On 05/02/2008, Alex Hudson home@alexhudson.com wrote:
On Tue, 2008-02-05 at 11:17 +0000, David Gerard wrote:
In practical use on Wikimedia sites, it's generally been taken to mean that whatever the reuser receives under GFDL is the transparent copy - e.g., even if the author made a picture in Inkscape, if he releases a rendered PNG under GFDL then that's the thing that's released under GFDL.
The question of transparency is more objective than that; the file format has to be readily amenable to editing. E.g., a PNG with a lot of text is not transparent, even if that's what the author released. If the original release from the author is not transparent, I think subsequent distributors could fall foul of the opaqueness rules, and would be unable to distribute according to the license. I wouldn't see that as being any different to releasing a binary under the GPL; just because that's what was released doesn't make it "the source" (the requirements in the two cases are very different, though, so maybe not directly comparable).
Who could they fall foul of? Remember that the risk model is: "if I use this in a manner outside of 'all rights reserved,' will keeping to the terms of the licence be a sufficiently strong defence?"
If the author released a PNG with text on it and then sues me for making a copy available under GFDL - or even a modified copy under GFDL - I find it hard to imagine a judge doing other than telling the original author not to be silly.
- d.