Gajim violation

[Matthew Flaschen]

IANAL, but I think you're misunderstanding this.  First, according to 
http://tango.freedesktop.org/static/cvs/tango-icon-theme/COPYING the 
icon is under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.5 license 
(as the FSF says, don't use just "Creative Commons" as there are many 
distinct licenses.  This means in general that the icon can be reused, 
as long as the author is attributed and any modifications are licensed 
under that same license.  The FSF says that while this (or at least the 
2.0 version of this) is a free license it is incompatible with the GPL 
and GFDL.  Thus, they recommend that it not be used for *software* or 
documentation.

The icon is neither.  Using it in a GPL code would only be a violation 
if the GPL code is derived from the icon.  IMHO, this is as incorrect as 
saying the contents of a book are derived from its cover photo; the code 
is not based on the icon and was probably created first.  Thus, I think 
this use is compliant with both the CC license and the GPL (under the 
"mere aggregation" clause).

Matthew Flaschen

Dimitur Kirov wrote:
> Current devel version of Gajim includes icon from tango project. 
> Tango icons are licensed under some CreativeCommons license. According
> to gnu.org site, CreativeCommons is incompatible with GPL and thus a
> project with such materials cannot be distributed under GPL. Gajim
> sources are available at
>   svn://svn.gajim.org/gajim/trunk/
> 
> original tango icon:
>   http://tango.freedesktop.org/static/cvs/tango-icon-theme/32x32/status/network-offline.png
> 
> the same icon in gajim:
>   http://trac.gajim.org/browser/trunk/data/pixmaps/events/connection_lost.png
> 
> 
> If this is the case, could you send a clarification to
> gajim-devel at gajim.org
> Thanks.
> 
>