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Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
- This essay was created on August 2, 2008, by Amire80 and has been edited by 51 other editors since that time. You may edit it, but please edit at the essay's original location, Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia. It contains the advice and opinions of 52 Wikipedia contributors and has been translated into 12 languages. It is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.
This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia is "free" as in " free culture ", not necessarily "free beer" and "free speech". |
The subtitle of Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.
The main meaning of "Free"
The
The next important dictionary to be published was an English–French one by John (or Jehan) Palsgrave in 1530 [...] and a letter has survived showing that he arranged with his printer that no copy should be sold without his permission, lest his proffit by teaching the Frenche tonge myght be mynished by the sale of the same to suche persons as, besids hym, wern disposed to studye the sayd tongue.
— "dictionary". Britannica Online Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2008-10-20.
The English word "free" has several meanings. The word "Free" in "The Free Encyclopedia" refers first and foremost to the licensing terms of Wikipedia's content. Text is contributed to Wikipedia under the terms of the
The goal of such licensing is producing reference material free to all people—a collection of human knowledge, which cannot be limited or controlled by restrictive use of
Uploading to Wikipedia of information whose copyright terms are not compatible with CC-BY-SA or GFDL is not allowed. If uploaded, such data will be promptly deleted. The only exception to this is that the English Wikipedia allows limited uploading of some images and media files under "fair use" terms; see Wikipedia:Non-free content for details. Wikipedias in some other languages, for example Spanish, do not allow "fair use" content at all and include nothing but free content.
The other meanings of "Free"
Some people misunderstand the subtitle "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit", often because of the different meanings of the word "free" in the English language. Wikipedia's co-founder Jimmy Wales said the following about the ambiguity of the English word "free":
[W]e probably run into the problem of the word 'free' in English, which means both "gratis" (free of charge) and "libre" (liberty). We mean primarily the 2nd meaning, but it will depend on the particular language as to whether "libre access" is a concept which can be smoothly expressed. Since we also mean "gratis" as a secondary meaning, that can be used.
Some of these meanings happen to apply to Wikipedia in whole or in part, but they do not necessarily reflect the intention of Wikipedia's existence and must be precisely understood.
"Free Encyclopedia" does not mean "zero price encyclopedia"
In practice, any person who has access to the World Wide Web may read the content of Wikipedia on the website wikipedia.org without paying any money. This, however, does not mean that Wikipedia content is fully non-commercial. Copies of Wikipedia content can be sold. The CC-BY-SA and GFDL licenses allow charging money for distributing content that they cover. Indeed, parts of Wikipedia were copied to optical media (such as DVD) and printed on paper, and these copies were distributed for money.
Furthermore, it is forbidden to upload to Wikipedia any content whose copyright terms allow only non-commercial use, as this is not compatible with the meaning of "free" as defined by CC-BY-SA and GFDL.
"Free Encyclopedia" does not mean "anyone can edit it however they like"
"An encyclopedia that anyone can edit" does not refer to the legal or ethical
"Free Encyclopedia" does not necessarily refer to "Free Speech"
A common definition of
See also
- Wikipedia:Free encyclopedia
- About Wikipedia
- What Wikipedia is not
- Copyrights in Wikipedia
- Wikipedia:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License – the legal license as it applies to Wikipedia
- GNU Free Documentation License, an encyclopedic article about the history of the license and the related movements of Free software and Free content
- Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks
External links
- The Free Software Definition by the Free Software Foundation
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