Hi,
I am very surprised to discover that three of the patterns Inkscape has included in the Fill and Stroke dialog are not public domain. The only way a user can see this is to look directly at the SVG content, either through a text editor or the XML Editor dialog. I think that this is going to create large scale violations of the licenses as the average user will have no idea that they are using licensed images.
Here are the effected patterns:
sand_bitmap: creative commons attribution old paint: creative commons attribution cloth bitmap: GFDL or CC Attribution ShareAlike
Tav
On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 11:02 AM, Tavmjong Bah <tavmjong@...8...> wrote:
I am very surprised to discover that three of the patterns Inkscape hasincluded in the Fill and Stroke dialog are not public domain.
These are the best I could find, and they are at least compatible with our own GPL for all I know. If you insert such a pattern into your document, it is inserted along with the comment which provides attribution, so I believe the license is satisfied. IANAL, of course.
What about the vector patterns in the same file? There's no special license on it, so one would assume that patterns.svg, as well as markers.svg etc., is covered by GPL as is the whole program. Should we relicense these files?
In any case, if you can replace these bitmaps with comparable public domain ones, please do.
On Tue, 2008-03-18 at 15:11 -0300, bulia byak wrote:
On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 11:02 AM, Tavmjong Bah <tavmjong@...8...> wrote:
I am very surprised to discover that three of the patterns Inkscape hasincluded in the Fill and Stroke dialog are not public domain.
These are the best I could find, and they are at least compatible with our own GPL for all I know. If you insert such a pattern into your document, it is inserted along with the comment which provides attribution, so I believe the license is satisfied. IANAL, of course.
What if I distribute a PNG? The attribution is lost. And in the case of the cloth bitmap, I am requited to make my artwork available under the same or similar license:
CC Attribution Share Alike: "If you alter, transform, or ->build<- upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one."
From the Inkscape interface, the user isn't going to be aware of these
conditions.
What about the vector patterns in the same file? There's no special license on it, so one would assume that patterns.svg, as well as markers.svg etc., is covered by GPL as is the whole program. Should we relicense these files?
The other patterns are generic enough that there shouldn't be any problem with copyright or licensing. IAANAL.
In any case, if you can replace these bitmaps with comparable public domain ones, please do.
I will add making new, public domain bitmaps, to my list of things to do... but it will be awhile.
Tav
participants (2)
-
bulia byak -
Tavmjong Bah