Thanks to all for replies. This one in particular clarified the situation.
And of course, thank you to the development team. On 05/18/2012 04:42 AM, "Christoph Sch?fer" wrote: > 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
