On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 7:11 PM, Ricordisamoa <ricordisa...@openmailbox.org> wrote:
> Are there policies/guidelines regarding the use of third-party icons in > software maintained on WMF's Gerrit instance (e.g. MediaWiki extensions)? > I'm unaware of any formal policies, aside from a general requirement that icons (like everything else hosted in git) be under an open license of some sort. It certainly wouldn't hurt to have that written down somewhere. (I note that there are no icons in the git repo itself, that I can find; this does not excuse problematic licensing, but does make it slightly less urgent to resolve.) > For example, the Chameleon <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Skin:Chameleon> > skin appears to use Glyphicons <http://glyphicons.com>, whose license < > http://glyphicons.com/license/> is not very clear. The license looks fairly clear to me: png ("free") version is under CC; version included with bootstrap is MIT; other versions are non-free. Has the author said things elsewhere to indicate that he(?) doesn't understand the MIT terms, or somehow believes they aren't under MIT? Assuming Chameleon uses the icons included with Bootstrap, this looks fairly straightforward to me. Even git.wikimedia.org <https://git.wikimedia.org> uses Glyphicons (the > free PNG version) without complying with the CC-BY 3.0 license. > If we're using them on git.wikimedia.org, we should probably fix that. (I see Chad says there is an upstream bug, but I can't find it for the life of me, despite looking in three different places. gitblit doesn't strike me as the most... organized project I've ever looked at.) > Wouldn't it be better to use a really /free/ icon set (such as > Font-Awesome <https://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/> or Elusive > Icons <http://shoestrap.org/downloads/elusive-icons-webfont/>) instead? > As discussed above, parts of Glyphicon are CC and/or MIT, which is "really free". There may be a discussion to be had around development models, sustainability, community-friendliness, etc., and if you want to have that discussion, by all means! But please don't confuse/complicate the discussion by saying things under free licenses aren't "really free" - if you're doing that, you're using the terms in a very different way from common, long-term usage. Hope that helps- Luis -- Luis Villa Deputy General Counsel Wikimedia Foundation 415.839.6885 ext. 6810 *This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer>.* _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
