Hi,
> I build OSS packages from source, in a corporate context that requires
> OSI-compliant licenses down to silicon...for software. I regularly
> build scribus.
>
> When I saw scribus now uses givelife, I went looking for its
> licenses...and couldn't find any. Backtracking, I think I see this
> scenario:
The licensing information is in the file givelife_colors_license.rtf in the
swatches folder. Except for the trademark clause it's the same license that's
being used for the dtp studio palettes.
>
> a) The givelife code is closed
> b) The givelife team uses givelife code to generate specific colors
> (palette of swatches)
I have no idea how they generate their colour palettes, not even if they use
any "code" at all (unless, of course, by "code" you mean that they are using
computers, operating systems etc.), and it doesn't matter anyway. We only
distribute two XML files that are comprised of a list of colours. These XML
files have been converted from GiveLife's Photoshop palette files and were
edited afterwards to make the colour numbers more legible in the Scribus colour
dialogs. This approach has been approved by GiveLife, and only after they
checked our files for colour value correctness they granted the license to
Scribus.
> which are then made available under a Creative
> Commons license.
>
> Is this right?
Yes and no. If you download the "Scribus" RGB palette from their website, then
you get a CC-licensed file. The CMYK palette for Scribus isn't available at all
for download since they used the old GIMP (*.gpl) format, which doesn't support
CMYK values.
>
> Where is the Creative Commons license for the palette of swatches?
Our license from GiveLife is tailored for distribution of the palettes with
Scribus, and it's not a CC-license. See the license file for more information.
I have no idea whether it's OSI-compliant or not, but interestingly it passed
the legal checks at Novell/OpenSUSE and RedHat/Fedora, probably because it
allows for separating the palette files from Scribus into a non-free branch
(whereas a BSD-style license didn't pass the test without a clarification from
the vendor!). As to your corporate context: GiveLife's target audience is the
Hispanic world, i.e., Portugal, Spain, Mexico, the Philippines, as well as
Central and South America. If your company doesn't operate in this
geographical/cultural context, you may want to consider building Scribus
packages without GiveLife (and other palettes you don't need).
>
> Does using givelife impact the right of scribus users to invent their
> own colors - even if they happen to be identically the same?
No, that would be ridiculous. Colours (= colour values) as such cannot be
subject to copyright, but the combination of colour values and names/numbers in
a colour system (e.g. Pantone or GiveLife swatches) can be, because the
creation of such a system requires a lot of knowledge about colours and colour
theory. E.g., GiveLife's employees are mostly designers and engineers, not
coders. The creatives work on colour harmonies, the engineers on reliable
colour values and printed references. In other words: What these companies do
has a lot to do with real-world tinkering, whereas programming is an
afterthought, if worth a thought at all. Hence the Scribus approach to separate
content from code. Swatches are content.
HTH,
Christoph
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