Re: gnome-themes and licensing

[Josselin Mouette <joss debian org>]

Le mercredi 26 avril 2006 à 21:00 +0100, Thomas Wood a écrit :
> Josselin Mouette wrote:
> > Le samedi 15 avril 2006 à 13:16 +0100, Thomas Wood a écrit :
> >> Personally, I think it's understandable that artists may choose not to 
> >> distribute their work under the (L)GPL, which is primarily a license for 
> >> software. As long as the license they choose upholds the values of Free 
> >> Software, I don't see it as a problem. However, I know there have been 
> >> various lengthy discussions elsewhere about the status of the Creative 
> >> Commons licenses, so I would like to have some advice before continuing.
> > 
> > I think I would ask those people to wait for the 3.0 version of the
> > Creative Commons licenses, which promise to solve a number of small
> > issues[1] that were raised with 2.0 and which are still present in 2.5.
> 
> Do you happen to know if there is any time scale for 3.0? I'd really 
> like to get started on revamping gnome-themes, but I can't do it unless 
> I can distribute the themes under a more appropriate license. If it's 
> likely that a 3.0 CC license is not going to be available before 2.16, 
> are there any other licenses that might be suitable to meet the needs of 
> artists and distributors such as Debian?

According to [1], the CC 3.0 licenses should be available very soon.

People using the CC-BY license should consider using the BSD license
instead. Its wording isn't specific to software and it is perfectly
suitable for artwork.

For people looking for a copyleft license, things are more difficult.
The GPL isn't that bad for artwork only meant to be distributed
electronically, but artists generally don't like the "preferred form of
modification" wording of the GPL. There's also a "Free art license" [2]
which seems free but its wording isn't nice [3].

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2006/04/msg00161.html
[2] http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en/
[3] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/09/msg00131.html
-- 
 .''`.           Josselin Mouette        /\./\
: :' :           josselin mouette ens-lyon org
`. `'                        joss debian org
   `-  Debian GNU/Linux -- The power of freedom