Planet Open Clip Art Library News   

New tutorials on inkscapetutorials.wordpress.com

August 25, 2008 11:10 PM

Launched Creative Commons Case Studies Project

This is the next 30-45 days (okay a month) of knocking out all kinds of projects I’ve had in the queue for months, literally. The first of these is the Creative Commons Case Studies project. Seriously, this one has been touched by so many people for countless months now.

I remember when Mike Linksvayer wanted me to push this one out and TVOL and I sat in a room looking at each other like what the hell is this vague task Mike just gave us Well, it coalesced at the CC Taiwan

It also now helps me feel like the information side of Creative Commons infrastructure is pretty solid. I won’t say complete, but at least up to par with most projects of this size. To go along with this release, Alex and I shuffled around some of the /projects page at creativecommons.org and there is now a section called “Information” which is useful for all those seeking out about why use CC. Please all, feel free to use these sections.

Joi just blogged a chunk of the Case Studies blog post I did over at CC’s blog, which I’ve sourced below:

Creative Commons Launches Global Case Studies Project
Jon Phillips, June 24th, 2008
Brisbane, Australia & San Francisco, USA — 2008 June 24

Today Creative Commons (CC), in association with Creative Commons Australia, officially announced the release of the Case Studies Project, which is a large-scale community effort to encourage all to explore and add noteworthy global CC stories. Creative Commons provides free tools to allow copyright-holders to clearly show rights associated with creative works, and now this project shows how notable adopters like author Cory Doctorow, web video-sharing company Blip.tv, and open film project “A Swarm of Angels” have successfully used CC licenses.

And, Joi had this to say about the project:

This is a very important initiative and I hope everyone will contribute and use this resource. In order to make CC ubiquitous, we need support from businesses to get it integrated into the tools and the infrastructure. We need to prove that CC is not only good for society and culture, but makes business sense too. These case studies will be very important to help drive home the fact that sharing is good for business in addition to being “the right thing to do” in other respects.

This also helps make the case to creators that you sharing makes sense for professionals as well.

The next big projects to focus on are the Metrics project, PDWiki Projects (Open Library with CC/PD integration and PDRegistry.ca). No links you say! Well, they are mostly out there in the ether so you can do investigation to find out what these cool projects are that I’ve been working on for a couple of years, seriously!

SIDENOTE: For all you friends of Open Clip Art Library and ccHost, a few of us will be heading to Berkeley to meet at Mudrakers Cafe at 2 PM this Thursday, June 26, 2008 until whenever (~5 PM) to hack with legendary hacker, Victor Stone on ccHost 5.0, the engine behind ccMixter.org, Open Clip Art Library and Open Font Library. I want to do some code fun and not just my talky talk I do mostly these days.

June 24, 2008 06:35 AM

creative commons salon 2

June 05, 2008 01:40 AM

ccHost 4.5 Out and Liblicense 0.7 Too!

Mike blogged about the ccHost 4.5 release for all you to update your sites to for stability right before the massively updated 5.0 arrives on the scene. If you have forgotten, ccHost is the engine behind Open Clip Art Library and Open Font Library (which both need developers). More info below:

Two new releases of ccHost today, the remix-oriented media hosting software that drives ccMixter:

4.5, the final release from the 4.x tree. 4.0 was released March 6 last year.

5.0beta is the code that has been running on ccMixter for several months (5.0alpha was available in February.) The missing piece needed to make 5.0 final is updated administrator documentation.

The software is licensed under the GPL and downloadable from sourceforge or our source repository.

Also, Asheesh packaged up liblicense 0.7 which is useful for all wanting to add licensing to your application. I want to get liblicense into a couple of applications like Eye of Gnome and something else fun. Any ideas open source developers? There are resources to help work on this at Creative Commons if you are interested in something fun:

I just released liblicense 0.7.0 on SourceForge. It fixes the Python bindings. They’ve been broken since the 0.6 release, it seems. Some functionality in them probably worked between 0.6 and 0.7, but (read on for more)…

LL_LICENSE and other constants were “extern const char” arrays before. Now they’re just lousy old #defines. This way, even though the strings might appear more than once in memory, it’s very simple for the IO modules like exempi.so to refer to those constants.

Before, due to dynamic linker loading order issues, if liblicense.so were added to a process’s memory memory map at runtime, if liblicense then tried to dlopen() its modules, the modules wouldn’t be able to find those constants. What a drag! That broke the Python bindings’ ability to use the modules.

