Wikipedia:Image license migration

The licensing update will move Wikipedia from licensed under the GFDL to dual licensed under GFDL plus Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0.

As a part of this transition, any images licensed under the GFDL and meeting certain conditions described below may also be dual licensed. This will be accomplished in several waves. Initially, an announcement template will be added to each GFDL tag highlighting this change and linking to this page to explain the conditions. Following this, all existing GFDL images will be sorted both by bots and by humans to separate the ones we can relicense from the ones we can't. It is hoped that of the 200,000 GFDL images on Wikipedia, approximately 90–95% can be sorted by automated processes, though we will still need your help in evaluating the remainder.

Media file relicensing criteria
To be eligible for relicensing, a file must meet the following conditions (set out in GFDL 1.3, section 11):


 * 1) Must be licensed under the GFDL 1.3 (including e.g. "GFDL 1.2 or any later version", but not including "GFDL 1.2 only").
 * 2) Must not be marked as having any "cover texts" or "invariant sections".
 * 3) Must have been uploaded to Wikipedia or to some other Wikimedia project before August 1, 2009.
 * 4) If first published under the GFDL somewhere other than a Wikimedia project, must have been uploaded to Wikipedia or to some other Wikimedia project before November 1, 2008.

Any file that meets these conditions may also be used under a Creative Commons cc-by-sa-3.0 license as of June 15, 2009.

Media relicensing process
In order to manage the media relicensing process, the license migration template system was created and embedded at the end of each GFDL tag. In addition, the GFDL tags were modified to accept a single parameter in the form of " " where   has one of the values described below and tells the license migration template what to do.

Note: the migration parameter may also be passed through the self multibox, e.g., and other GFDL templates such as gfdl-self.

Copyright holders
You are encouraged to dual license your content yourself. You can do this at any time either by:
 * adding a cc-by-sa-3.0 tag to the image description and changing the GFDL tag to gfdl
 * OR
 * replacing the existing GFDL tag with gfdl which will automatically append a CC BY-SA tag immediately after the GFDL tag.

Note that even if you aren't the copyright holder, you are still welcome to evaluate images based on the criteria in the top section of this page and mark as relicensed where appropriate.

The opt-out provision
Out of respect for a small group of Wikimedia contributors who are strongly opposed to relicensing, and in recognition that media files uploaded after August 1st, 2009 would be allowed to be GFDL-only, the Foundation is allowing copyright holders of GFDL media to opt-out of relicensing if they explicitly request it. This provision exists at the discretion of the local community which may impose restrictions upon it (such as time limits on when the request can be made), or even prohibit the opt-out option. If someone chooses this option, the CC BY-SA template will not be added. This option is not encouraged by the Foundation as it limits the use and availability of free content.