Creative Commons license for pictures

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Tue, 2005-09-27 at 18:28 +0200, Christian Jodar wrote:
> Thanks a lot Jeff. So definitely CC cannot be used.
> 
> Here the pictures have to be delivered with the software and not as a separate
> package.
> 
> >> So before trying to have pictures under Free Art licence instead of the CC
> >> one, I'd like to know if it will be OK then.
> >
> > Probably not.
> >
> >  From http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#OtherLicenses
> > ...
> > Free Art License
> >
> > This is a free and copyleft license meant for artistic works. It permits
> > commercial distribution, but any larger work including the copylefted
> > work must be free. Please don't use it for software or documentation,
> > since it is incompatible with the GNU GPL and with the GNU FDL.
> > ...
> 
> I don't want to use it for the software itself, but for pictures that are used
> by it.
You have to distinguish 2 types of licenses being applied
simultaneously:

1. The License on the "Art Work". 
This is the License on the "human interpretation of a pictures".

2. The License on the "Source Code".
This is the license on the source code, i.e. the files containing data.


To be able to ship an art work as part of a source package you must
comply to both types of licenses. AFAIU what the FSF says about the
"Free Artistic License", it fulfills "1" but does not fulfill "2".

Note they explicitly say: "... it is incompatible with the GNU GPL ..."

I.e. if you ship your sources under the GPL, and the "Art Work" under
the Free Artistic License, you are only licensing part of your sources
under the GPL.

You thereby cheat at developers who try to reuse your sources under the
GPL. They can't reuse the pictures you ship.

> I found a package in Extras that is in exactly the same situation:
> 
> http://cvs.fedora.redhat.com/viewcvs/rpms/torcs-data/FC-4/?root=extras
>
> In spec file, there is :
> 
> License: GPL and Free Art License
>
> They are the ones I want to use. So dual licensing seems to be acceptable. And
> Free Art license may be used.
> 
> I know that this is a data package for a software one. But the dual license
> applies to torcs-data only, not to torcs + torcs-data.
I am not familiar with this package, but somebody with deep legal
background should have a deep look into it. To me, this looks like a
very problematic situation.

One possibility I can imagine for this to work, is shipping the data
separately from the program's sources code, in separate tarballs and to
package these packages (!) into separate rpms. In this case, the program
would be "just using" the data.

Another possibility could be these files being dual licensed.

Ralf