Licensing policy change proposal

[Sune Vuorela]

On 2019-01-27, Nicolás Alvarez <nicolas.alvarez at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 27 Jan 2019, at 15:04, Krešimir Čohar <kcohar at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> This email puts forth for your consideration a proposal to change our current licensing policy to accommodate three more licenses that cover the new photographic selection of wallpapers in https://phabricator.kde.org/D18078.
>> 
>> The licenses are:
>> - the Pexels license: https://www.pexels.com/photo-license/
>
> While I *personally* agree with this license, it will be probably considered non-free (because you can't resell the photo alone), in particular by Linux distributions.

I think I agree taht linux distros will want to remove it.

Discriminates against field of endavour

>
>> - the Unsplash license: https://unsplash.com/license, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsplash#License
>
> Looks good to me. "The right to compile photos from Unsplash to replicate a similar or competing service" doesn't really affect us when we're using individual photos. I think it doesn't even concern copyright but "database rights". And everything else is basically CC0.

I still need to fully understand what that means.

If I get 5 images from KDE that are under unsplash license, 5 images
from Gnome that are under unsplash license, can I use those in my public
image gallery ?  Depending on this, I think it might fall under the same
non-free category as the Pexels license.

But it feels that this clause should not be a license clause for the
image, but part of the ToS for unsplash API or unsplash site. I guess
someone needs to talk to either the photographers or with unsplash to
figure out what it actually means. Else, I think we should default to
"no".

>> - the Creative Commons Zero License: https://spdx.org/licenses/CC0-1.0.html
>
> CC0 should be uncontroversial, it should be definitely allowed by our license policy.

yeah. at least implicitly.

I don't think we are listing all the possible licenses, just the main
ones. Everything that is one-way compatible with what we request, should
be allowed as such.  


Also note that most distros won't ship these images if there isn't
clarification of the license.

/Sune