Now, I guess that’s still true, but the modules don’t need actual symbols from liblicense anymore.

I noticed this issue in the process of creating and testing RPMs for Fedora. I had to bump the SONAME because this removes symbols from the library.

You can grab it on SourceForge, and perhaps soon in Fedora Rawhide.

May 18, 2008 08:54 AM

Yes, Use CC to Free Your Stuff IANAL

Yes, I do get paid by Creative Commons, but I’m speaking in a personal capacity in response to the post on i, quaid about using CC licenses.

My answer is yes, using CC is better than using nothing where anyone would have to ask you for permission to use your work which is locked by default in many jurisdictions, including U-S-of-A. And, if you want to contribute to the solution you and others seek, use something like CC Attribution or the CC Public Domain dedication. New things like CC Zero coming down the pipe are good to with a system in place to encourage social solutions per community (called “social norms”) rather than legal solutions, like the NC, SA, ND conditions, which I have been super excited about for some time and pushing hard, because that is what we have been doing with Open Clip Art Library for ages by using PD and encouraging attribution.

I shouldn’t tell you what to use, but I do personally think that the NC condition is a gateway into the free universe. Without it, you will get a situation where less people will use more free licenses. And, in my experience as well, individuals are the ones using the NC condition more than businesses, which often times select the CC Attribution or the CC Public Domain dedication for all content submitted to their site, like Digg.com (look at the bottom of the page). Please do conjecture about why this is, as I’m curious to why others might think this is the case.

With that being said, IANAL

May 18, 2008 08:43 AM

Fedora 9 Released

May 13, 2008 08:25 PM

Thanks to the Fedora Project, LGM Goal Met

I wanted to send a big thank you out to The Fedora Project, Max Spevack and Greg DeKoenigsberg for their support of the upcoming Libre Graphics Meeting 2008 in Poland, May 8 - 11!

Dave Neary wrote a good overview of the state of the massively successful fundraiser we put together with Pledgie.com (try it out if you want to raise money for your cause!).

It is still not too late to donate money (you can use paypal with the previous link which will help get more developers to the event. Cheers to all who gave too and linked to the various posts thus truly shedding light onto the huge community of free and open source graphics users and developers out there in the world

April 28, 2008 07:04 AM

Issue 1 of ‘Code:Free’ - an Art Magazine for FOSS artists

April 21, 2008 10:28 PM

inkscape wallpapers / desktop backgrounds

April 16, 2008 07:34 AM

Support the Libre Graphics Meeting 2008 in Poland

We are trying to raise USD$ 20,000 in the next 16 days before Friday, April 18th in order to support the conference and travel from so many Free and Open Source software developers to attend the 3rd Annual Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM) conference in Wrocław, Poland May 8 - 11 - the premiere event bringing together free and open source creative software application developers for a productive international conference (emphasis on productivity!).

This is really a big community drive for all you users, supporters, and companies to donate money so that all us free and open source developers may get together to have a productive face to face meeting. The last two LGM’s have been invaluable to coordinate, consolidate and create the future in a free and open source way.

For the next 16 days, we want all the supporting projects to put a note about this pledge drive right on their front page of their website! You can use the badge below as well to help us raise money!

You can also help by spreading the url to our pledgie campaign: http://pledgie.com/campaigns/613

And, don’t forget to digg this story: http://digg.com/linux_unix/Support_the_Libre_Graphics_Meeting_2008

More from the Pledgie.com page:

What is the Libre Graphics Meeting?

The Libre Graphics Meeting brings together developers and users of free software graphics applications, such as the GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus, Blender, Krita, the Open Clipart Library and more.

In its third edition, the organization needs your help! You can support your favorite graphics application, and ensure that the travel costs of as many volunteer developers as possible are paid to ensure that this edition of the conference is more successful that its predecessors.

Where will the money go?

We have kept costs associated with infrastructure to a minimum. Over 80% of the conference budget will be spent on subsidizing travel and accommodation costs for developers.

A non-profit organization

All donations will be made to the conference organizers via the GNOME Foundation, a 501(c)3 tax exempt US-based non-profit, so donations will be tax deductible for US taxpayers. We would like to thank the GNOME Foundation for their support.

April 02, 2008 03:45 AM

Inkscape 0.46 Fully released.

