Re: Firefox themes as Art files

[Sam Geeraerts]

al3xu5 / dotcommon schreef:
> > ... as you've shown here. But I agree that free licenses for artwork
> > are a good thing.
>
> good! so why do not use them?

Approving the use of all free artwork licenses is not the same as 
requiring only the those licenses that are copyleft and give all 
possible freedoms.

> > > Finally, css can not be consider art. 
> > > First of all, ccs are essentialy CODE, no matter what it does or
> > > what it is for.
> > Wether or not it's human readable code is irrelevant. SVG is also
> > code, it describes an image and is most certainly artwork.
> >
> > > 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?
> > The HTML elements "strong" and "h1" describe the semantic structure
> > of data (like most non-deprecated elements in modern HTML). Browsers 
> > generally render them as bold by default, but that is not required
> > and can be changed with CSS. 
>
> right but the css alone do nothing and when included in the html it
> is as a piece of the html code...

Just like an PNG image alone does nothing: it requires software to view it.

> > A C++ class to set background colors
> > would be like a CSS interpreter: the color values would in general be
> > separated from the code that sets them. 
>
> so both css and c++ class have a *functional* role (not aesthetic)
> displayng the external defined colour...

I was talking about the CSS _interpreter_, the software that parses the 
CSS and renders a visual representation of it, e.g. a browser.

> > Images can be described in
> > C/C++ (I believe GIMP has such an export format) and that would be
> > artwork. But it doesn't mean that all code that is in some way
> > involved with graphics or visual style is artwork.
>
> so how can you decide when the css code is just artwork or not?
>
> > CSS describes the visual style of structured data. It is not sequence
> > of detailed instructions and so should not be lumped together with
> > actual computer programs.
>
> css can do more than defining the visual layout...
>
> can handle floating menus, can mamage printing, can manage what should
> be displayed and what not usualli according with the media... it is
> hard to me thinking css is just art...

Those are all examples of how/where data should be represented on a 
screen or on paper, so part of the visual layout.

> but also if it is... why users should not be free to copy, modify and
> redistribute images and css of a theme made to work in
> functionally conjunction with a free browser???

The freedom to modify a visual representation is not required because 
it's not part of the functionality.