Usuario:Renacimiento//Sobre por que no aceptar licencias con restriccion no comercial

Esta es una nota que Anthere, una miembro elegida del directorio de la fundacion, escribio a un usuario acerca de la restriccion de subir imagenes con licencias que prohiban el uso comercial. Lo copio aqui como referencia.

I was told a couple of days ago that you were having a difficult time with the license of an image. I could not come and talk with you as I was away from Wikipedia for a couple of days. I see that you are no more discussing the issue and that you have not edited wikipedia for three days. I hope you are not too upset and have not decided to quit us. I tried to do google translation of the discussion, but google translation is quite bad :-)

Or you may have agreed that using a non commercial license is not a good idea.

I am aware that some editors do not want to work with a licence which authorize anyone to use their work and make money on it. This is quite natural.

However, it is *important* to allow reuse of images even for commercial reasons and this is why wipipedia policy authorize it.

I would like to tell you a little story

I just went to a meeting on sustainable development and new technologies. I wanted to meet with african people and see how we could help wikipedia be used (and be edited) in african countries. I met mostly people from Mali, Bénin, Burkina Faso, Sénégal - these countries are french speaking.

The people I met were politicians, or people working in public services, or entrepreneurs trying to get africa of the ground, or teachers or NGOs.

One of the NGO told me this : they recently made a software and installed it in many villages. Of course, they set the internet line as well. This software can be used by women, and does not require to know how to read. The women must register the weight of all kids in a village possibly once a month. The data is entered in the software thanks to little images (it uses tactile screen) and send by internet to one doctor, who can follow curves of the children weight. He can do so quickly, without needing to move from village to village, and can see which children are loosing weight. He can go visit only these children (a huge gain of time). Following the weight of children is a major indicator for children health. Since they use this software, children death has dropped by 50 % !

Such NGO also know this : in these villages, there are some people who know a lot about local medicine, plants, techniques. However, in these villages, there is not necessarily a young person who is ready to learn this medicine technique. They fear information will get lost. They would like the local "doctor" to enter their knowledge in a software, so that this knowledge can be redistributed in nearby villages, and not lost. They can redistribute it through computers with internet, or with cdroms, or with paper.

But nothing is entirely redistributed for free. Usually, they ask a firm to print the cdrom, and they distribute it for a very low price, or ask grants to lower the cost to the minimum. Still, as soon as someone print and distribute the information, this is a "commercial" activity.

The distributor may not make any benefit, or enough benefit for the firm to exist and ensure distribution, but it is still a "commercial" activity. This is possible if information can be distributed under such a license.

If the license restrict distribution, there will be less diffusion of the information. This is why we must stick to the largest licence type.

I hope you understand, even though I *know* that it is hard to think other people can make money on our work.

Incidently, during the meeting, I also met with a group working with Amazonia and some south american countries. I will explore any deal we could set with them, and if any thing can be done, since these countries are spanish speaking, I'll come back here ;-)

Hope you are fine and will succeed to understand a bit of what I wrote.

Anthere 08:57 5 feb, 2005 (CET)