Re: Icon designer wanted (Aquamacs Emacs)

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

David Reitter <david.reitter@gmail.com> writes:

>> > However, the big advantage for us is that we can draw from icons
>> > used in a variety of other projects. So much of the core work is
>> > done -- what remains is to find and select the right icons, make
>> > them look uniform / coherent, draw remaining ones.
>>
>> It seems a bit out of place to do this work downstream when it seems
>> more sensible to do this in Emacs itself.
>> ...
>> Is there a reason why you don't want to work on improving the icons in
>> Emacs proper?
>
> I'm glad you see it that way, and we certainly would be delighted to
> make source code (or icons) available to the main Emacs. Quite a few
> patches developed for Aquamacs have already been applied and a
> package has been added, others might be in the future. Of course,
> this applies to icon designs as well.
>
> However, the rigorous legal process involved in contributing
> material to Emacs means that we cannot just take somebody else's
> icons from GPL'd software, properly credit them and make use of
> their work in the spirit of free software.

If the people understand about the "spirit of free software", they are
likely to understand the need for a copyright assignment or disclaimer
(for icons, I guess a disclaimer would be sufficient).  It is a
written guarantee that the licensing conditions are stated accurately.

> While I perfectly understand why this may be considered necessary
> for GNU software, given the history of Emacs, I don't see myself or
> anyone come up with a newly drawn set of icons of high
> quality. Instead, we need to reuse icons. Therefore, if someone is
> willing to do the work, I'd incorporate this in our distribution
> now.

Willing to do _what_ work?  Designing icons?  Collecting them without
contacting the authors?

> If the Emacs team is then willing to go through a discussion process
> as to whether to adopt a new UI, and if the FSF would do some legal
> footwork, I'd be proud to support them. But that is up to them, not
> me, to ask, "Hey, can we incorporate that?".

It is a pity that you are not interested in the effort needed to
improve Emacs for everybody.  You certainly have the right to do so,
and this right is a consequence of Emacs being free software, but it
does not help the cause.

But you should be honest and clear enough when recruiting people to
_your_ project to mention that this is not intended to help Emacs.
And also you should refrain from calling Emacs or GNU "Open Source",
in particular on GNU lists, which is an expression intended to muddle
what free software is about: freedom.

> But before that, we'll need to do the work and I prefer doing that
> before offering a contribution.

Not "we", but some volunteer you try recruiting without being explicit
that the contribution is only intended for your own port to Carbon, a
proprietary platform.

So if somebody is going to collect icons without bothering about
written assignments or disclaimers, his work is not going to end up in
Emacs.  Even if he did the stuff himself, he has no guarantee that you
would bother extricating it from your personal fork, making sure that
nothing infringing remains, and properly contribute it to Emacs.

I think you could have made this somewhat clearer, considering that
you are asking on a GNU list.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum