Re: source for artwork

[Jonathan Dowland <jmtd@debian.org>]

On Sun, Feb 23, 2014 at 06:35:20PM +0100, Gerfried Fuchs wrote:
>  We are discussing that we want source for everything, and yet we don't
> even know what the source for some things actually *is*, or what would
> be preferable for them.  And it is totally different on what kind of
> artwork it actually is, what makes sense.  We have to realize that the
> binary approach that works for actual code doesn't work for artwork, and
> that there is no black and white in that area, only shades of gray
> (unless the artwork is as simple as a "hello world" program).

Absolutely.

Thanks Rhonda for injecting some sanity into this discussion.

Code and multimedia resources are not perfectly analogous. It's very
common for a 'final image' (be it a picture, sound, etc.) to be released
under a permissive license and for whatever the source bits were to
never be released. Unlike source and binary, such end-products are
almost always reusable, adaptable, modifyable. Whilst it would be ideal
if artists always did release source, and also if the world was such
that such sources were always useful and the build process always
repeatable, but that isn't the case. It would be absurd to consider such
things non-free.