Release 3.0 and Themes

[Llorean]

As many of you may be aware, we're working on trying to put together a 3.0 release again.

What I personally would like to see is that we include a small selection of themes for each target with the 3.0 download, so that people installing the "release" will have a few nice themes to choose from. Since this is my personal want, there's no guarantee this will happen, nor is there any plan for how (will they be in SVN, or just bundled in the .zip, or what).

But there are some key things that will need to be true no matter which way it might happen.

1) Your theme will need to work with SVN Rockbox.
2) Your theme will need to be released under a license that allows us to redistribute it. If we do include themes, we'll probably be picking them ourselves, and it will be much easier on our side if all themes come under the same license, so if you want to be extra sure you might consider the CC-by-SA license, which is popular. There is a good chance we'll frown on themes that have licenses disallowing modification and reuse.

So, while there's no guarantee we'll be including a selection of themes with 3.0, I'd very much like to, and even if we don't, you'll want your theme usable by 3.0 users, right? So here's the call to not only update your themes, but organize and clean the wiki pages they're on, because if we don't see your theme, easily spot a license, and easily spot that it's 3.0 ready, we can't decide it looks good enough to include.

[Hweb21]

"a small selection of themes for each target"

So the theme doesn't have to be ported on every target to be selected?

[Llorean]

The default theme is, in my opinion, the only one that needs to be cross target.

Other than that, I don't see any problem with having a unique set of themes for each target.

[GodEater]

I agree, I think everyone involved in creating the Cabbie V2 theme which is now Rockbox's default can attest to how difficult it is to make a theme look consistent across all our targets. We wanted it done to improve the users first experience of Rockbox, but I think there's a strong argument for target specific themes to form part of this release.

[shotofadds]

2) Your theme will need to be released under a license that allows us to redistribute it.

I'd hope any released themes also have a license allowing future modification, in case of future WPS syntax changes, etc.

[Llorean]

Well, the WPS syntax for 3.0 will never change since 3.0 will never change...

[shotofadds]

I think you know exactly what I meant.

(ie. that it'd be desirable if we didn't have to throw out any 3.0-delivered themes if/when 3.x come out with a new WPS syntax)

[karashata]

Are we allowed to make recommendations or suggestions as to some themes we might like to see bundled for our various targets?  Or is it entirely up to the devs and what they'd like to bundle, if anything gets bundled?

[(:@)]

What about to include unifont into release 3.0, since the theme UniCatcher is included?
It's not obvious for a newbie that he also has to download and install unifont so that UniCatcher will look correctly. It will make it easier for someone who has songs in a non latin language and doesn't know english well.

[saanaito]

I know it's asking a lot, but I would love to see at least a few of the most popular themes to be ported to the c200s by the 3.0 release.

[Llorean]

Strife89: Here's how it works: You do the porting, and we might include the themes.

(:@): Honestly, you should raise a bug report about that. There shouldn't be included themes missing fonts.

shotofadds: I don't see why the next release can't have different themes if their authors abandon them. It would be ideal if they're modifiable, but I don't think it should explicitly be a requirement, nor do I think it should be the responsibility of the release team to commit to keeping what may be dozens of themes forever up to date with releases.

[ZincAlloy]

2) Your theme will need to be released under a license that allows us to redistribute it. If we do include themes, we'll probably be picking them ourselves, and it will be much easier on our side if all themes come under the same license, so if you want to be extra sure you might consider the CC-by-SA license, which is popular. There is a good chance we'll frown on themes that have licenses disallowing modification and reuse.

so CC-BY-NC-SA would be ok?

[Llorean]

Strictly speaking yes. But remember, the people who are likely  to be picking the themes are people who've chosen the GPL as their project license, and it allows Commercial use as long as that commercial use doesn't break the GPL terms. CC-BY-SA is closer to this than CC-BY-NC-SA. I'm not saying it would rule anything out, because there's no set rule yet, just saying what I think is most likely to be smiled upon.

Especially since CC-BY-NC-SA means that if someone wants to sell DAPs preloaded with Rockbox 3.0 on eBay or something, they have to go through the hassle of removing your theme on each install first. Which may be what you want, but a point may come up in debate that we wouldn't want themes restricting the ease of distribution of everything else.

[ZincAlloy]

alright, I'll rerelease my themes under the CC-BY-SA license where possible.

[saanaito]

Strife89: Here's how it works: You do the porting, and we might include the themes.

Well, I guess I'll start small - literally - and try a Nano theme or two.