April 01, 2008 11:27 PM

Inkscape 0.46 Released

Download the latest copy of your favorite editor everone!!!

More from Bryce’s post:

The Inkscape community today is announcing the release of the newest
version of its open source vector graphics editor. Inkscape 0.46 is a
major update that introduces native PDF support. The implementation of
PDF support in Inkscape provides an easy, open source solution to
editing PDF documents.

Tons of new features and performance improvements are included in this
release. Dialogs now have the ability to be docked to the editing
window. Gradients can be edited completely on-canvas. The new Paint
Bucket Tool fills bounded areas with color. A new 3D Box tool helps
create perspective-correct drawings. A new Tweak tool provides an
intuitive method for editing paths and painting objects. The new Live
Path Effects feature can create “brushes” and various organic effects on
paths. Improvements to color management include support for color spaces
other than sRGB. Most SVG filters are now implemented, and a new
powerful UI is provided for editing filter stacks.

Downloading Inkscape 0.46

Inkscape 0.46 is already included by default in Ubuntu Hardy so just
install it normally. Ubuntu Gutsy users can install by adding the
following to System : Admin : Software Sources : Third-Party Software:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/inkscape.testers/ubuntu gutsy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/inkscape.testers/ubuntu gutsy main

Macintosh OS X users can download a Leopard Universal package from our
SourceForge site:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=93438

Packages for Fedora, Debian, Windows, and other platforms should be
coming soon.

For more information

Complete Release Notes for 0.46:
http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes046

Community Contributed Screenshots:
http://inkscape.org/screenshots/

Here are the example screenshots demo’ing 0.46…its hot!

Version 0.46
	The path changing modes of the new Tweak tool allow you to push, shrink, grow, attract, repel, or roughen any path, easily and naturally sculpting exciting freeform shapes. This is a lot more convenient than the Node tool not only because you don’t need to think about nodes, but also because it can work on any number of selected paths at the same time.
	The color changing modes of the new Tweak tool, paint and jitter, are very similar to the way a soft brush works in a bitmap editor. If you have a number of separate objects, you can select them all and paint over them with any fill or stroke color.
	Inkscape 0.46 comes with a selection of stock patterns, accessible via the Fill and Stroke dialog. It is now much easier and faster than before to fill a path with stripes, checkerboard, or polka dots.
	The use of effects which previously required to manually installed some Python modules is now straightforward on Mac OS X: they all work out of the box. In addition, Inkscape’s interface was made more Mac- friendly by the use of a default theme. This theme reflects the changes made in OS X system preferences (Appearance panel) and works with Graphite (as demonstrated here) or Aqua variants. For advanced users already having a custom ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file, the theme is not enforced and their personal settings are respected.
	The Paint Bucket tool works just like the Paint Bucket tool in bitmap image editors — clicking in an area fills the area with the chosen color. Unlike other editors, the Inkscape tool features some additional fill methods to help you finish your work faster.
	With SVG Filters and Inkscape’s new Live Path Effects, the available options and ease of editability to accomplish various visual effects has been greatly enhanced. The picture in this screenshot utilizes a number of features such as Tiled Clones, SVG Filters, Live Path Effects, Clipping and Masking, Multi-stop Gradients and more. This screenshot shows the parameters used on a patch of hair created with the Stitch Sub-Curves Path Effect. Additionally, you can see how handy having docked dialogs is to un-clutter the workspace with the side benefit of increased productivity. To see the full version of this picture you can click here.
	The Path along Path effect can curve a path along another path. When this effect is applied to path A (called skeleton), another path B (called pattern) can then be passed as a parameter. The result is that path B is bent along path A. With the node edit tool, path A can be editted on-canvas and the result is updated live. This provides a direct equivalent of “vector brushes” or “skeletal strokes” features in other vector editors.
	This example shows how the new hatching techniques can be used to produce a traditional line engraving from a photo. Note also that thinning/thickening can be used not only for hatchings but for sculpting arbitrary paths - easy shape morphing without the Node tool!
	Several new features were added to the Calligraphic pen to make Inkscape capable of the ancient art of line engraving. This screenshot demonstrates tracking a guide path to hatch areas quickly and uniformly; tracing background to make your pen width reflect the lightness of the background in every point; and thinning/thickening that lets you change the darkness of your hatchings at any point, or even erase parts of the drawing.
	Now all guidelines are angled. The usual horizontal and vertical guidelines have become angled at 0/90 degrees. To change to a different angle, just double-click the guideline you want to change and enter the values. You can also create a guideline with an angle of 45 degrees by dragging the guideline from the ends of the rulers. You can also create an angled guideline from a straight line. Draw this line and press Shift+G.

