LGPL icons

[Carlos Leonhard Woelz]

Hi Dave,

The kde-artists guys discussed these topics in more detail, and should be
consulted for more in depth questions, but I think I can give some basic
answers.

On Fri, 04 Jun 2004 19:32:58 +0200, "David Vignoni"
<david.vignoni at virgilio.it> said:
>
> Now, I recive many emails everyday from person asking to use icons taken 
> from Nuvola theme for :
> 
> 	1. personal site
> 	2. commercial site
> 	3. shareware application
> 	4. l/gpled application (and this is the only case I'm sure they can)
> 	5. web communities
> 	
> What the LGPL license imply in these cases?

All the above can freely use your icons, even in
6. proprietary applications.

What they cannot do under the LGPL:

1) Release your icons or images based on them of your icons under a
proprietary license / restrictions.
- Meaning: your icons or images based on them should always be free, even
if they are part of a proprietary software / commercial site.
For instance, they can't register an image based on your icons as a
trademark (like a logo for a company, for instance). To do that, they
have to contact you and relicense the icons, as the lgpl does not allow
that. The lgpl is not public domain :) You, as the copyright owner, can
relicense the images at your discretion.

2) Distribute your icons or images based on them without license /
copyright notice. People has to know this is lgpl, not public domain.
Note that they do not have to make the source available with the
product/site/software, but they have to make them available on request
(for free).

What _you_ (or anyone else) can do with images based on your iconset:

1) Images that are derivatives of your iconset should be available as
LGPL as well. You have the right to  ask for the source (the png) files
for these images, and add to your theme or whatever. They should always
be free.

So as you can see, the LGPL is a very liberal license, please check if
this is what you want. Also, you have to be careful when you include
icons from other artists in your iconset. As I said, artwork that you
created can be relicensed or sold as many times _you_ want, as you are
the copyright owner. Trolltech does exactly that with the Qt toolkit
(open source and proprietary license). But you cannot do that with icons
created by other artists for your iconset. So take care not to mix them
:)

Cheers,

Carlos Woelz
-- 
  Carlos Leonhard Woelz
  carloswoelz at imap-mail.com