Support and General Use > Theming and Appearance Customization
Theme Licensing
senab:
--- Quote from: evilg123 on May 20, 2007, 01:10:09 PM ---Nate, I see where you're going with this, while it may be a bit of a hassle to force authors to license their work, I think this is the best method. I understand it would be much easier just to force all uploaders to agree to CC-by-SA, but it *may* prevent some users from uploading their work.
--- End quote ---
I would strongly discourage making people license their themes CC-by-SA. At the end of the day, the themes are the creation and copyright of the person creating them, you can not force anyone to use a license they do not what to use. Of course you could make it the default license, but there has to be choice.
I have today decided to license my themes under the Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales. This is for the simple fact I am fed up of seeing crappy knock offs of my work. This way I have control over any "remixes" and mods.
If anyone wants to make a mod or remix of my work, then I'm easily contactable through PM and email. ;)
Febs:
--- Quote from: gwrtheyrn on December 02, 2007, 07:45:32 AM ---so does that mean i cannot distribute the theme as long as i use some brushed metal graphics?
--- End quote ---
Yes, that is what it means.
linuxstb:
--- Quote from: senab on December 02, 2007, 08:53:07 AM ---I would strongly discourage making people license their themes CC-by-SA. At the end of the day, the themes are the creation and copyright of the person creating them, you can not force anyone to use a license they do not what to use. Of course you could make it the default license, but there has to be choice.
I have today decided to license my themes under the Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales. This is for the simple fact I am fed up of seeing crappy knock offs of my work. This way I have control over any "remixes" and mods.
If anyone wants to make a mod or remix of my work, then I'm easily contactable through PM and email. ;)
--- End quote ---
Authors are of course free to license their themes under any license they wish.
However, Rockbox itself is free software, licensed under the GPL, and that license gives users the right to modify and redistribute Rockbox in any way they wish (as long as they comply with the GPL - which mainly means making the source code to their changes available under the GPL as well).
My view is that the same freedom principles should apply to themes - users should have the right to modify and redistribute the themes in any way they wish, whether or not the original author agrees with those changes.
If I understand correctly, the CC-by-SA achieves this, which is why this was chosen as the "official" license for themes distributed via rockbox.org. The license you've chosen doesn't appear to give the user any freedom to modify and redistribute, not even to fix bugs or adapt to changes in WPS syntax.
senab:
--- Quote from: linuxstb on December 02, 2007, 09:27:11 AM ---The license you've chosen doesn't appear to give the user any freedom to modify and redistribute, not even to fix bugs or adapt to changes in WPS syntax.
--- End quote ---
True, but as I see it, there's only so much changes you can make to themes after they're made. To make a decent change you'd need the source images file. Of course people are free to contact me and let me know of any WPS bug (i'm currently going through all my WPS's to make sure they're bug free).
I will waive the condition of No Derivative Works, only if the results are for personal use. By personal use, I mean that the works are not distibuted afterwards. You are then free to contact me with any change and I may waive the No Derivative Works fully for your remix/change.
linuxstb:
I'm sure people would be happy for you to share the source images - in the same way Rockbox developers are sharing their source code.
What happens to your themes when you lose interest in Rockbox at some point in the future and change email addresses? Or if the WPS syntax changes, and you can't be bothered to update all your themes?
I respect your right to choose any license you wish for your themes, I just don't like to see the use of such "non-free" licenses encouraged for Rockbox-related things, and would hope that most theme authors are happy to choose the CC-by-SA.
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