March 26, 2008 08:56 AM

On a scale of evil from 6660 to 6666

I know the real "evil" number is 666, but the 666-th upload to the Open Clip Art Library was long ago, so the best I can do is to try a surrogate, a replacement something looking close to it. So I uploaded another milestone:

I am not sure what is "more evil", 6660 or 6666 or if they are evil enough to count, so I uploaded both the image number 6660 and image 6666 (both were imports from the old website), hope this make me sort of evil:

As Johnny Automatic noted on the mailing list, about February 2008: "this month has seen more submissions than any month since we began tracking them", we were up to something this month and still have one more day to go:

What's next? I still have a lot of files from the old site to dump into ccHost, so I will continue my share of increasing the monthly uploads for a while. And I'll continue to be evil (or at least try to).

February 28, 2008 03:50 PM

Tons of clipart: openclipart.org daily snapshot

Quite late, a couple of years late, the 0.18 release of the Open Clip Art Library got packaged for Fedora and is expected to hit a Rawhide near you (thanks lkundrak for that).

But that release is ancient, in the meantime we changed the site infrastructure (and lost the ability to do formal releases), gathered thousands of new images from hundreds of new users. What to do, lots of people want the images, we have them but no easy way to bulk download?

I present you the daily SVG snapshot: a large tarball containing all the SVG and SVGZ files from our ccHost installation. Today's (the first) snapshot is 156 MB (tar.bz2, it extracts in about 600 MB) and contain over 8.000 images (all of them released as Public Domain).

As a downside, it does lack meaningful structure, the files are grouped in folders by authors, not by topics/keywords/tags and we don't have keywords metadata inside SVG, so searching is a daunting task. But this is the best I can do, provide at least the content.

Note that this does not replace the old 0.18 release, is complementary and contain mostly images submitted after that release (even if this is changing at a glacial speed as some of us re-upload by hand images from the old site to the new one).

I forgot something? Yes, the link to the tarball, of course, the most important thing :D Go to the Open Clip Art Library downloads page and get daily_SVG_snapshot.tar.bz2 (no direct link from my blog as I'm not sure if it's a good idea do for a 156 MB download).

So use the clipart, enjoy it and maybe contribute back!

February 20, 2008 02:30 PM

Pac-Man baddies with Inkscape: clipart, tutorial, screencast and challenge

My not so secret Pac-Man project is finished, the clipart images are available on my collection as well as on openclipart.org, the tutorial is on the tutorials page, a screencast too, so now is the time to talk about them.

Ladies and gentelmen, here are some Pac-Man bad buys and bad girls:

The idea started months ago, when I made a silly cartoon about Fedora Games and I quickly realized the potential: is easy and fun (at least I think so), anybody can create such graphics and a tutorial is obvious and quick enough to be covered also by a screencast.
It got stuck in my head for a long time, screaming to get out waiting for me to get in the right mood for that. And in the end I gave up.

I started by doing a screencast (as I said, is based on a concept I was already familiar with), sorry for the Flash abuse, it is made with Istanbul in Ogg Theora and I have the original, but until fedoratv gets usable, its temporary home will be on YouTube.


Then I made in Inkscape the base shape, taking at each step screenshots for a future tutorial.

When done the next step was to create various derivatives, changing either the texture or the shape, there are many of them I like, for example the ninja-pirate duo (who would win in a fight?):

or the textured stripes and camouflage:

The original plan was to create 9 distinct images but the ideas came over and over so I jumped first at 16 and ended with 25 images (and still have a lot of ideas, but enough is enough).

Then I uploaded the images: both in a pacman gallery of my clipart collection and to the Open Clip Art Library (check the arcade tag).

After that, crop the screenshots, combine them, put together in a HTML, add some English text and the Pac-Man baddies Inkscape tutorial is made. Translate everything into Romanian language (yup, I write in English first), put everything online, including the screencast and I am almost done.

The last step is this: blog about them and throw a challenge: look at the gallery and find one baddie representing you. If you can't find one, read the tutorial and draw one yourself. Enjoy it. Show it to the entire world. Maybe upload it to the Open Clip Art Library.

