Re: Icon designer wanted (Aquamacs Emacs)

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

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

> On 3 Jan 2006, at 15:34, David Kastrup wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
> Most people publish their work under some Creative Commons license,
> and as far as I know that's compatible.

Then you certainly don't know much.  There are for example CC licences
that are explicitly noncommercial.  That's incompatible.  I have no
idea whether there are any GPL-compatible CC licences, but there are
_certainly_ several incompatible ones.

> Contributing to Emacs involves obtaining a contract from the FSF and
> signing that (paper form) -- I understand that is what was necessary
> when the new application icon was contributed. Taking code from 20
> or so authors and getting all of them to sign this is probably
> what's needed when you do patch work. 

Sure, and that's what is necessary to ensure lawyers won't be knocking
at your door later because things weren't like you thought or wished
them to be.

> Ask the FSF if you're interested in knowing more, I sure don't know
> much about this stuff (and I don't want to deal with it either).

Nobody wants to deal with it.  Unfortunately, laws and courts and
copyright issues won't just go away by ignoring them.  The FSF is not
bothering with all this stuff because they think it makes for great
fun.

>>> 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?
>
> All. Somebody will need to find icons and check their copyright
> status (as far as reasonably possible),

"As far as reasonably possible", in my book, means getting written
assurance that the legal state of the icons is compatible with
inclusion into Emacs or other GPLed works.

Of course, if you don't mind getting cease-and-desist orders and
lawyer bills, your definition of "reasonable" might be different.

> design the ones that are missing, keep a list of where everything
> came from, maybe notify but at least acknowledge the authors.

So what written guarantee will you have that this list is accurate?

>> 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.
>
> By the way, I would probably do more of that for AUCTeX (for the few
> report's we're getting) if I could see that such reports were
> followed up on in a friendly and professional manner (even if the
> user or I make a mistake and report something that's not actually a
> bug).

Come off it.  Care to quote an example where you were treated
unprofessionally?

>> 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.
>
> Excuse me, but we supply source code and maintain an open-access CVS
> repository. We document what's where, and other distributions such
> as the Carbon Emacs Package take code from us every now and then
> (and we're taking theirs).  It's a public project, everyone can
> check out the code and it's easy enough to extract things if you're
> willing to do so.

And if you are willing to bear the consequences if somebody claims
rights on the code you happened to extract in good faith.  It's not
like this has not happened in the past.  The whole mess with written
copyright assignments and disclaimers is being done _exactly_ because
of actual occurences that caused a lot of work, trouble, and also
legal expenses.

> You can hardly blame me for not willing to convince you personally
> that a particular change is justified, given the tone of your
> e-mails.

Sure, blame the messenger.  But you should still point out that you
are searching for help on a non-GNU derivative of a GNU project that
only runs on a proprietary system, and do this under conditions that
preclude this work to be of use for the upstream project.  I don't
think that a GNU help list is the right place for that.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum