Openly licenced icons/emojis with crop icons

[andru]

UTF Emoji sets

• Noto Emoji for Android, Apache License
• EmojiOne, CC-BY
• Mozilla Firefox OS, CC-BY

[elbotho]

Open Source Ecology is also working on icons, different style but similar idea:
http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Icon_Source

[simonv3]

@elbotho very cool. does it make sense to combine these sets?

[elbotho]

well, I guess it makes sense to have variety, but combining isn't really feasible imo.

[elbotho]

Hello everyone!
It seems this project is in summer hibernation at the moment.
What do you think how we should proceed? Here are two ideas:

---

Icon collection

I just found a huge collection of (very probably, but will check) cc-by icons.
Not the prettiest I have seen, but a great place to (re)start from! There are over 80 Icons.
Do you want me too add them here?

---

Project Fork

Another thing: I forked this project last week and will fill my fork with crop icons I was working on before. I did not upload them here, because they use a different style (flat design).
At the moment I'm up to about 30 icons (own work) and I appreciate feedback and contributions here:
https://github.com/serlo-org/open-flat-crop-icons

(It's also CC-BY to promote the free education platform serlo.org)

[simonv3]

These look awesome, thanks for the links @elbotho. They're both certainly things to look into.

They're great sources of inspiration. I'm personally not opposed to using some of them, but I'm not sure we've ever had a discussion on what license these crops would be under.

OpenFarm's default is completely public license, so these licenses would clash with that. I had kind of assumed the crops we develop here would be the same.

[elbotho]

@simonv3
well the readme is quite clear on that :)

These are released under a CC0 license. They're public domain works so use them without restriction. A credit somewhere to help other people find them would be in good spirit, but is not required.

So, yes they would clash. I'm currently waiting for an answer from the 80-icons-set people to make sure if they are actually CC-BY (might be CC0 as well or more restrictive, let's see).

The flat crop icons will stay CC-BY for now but I might reconsider when some nice people won't use them because of that :) I see it as a way to contribute to the free education platform (serlo.org) and everybody else at the same time.

[andru]

Hey @elbotho - Where did you find that set? Some of the icons in that set are just scaled down versions of the Veggie set by symbolicons, which is available under a pay-what-you-like but not at all open license. See: cabbage, lettuce, beans, pumpkin, beet, tomato...etc. That makes me doubt the legitimacy of the licensing of the others, too.

Summer hiatus indeed! I've personally not had much time for this project as I've been in garden and building season. I intend to get back into it in winter.

I like your flat-icon fork. It seems a good simple style to get an attractive and comprehensive set put together quite quickly. I don't see any icons in the actual repo yet though.

That said, here comes a CC-BY rant (sorry)...

I'm not a big fan of CC-BY licensing unless it's covering a single work (like a photo) or complete collection (like a finished icon set) of works from a single individual or exclusively by members of a single organisation. I would feel hesitant to contribute to an ongoing project with your current licensing setup.

Your instructions are "Please credit Serlo Sustainability and link to https://en.serlo.org/sustainability", which doesn't actually list anything to do with the crop icons project, effectively crediting SerLo and not the contributing authors of the work. Also, where should a consumer of the project add the credit? Under every icon? Or tucked away somewhere? Is a sourcecode comment ok? How about metadata attached to the SVG file? Does the location have to be accessible via the website/app or is a google search ok?

Structurally speaking, I believe it also strongly discourages forking. We're not talking about a photo here, where all derivative works are changes to the original. This is a project which can be added to. Every fork must keep all prior credits of the upstream work, and either let their additions of new original works be hidden under the required license recognition that the work has been "modified", or actually license their own additions under a separate license, creating a work with a combination license. And then the next fork... And the next... urgh.

To make matters even more absurd: If this project had been CC-BY, your fork to redesign the icon set with your style would technically have to credit this project in perpetuity because your work could be classed as a derivative. I don't find that to be in the spirit of a commons at all.

Given how many people blatantly ignore the BY requirement of CC licenses anyway, I think it's way cooler to ask people to credit the project, not require it. When people do things because they want to, they don't try to hide them away, they try to promote them.

Ok, rant over.

I do hope you'll consider changing to a different license, like CC-0 with a "Hey, it'd be super awesome if you credited this page [direct link to a list of designers]" type message. I'd be very much up for contributing in such a case.

[elbotho]

Hey @andru,
bummer about the Icon collection. Seems you are right. Let's see what they say…

Thank you for your input on the license. I get parts of your rant, and yes I was and am considering CC0 and I understand that it might discourage contributors.
Up to this point it's this is not an multi author project, so I decided to credit an organization I work for instead of myself, that's that. And yes, the icons and the corresponding are not up yet. I just created the rep last week.
Not to get defensive here, but I do think the CC-licenses have proven them self. And yes, there are still issues with attribution (with we shouldn't have to set manually) and other things. But there are also good reasons to use the more restrictive but still open licenses. ( e.g. Wikipedia and all the others)
I usually work on projects that are CC-BY-SA, because I believe in the viral aspects of those licenses. CC-BY is already unfamiliar territory :)
I'd suggest if there is more to discuss we take it back to the other rep, so we don't spam this issue any further.