Wikimedia adopts Creative Commons

By Stephen Withers
Friday, 22 May 2009 11:49

Opinion and Analysis

Wikimedia has changed the terms under which the content from Wikipedia and other projects can be used.

Since its inception, Wikimedia has allowed the reuse of its content under the GNU Free Documentation Licence, as that was one of the few standardised licences allowing reuse and redistribution.

It wasn't ideal, but it was arguably the best choice at the time.

The year after Wikipedia kicked off, the Creative Commons licences were established, and provided just the sort of rights that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales had in mind.

A growing amount of content - such as texts, photographs, podcasts and other recordings - has been released under Creative Commons licences.

These licences range from 'Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives' (which basically means the material can only be given away in its original form) to 'Attribution' (which allows reuse of any part of the content, even for commercial purposes, providing it is credited appropriately).

Wikipedia has adopted the 'Attribution Share Alike' version of the licence. According to Creative Commons, "This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use."

The change of licence was enacted by a Wikimedia Foundation board meeting, following a community ballot in which more than 17,000 votes were cast. 88 percent of votes expressing an opinion favoured the change.

What did the Wikimedia chair and the Creative Commons founder have to say about the change? Find out on page 2.