Bangladesh Air Force releases photographs under open licence for Wikipedia

Bangladesh Air Force personnel in front of MiG-29. Photo by Bangladesh Air Force; licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0..

Bangladesh Air Force has released all photographs on their official website under 'Gallery' category for use in Wikimedia projects under "Creative Commons Attribution - Share Alike 4.0" (CC BY-SA 4.0) international license. These valuable photographs can now be used to enrich the open knowledge repositories including Wikipedia articles on Bangladesh Air Force and Bangladesh Armed Forces in general, under this licence. So far, 341 photographs have been uploaded on Wikimedia Commons. Among these photographs are very rare and historic ones, such as those taken during the formation of Bangladesh Air Force i.e. the 'Kilo Flight', photograph of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman with the personnel of Bangladesh Air Force and photographs of aircrafts that are used by the Air Force. These photographs have already been used in different Wikipedia articles.

Bangladesh Air Force personnel with Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Photo by Bangladesh Air Force; licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0..

It's worth mentioning that, in different countries, photographs from government institutions are available under public domain licence. So, Wikipedia articles regarding these countries can be easily enriched using those photographs. However, photographs of Bangladesh Government are not available under that licence. As a result, scarcity of quality photographs is often felt while improving Bangladesh related Wikipedia articles. Information rich good quality articles lack proper illustration because of unavailability of necessary photographs under open licence. Wikimedia Bangladesh has been requesting different institutions to release their photographs under open licence from time to time. As part of that effort, Bangladesh Air Force was requested to release their photographs under Creative Commons licence.

Bangladesh Air Force personnel with The Honourable PM Sheikh Hasina. Photo by Bangladesh Air Force; licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0..