And with that, enough for me with clipart for a while...

February 05, 2008 11:17 AM

Inkscape at SCaLE and Inkscape Stickers.

January 30, 2008 07:24 AM

How it's made: my map elements with Inkscape

I imagine such a preamble is not very inviting, but it is the preamble of the latest article from my tutorials website:

It's been a while since I wrote a tutorial (in fact quite a while, as "wrote" != "published") and that was for good reason: I was not able to come with a tutorial fitting the rest of my my tutorial site and did not want to break the tradition . So it was a hard decision to write this piece, which comes as a conclusion to my quest to create a RPG tileset of over 50 clipart images, a decision I made mostly because I already was asked about how I made the images and expect even more questions in the future.

It is not really a tutorial, more a "how it's made" for my map tileset (available also from the Open CLip Art Library), it describe the process I used in creating those images, a very short sketch of the workflow (described in more detail in the article) is like this:

[read more]

Of course, there is available as usual a Romanian translation.

And now I can really consider this topic closed.

January 29, 2008 05:00 PM

Quest complete: RPG map tileset

I can consider complete my quest for a RPG map tileset, 50 images are done (outline and full color), uploaded to my clipart collection and to the Open Clip Art Library (look at the cartography tag).

Now is the time to sit back, relax, upload some samples in various places (like here), annoy people with that and maybe think at the next step, which should be something different. Or should I do more pieces for the set, considering I have a long list with additional ideas? This is a good think to think about while sitting back.

I don't know how transparent is from those clipart images how much I miss the time when I used to fight orcs and be happy about that. I guess it's quite obvious (is a long time, about an year and a half).

PS: the samples above are JPEGs, the PNG version was to big in file size, so I had to use lossy compression (with high quality), but load the JPEG, change the extension and will get either PNG and SVG.

January 23, 2008 06:27 PM

Uploading to OCAL is killing me...

So the time has come: the set is done, it have to be uploaded to the Open Clip Art Library. Unfortunately by hand, one by one, the full color image, the outline and a PNG thumbnail.
Question again: what are the computers build for? By any chance to help us automate repetitive tasks? Anyone wonders why I hesitate re-uploading my images (some hundreds) from the old site? Look at the pretty screencast (2.8MB, Ogg Theora) and multiply the operation with 50 (the number of images I have to upload):

Php coders badly needed... anyone available?

January 23, 2008 11:52 AM

Coloring the map

The other day I talked about the outlines for my RPG map tileset, naturally I went to the next step: adding pretty colors (as planned) and it progress quite fast, it is the easy part.

I tried to get a balanced result: at the same time shiny enough but also simple enough, I could have added a lot more details but this is my current trade-off (feel free to start from the outlines and do your own colorization).

One decision I made will surely come back and bite me in the ass: I used gradients. They make the look prettier but after importing a few images with gradients Inkscape gets confused very fast (it is a known bug).

But enough for now, I spammed enough with this topic, will talk again about it when the set will be complete and uploaded to the Open Clip Art Library (hopefully next week considering the current speed). Until then I will quietly update my gallery, one by one.

January 17, 2008 03:24 PM

Halfway to an empty pledge: a RPG map tileset

One of my many failures in 2007 was to get the people at the Open Clip Art Library into holding a "month of cartography", such a benign defeat is a good show of how bad I react at losing.

A few years ago I made a proof of concept about how Inkscape can be used to create RPG maps and a (small at the time) number of terrain SVG tiles. This showed to be one of the hottest topics on my blog, with important traffic, many reactions and follow-ups (I got many people contacting me offline about it). It can be considered a success.

Recently on the Inkscape users mailing list the topic of cartography came to attention so I got the idea about holding a "month of cartography" at OCAL, we used to have such things, but the (still unfinished) migration to ccHost shifted the focus. They are good for channeling energies, gaining momentum, generating buzz and potentially bringing new contributors and users.
My approach was to make a pledge: if at least two other people back me and will contribute, I pledged to contribute at least 50 new, original, images.

The idea didn't got enough traction, nobody backed me. So here is me bad at losing: once the idea was developed in my head, I continued working on it and created (at a slow pace, due to the low motivation) the above mentioned quantity of images. So today I am halfway to this pledge: I finished the outlines (this was the hardest part) for 50 images, they still nedd to be colored (that is the second half), see below a few highlights:

For now the images are available for download as part of my own clipart collection, after I add colors they will be uploaded (both as outline and full-color) to the Open CLip Art Library. The coloring process will follow at the same slow pace, probably I will make enough noise when ready.

