Archive:Should we permit or disallow commercial use of CZ-originated articles?

Policy argument summary started March 23, 2007

The issue explained neutrally

At issue is the question whether entities may use (some of) our articles, under our standard license, for commercial purposes. There is no question that we do and will always permit noncommercial use of our content.

More particularly, should we use CC-by-nc, on the one hand, or CC-by-sa or GFDL, on the other, for articles that are not required to be licensed otherwise? For those articles that began life on Wikipedia, we are required to use the GFDL. For articles that make no use of Wikipedia content, we need not use the GFDL.

Affirmative: permit commercial use

Argument: Commercial use permits maximum distribution of content.

Elaborate the argument here.

Reply: The Citizendium website is maximum distribution.

Elaborate the reply here.

Argument: A noncommercial license is incompatible with Wikipedia.

Elaborate the argument here.

Reply: There's no good reason to prefer to let Wikipedia use our articles.

Elaborate the reply here.

Negative: disallow commercial use

Argument: Commercial use would permit people to profit on the backs of volunteers.

Elaborate the argument here.

Reply: There is nothing wrong with commercial use.

Elaborate the reply here.

Argument: If contributors share copyright, the Citizendium Foundation could relicense articles commercially.

Elaborate the argument here.

Reply 1: Then the Citizendium Foundation, too, is profiting on the backs of volunteers.

Elaborate the reply here.