Re: Applying the GPL to Artwork

[Thomas Wood <thos gnome org>]

On Fri, 2008-04-25 at 10:32 +0200, Stephan Arts wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 9:41 AM, Thomas Wood <thos gnome org> wrote:
[...]
> >  I think Jakub tried to clear this up. Basically, I was trying to say if
> >  your non-GPL application references an icon that is clearly from a GPL
> >  theme without providing the icon itself, then this could be considered a
> >  violation. I could argue that using any gnome-* icon name indicates a
> >  reliance on the GNOME icon theme, which is GPL (almost all themes use
> >  this as a fallback).
> >
> >  Does this make sense?
> 
> Not at all, if the icon is bundled with the software, then yes.
> 
> But there is no way any developer can figure out if the icon-theme in
> question is GPL-ed or not. And calling the use of an icon-name (a
> convention to make sure the same 'type' of icon is used across
> applications) a violation of the GPL?!
> 
> That's rediculous.


Well, I'm quite happy to scrap that idea if it's what people want.
However, I believe the gnome-* convention is only specified in Nautilus
source code, which is GPL. So either way, if you specify a gnome-* icon
name in your non-GPL application and don't supply a non-GPL icon, it
seems fairly obvious you have copied some GPL code to get it to work?

I believe this is similar to the dynamic linking argument in software
and the GPL[1].

Regards,

Thomas

[1] Of which there is a short description in the first paragraph here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#The_GPL_in_court