[Clipart] Public Domain Licensing

Alan Horkan horkana at maths.tcd.ie
Mon Apr 12 10:51:54 PDT 2004


I added in a few words.  They are pessimistic but necessary I think.

While I respect and admire the choice of putting the clipart in the public
domain and allowing them to be used royalty free I have to restate my
reservations and wonder if there might be a better way?

I can see makers of proprietary software group taking the clipart and
repackaging it, removing the authors names and distributing it with their
own product.  This is exactly what public domain allows, there can be no
taking it back later.  I cant help wondering if there is some license that
instead of relinquishing copyright would instead have people would have
artists sign over the copyright to a central group such as
'freedesktop.org' or the 'free software foundation'.  The images would of
course need to be usable royalty free but I wonder if retaining copyright
might be of some benifit?

I dont plan on asking this question again, but are we absolutely sure that
'Public Domain' is the one and only suitable choice?

Sincerely

Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/





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