keyboard layout image license

[Simon McVittie]

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On Sun, 14 Oct 2007 at 11:43:48 -0400, Ed Trager wrote:
> Based on my understanding of a recent discussion I had with licensing
> experts at the institution where I currently work (USA),  LGPLv2 or
> Apache or other software licenses which Albert mentioned are not
> applicable to a visual image work.  A Creative Commons license is what
> we want.  Public Domain is not recommended.
> 
> Bundling or including CC-licensed image artwork in a software package
> is of course allowed so long as you state the license and provide
> attribution, so I see no need for "multi-licensing" under LGPL or
> Apache or whatever.

If the artwork is bundled in a software package, you should be aware
that that software package will not be allowed into Debian, or other
distributions that use the Debian Free Software Guidelines (on which the
Open Source Definition is based - so these are quite influential
guidelines!), unless the artwork is removed.

Debian's criticisms of the Creative Commons Attribution license (and
derivatives) as a Free Software license can be found here:
http://people.debian.org/~evan/ccsummary.html

I must admit, I can't see why images of keyboard layouts need to be
protected by copyright. A very simple permissive non-copyleft license
like the Expat (MIT/X11) license would seem more appropriate, if placing them
in the public domain is problematic.

It's also a bad idea to recommend "a Creative Commons license" without
explicitly specifying which one, since the CC licenses range from CC-BY
(clearly intended to be a permissive non-copyleft Free Software license,
although it has the issues I linked above) to CC-NC-ND (clearly incompatible
with the aims of the free software movement in that it denies permission for
commercial use and derivative works).

	Simon
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