Remove FamFamFam icons from CVS

Thank you for the report of invalid image with CC.

I am thinking about replace current images with Circular Icon Set (http://prothemedesign.com/circular-icons/). Refer to their policy page (http://prothemedesign.com/support/pro-theme-help/) they mentioned about license as below:

3. What are your licensing policies?

All of our products are licensed under the same license as WordPress, the GPL – there is more information on the GPL license available on the WordPress Codex. Support for Pro Theme Design products will only be given to those who purchase a Pro Theme Design product.

However, I can't find the GPL LICENSE.txt file within their download package (http://prothemedesign.com/files/icons-circular.zip), so any suggestion about using this set of icons?

It appears that the Pro Theme Design circular Icons are licensed under the GPL version 2. However, I had to click through a whole load of links to ascertain this...

http://prothemedesign.com/support/pro-theme-help/
led to...
http://codex.wordpress.org/GPL
and then...
http://wordpress.org/about/license/
finally...
http://wordpress.org/about/gpl/

It would be much better if Pro Theme Design could explicitly state which version of the GPL their icons were licensed under. I suggest contacting Pro Theme Design, and asking them to publish the license version clearly, somewhere that we can reference.

Besides circular icons I am now looking with spirit20 from http://19eighty7.com/icons. It is coming with message as below:

spirit20 consists of almost 500 transparent PNGs at 20×20 pixels, and is completely free to use for both personal and commercial projects. No attribution is required.

This looks like publish under Public Domain. I am now applying it to my blog (http://edin.no-ip.com/) and very suitable as FamFamFam replacement. I also give a simple repackage to it as 16x16 version (http://edin.no-ip.com/files/spirit20-repackaged-by-hswong3i.tgz).

If this is also suitable for Drupal CVS repository requirement I will commit it. Please feel free to comment with :)

I would like to refer this page for review and discussion: http://andybeard.eu/2738/creative-commons-wordpress-themes.html

In this case Mini Icons is licensed as "“Mini” is a set of 144 GIF icons available for free use for any purpose.", which above article comment it as "public domain" and so:

These can be used in WordPress themes and plugins with no licensing issues as you can use 100% GPL. You might still add a credit in your license, but there isn’t a GPL compatibility problem.

BTW back to Silk Icons it is licensed as CC and so:

These icons can’t be used for themes submitted to the WordPress repository, because only the copyright holder could make that assignment.

Refer to http://wordpress.org/about/license/, it also mention that WordPress coming with similar license handing as that of Drupal. WordPress even refer the theme and module repository handling from ours: http://drupal.org/licensing/faq/

Therefore in case of spirit20, should we apply similar handling as that of Mini Icons and so should be suitable for Drupal CVS repository? Please feel free to correct me.

re: comment 4

Public domain icons could be redistributed under the GPL without any problem. They would still be public domain, regardless of being included with GPL-licensed code (see the GPL FAQ).

However, just because the Spirit20 cons are "free to use" does not necessarily mean they are in the public domain. Unless a work has been explicitly released into the public domain, it will still be under copyright until the the copyright expires. Indeed, the page at http://19eighty7.com/icons carries a copyright notice in the page footer.

The proper thing to do would be contact Dale Morrell and request permission to distribute the icons under GPL v2.

@andrewmacpherson: So how about the terms explicitly defined for spirit20 that "No attribution is required." (http://19eighty7.com/icons)? The footer message is for the website itself which you can find in else pages but not target for the icon package?

@7

"No attribution is required" does not equate to public domain. The Spirit20 creator has only stated that the icons are "free to use" without attributing the source. He has not stated that the icons are in the public domain.

Most importantly for drupal.org, he has not stated that they may be modified and redistributed, which are both requirements of the GPL v2.

It's a shame that there aren't many suitable icon sets which are public domain or GPL.

@8: Sorry that it is still very confusing... Refer to above article for case of "Mini Icons vs Silk Icons" to WordPress (http://andybeard.eu/2738/creative-commons-wordpress-themes.html), why Mini Icons can apply to WordPress (and so similar as case of Drupal?) but spirit20 can't?

Whilst I think the designer should be clearer on the page about his licensing and it took me a little time rooting around his site to be 100% sure, I think his about page makes things clear enough for any Open Source project.

http://www.famfamfam.com/about/

if you wish to ask “Do the Flag/Mini icons sets need attribution or a link” (the answer is no – both sets are public domain)"

You have the actual words there - Public Domain

That isn't the case with silk icons, as I highlighted in my article.

Hi all,

Thank you for all of your concern about this license issue.

I have a direct contact to original author of spirit20 (Dale Morrell) from Facebook and he is "happy for anyone to use them for anything or do anything with them". After some indeed discussion Dale agree to re-release his work, including both Macchiato Social icon set and spirit20 icon set as GPL (http://19eighty7.com/icons). It should now suitable for the use in Drupal or even other OSS GPL projects.

Refer to modification with RAW file, Dale reply that all works are produced in Fireworks pixel by pixel so we may use it "as is".

Long story short, thank you for Dale with your lovely icon set and your freely contribution to all of us ;-)

Regards,
Edison Wong

Great result - that is worth a followup blog post

Be careful on the Circular license

Whilst on the download page they don't mention it, on thier product page they state

Circular is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 which means you can use it for anything you like!

@AndyBeard: Already replace all FamFamFam or Circular icon set as that of spirit20-GPL, and release new package as interactive_media-6.x-2.0-alpha2 (http://drupal.org/node/909562). Mark this issue as fixed.