The set is not consistent as style, scale, perspective or quality but, hey, I pledged 50 images, not 50 quality images... (could it still be labeled as a set?) see also a screenshot with the entire set:

When approaching the target number a motivational issue appeared and I got confused about what to do next: start coloring, as originally planned, draw more new shaped, as I have in my head a large list of items which could be drawn or just call all this thing off, freeze and upload as it is.
Most likely I will stick to the plan but he work speed may have to suffer, watch the tileset to monitor the progress.

January 16, 2008 11:51 AM

liblicense 0.5: first stable version of C library supporting CC and licensing metadata - Creative Commons

Asheesh blogged about the super-cool liblicense 0.5: first stable version of C library supporting CC metadata - Creative Commons. The thing I would add for all you out there in licensing land is that this generalized to support all free and open content licensing as long as it uses the great RDF developed by CC to express a license:

With the help of Hubert Figuiere, Nathan Yergler, Peter Miller, Scott Shawcroft, and Jason Kivlighn, I’m happy to finally announce a new version of liblicense. Summary: Now this is really worth using.

For those just joining us now, liblicense is a library to make it easy to add CC metadata support to desktop and server side software you write. The biggest reason to choose liblicense rather than handling CC metadata yourself is that we (huge thanks to Jason and Hubert) have written handlers for many file formats. We use Hubert’s Exempi library that is derived from Adobe’s Free/Open Source XMP library.

The two major driving factors on this release were making it crash less and providing a stable interface (API and ABI) for others to build upon. Earlier versions of liblicense would crash on invalid files. Also, crucially, this release has metadata inside the library, called “shared object versioning,” indicating what features the library supports.

As always, you can reuse this under the terms of the GNU LGPL. It’s interoperable with our metadata panel for Adobe applications, supports embedding into files ranging from JPEG to MP3 to Ogg Vorbis, and is available from SourceForge.net. It is written in C and comes with bindings for Python and Ruby. Finally, thanks to Venkatesh Srinivas for his tireless help.

I haven’t had as much time to blog about this project. I’m super proud of the work done by Scott, Jason, Asheesh, Nathan Y., Hubert, Peter Miller and many others! Thanks guys.

Now, onto the big business! Let’s get this library added to KDE 4.1, the Gnome desktop, and some other example apps like Eye of Gnome (EOG), Rhythmbox, Inkscape, etc. Is anyone interested in this? We need to get it plugged-in. Currently, KDE folks are planning on including in KDE 4.1, so I’d like to talk more with other about getting it into Gnome apps, and more specific apps to drive usage and development of this app. Also, we want to get liblicense integrated into OpenMoko, as liblicense creation happened in order to enable content license read/write on al our devices…ebooks, mp3s, etc, that have their licenses inside.

BTW, liblicense comes with an awesome command-line program called license. All it does is allow for getting and setting of license information on files on your desktop!!! It handles content right now, but there is no reason it can’t handle other things…like source code, etc…just need developers!!!

January 16, 2008 08:49 AM

Today is Public Domain Day!

Open Clip Art Library is helping celebreate Public Domain Day!!! All content submitted to the Open Clip Art Library is dedicated into the public domain! Hooray!!! As a community, we need to look at Creative Commons new CC0 project and figure out how to migrate to this once released hopefully in mid-January. Here is more from the original post:

January 1st is Public Domain Day, as noted by copyrightwatch.ca:

Welcome to 2008, and let’s welcome into the Public Domain thousands, indeed millions, of creative works from the collective cultural past of our little planet and its many countries. Yes, it’s January 1st, Public Domain Day in most countries of the world, where copyright runs from the death of the author of a work until the end of the 50th, 70th, or some other year thereafter.

Read the whole post for some notable works falling into the public domain in some jurisdictions.

Everybody’s Libraries also has an informative post about Public Domain Day 2008.

A post from Lessig on Public Domain Day 2004.

The microformats community jumped the gun, announcing a transition of their wiki to the public domain a few days ago.

Creative Commons offers a public domain dedication and we’ve announced that we’ll be upgrading and extending that this year with the CC0 project.

Via Boing Boing.

