Re: Firefox themes as Art files

[al3xu5 / dotcommon]

Il giorno sabato 18/07/2009 12:57:05 CEST
Giuseppe Scrivano <address@hidden> ha scritto:

> after a discussion we had on IRC (I catch this occasion to announce
> the #icecat channel on the freenode.net network), it seems that themes
> could be considered "Arts" and it is not a problem if they are
> non-free.
> 
> Considering that Firefox themes don't contain only images but for
> example .css files too, is it a good idea to consider them "Art"
> files?

I personally completely disagree.

Free software in a non-free world means nothing. 

Free software is just a part of a copylefted world.

Freedom not only means free software. Freedom involves knowledge,
science, culture, arts... all intellectual and creative works should be
free and benefif form all same four freedoms of free software.

Indeed, GNU and FSF support copyleft in gereral and in order to
copyleft all kinds of intellectual and creative works -not only
software-, they have free license also for works of practical use
besides software and documentation, including  a 'Free Art License'
specific for artistic works
[see: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OtherLicenses
http://artlibre.org/licence/lalgb.html],
and also they list licenses for works of opinion and judgment, like the
'GNU Verbatim Copying License'
[see: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OpinionLicenses]

By other hand, if GNU IceCat themes (artwork and css) could be non-free
then:
- Gnuzilla should distribute ONLY the free-software code and NOT release
  any binary file including non-free pieces
- GNU IceCat, like Firefox does, would include non-free pieces
  (artwork and css) and let or incourage people using non-free
  software: what will be then the difference?

Finally, css can not be consider art. 
First of all, ccs are essentialy CODE, no matter what it does or what
it is for.
More, css defines the "artistic" layout? Well, also the <strong> or
<h1> tag or a C++ class to set background colors using C++ do
exactly the same: so also HTML and C++ code could be considered art and
no matter if it is non-free?

I really hope you will reconsider such decisions being, I think,
clearly erroneous and harmful for free-software (and freedom in
general).

Regards


al3xu5 / dotcommon

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