycle ends with the imprisonment of a version of the
content.
Thanks to the GNU FDL the content always improves and is always free.
Britannica is more than welcome to incorporate our content but any changes
they make would have to be licensed under the GNU FDL. Thus that gives us the
/freedom/ to improve upon their improvements. Default copyright forbids them
to use the content at all and the public domain only grants freedom in one
direction.
I for one would not contribute to Wikipedia if it were in the public domain.
--mav
WikiKarma:
The usual at [[February 25]]