January 02, 2008 07:50 AM

Happy Anniversary! and Merry Xmas and Happy Holidays

From a cold Beijing, that is amazingly cleaned up and metropolitan, merry xmas and happy holidays and happy new year!

Most importantly, happy 1 year anniversary to Lu for being married for one year (to me)! Its taken a massive amount of engineering to get here right now and to have some degrees of freedom for our lives, so pretty happy about that overall!

Now its time for me, my mom, dad, Lu and I to take 24 hour train to Guangzhou…geez, I miss my 14 hour battery now

Time to get sentimental and see some amazing country-side while my real imagination comes true. Time to hack on OpenMoko and Open Clip Art Library while on the train

BTW, while waiting for my parents at the Beijing International Airport, I decided to break from that activity to find the atm. While walking towards it, out from the domestic terminal came the the worlds tallest man!!!

I stopped dead in my track and like the other Chinese folks around me, pulled out my phone and took a picture!

December 25, 2007 12:37 AM

Inkscape About Screen Contest Announced.

December 20, 2007 12:07 AM

Kottke’s Silkscreen Font on Open Font Library

This week has been crazy! First, I have been working on a couple of huge announcements for projects I manage at Creative Commons for CC’s 5th Birthday Party tomorrow (SAT) in SF (its free and freer). And, Lu and I have rented out our new place we got in SF and are going to spend the next few months in China getting that part of our lives settled.

And, on the side, Alex sent me over this cool little piece posted on the web by mihmo saying Jason Kottke had licensed his ever-so-popular Silkscreen font under the Open Font License and even better, he uploaded it to the Open Font Library. Cool!

Here is Kottke’s description of the Silkscreen font:

Silkscreen is best used in places where extremely small graphical display type is needed (duh!). The primary use is for navigational items (nav bars, menus, etc.). However, you can also use it for image captions and the like…wherever small type is needed. Silkscreen also works very well at large point sizes if you’re looking for that chunky, old school computer look so popular with the kids today.

In order to preserve the proper spacing and letterforms, Silkscreen should be used at 8pt. multiples (8pt., 16pt., 24pt., etc.) with anti-aliasing turned off. For larger text (larger than 64pt.), you can use whatever size you want without too much of a problem.

Check it out and use the site! It is the Open Clip Art Library’s sister site…please use it! And, don’t forget to upload your fonts and/or help make better free and open fonts from the ones already posted.

December 15, 2007 08:02 AM

Clipart of the Week

November 23, 2007 01:45 AM

New version of DiscLabel for Mac OS X comes bundled with 1300 OCAL images.

November 14, 2007 10:55 PM

Clipart of the Week

November 13, 2007 02:15 AM

Brilliant Submissions to Open Clip Art Library

I live in San Francisco and I try to keep up on the various metrics, searches, and so forth in my various involvements. I came across these beautiful vector graphics generated for San Francisco Arts Commission’s Art on Market Street Program by Steve Lambert.

In looking closer at these images, I noticed that Steve released them all into the public domain and uploaded ALL the assets to the Open Clip Art Library for ANYONE to use. Hats off to Steve and this is an open invitation for anyone to use these great images in your work!

This image is under a CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license by Steve Lambert.

Read more from Steve’s site:

Packard Jennings and Steve Lambert asked architects, city planners, and transportation engineers, “what would you do if you didn’t have to worry about budgets, beauracracy, politics, or physics?” Ideas from these conversations were then merged, developed, and perhaps mildly exaggerated by Steve and Packard to create a series of 6 posters for the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Art on Market Street Program.

6 foot tall by 4 foot wide giclee prints (Don’t let the postcard name fool ya, these are big)
6 designs, each in edition of 4 (24 total)

Steve and Packard would like to thank:
Peter Albert SF Municipal Transportation Agency
Prof. Nezar AlSayaad, Dept. of Architecture, UC Berkeley
Prof. Timothy P. Duane, Dept. of Architecture, UC Berkeley
Drew Howard, SF Muni Light Rail
John Peterson,, Public Architecture
Tom Radulovich, Livable City, BART
Seleta Reynolds, Fehr & Peeers

It looks like some great people worked on this project and it was also developed through the other great Creative Commons supporter, Eyebeam’s OpenLab.

UPDATE: Also, I should have noted that half of this work was done by Packard Jennings. A big thanks to him as a well and hopefully he will also release his parts to the Open Clip Art Library and into the public domain. CHeers!

November 12, 2007 10:13 PM