Hi everyone,
sorry if this has been discussed elsewhere. My search didn't turn up anything.

With the release of 2.4, Krita seems to be officially equipped with several brush presets created e. g. by David Revoy and Ramon Miranda. As far as I know, those resources are licenced under an attribution CC license, meaning that any artist using them in the creation of their work must give credit to whoever made the brush.

Apart from the fact that it would be next to impossible for me to remember each and every brush/preset I used during painting - shouldn't Krita at least give some information about this? Like, 'Dear artist, if you're using any of our presets, you need to give credit to the following people if you decide to distribute your work.'
A new user may not typically expect any legal duties arising from using the program's features.

But perhaps I'm just not up-to-date with the licensing issues.
Thanks for any thoughts and information you have about this!

Not sure here... I would think that if they are CC-BY, you would only need to give attribution if you were re-distributing the brushes themselves, or modifications of those brushes, rather than using the brushes to create artwork

Hi brettwmccoy,

thanks for the quick reply.

I have read this view elsewhere, too, but it doesn't seem to be very clear if a work created with the brushes (and thus containing the brushes) is a redistribution or not. Personally, I wouldn't want my artwork to be legally questionable, or even only in bad taste for not giving credit even though it's not legally necessary. Therefore I wouldn't want to use the presets at all (obviously very hard to achieve now in Krita).

But the point is, I feel there should at least be a warning of some sort, to make any new user aware of the situation.
Perhaps someone who was involved in integrating the brushes/presets has some inside information?

furryspider wrote: those resources are licenced under an attribution CC license

Hi, I'm David Revoy.
Chaos&Evolutions (brush kit only ) was released in Public Domain , or CC-0 after a short period in CC-By.

Read official license here :
http://www.davidrevoy.com/article29/fre ... evolutions

It was updated to make the inclusion easier in Gimp 2.7 and + / Krita 2.3 and + / GPS 1.5 and +
So , you can use them, modify , redistribute and even pretend it's your creation without any risk.

Hello David,
thanks for this update! I didn't realize the license had changed. This is a generous contribution on your part, and one that will make things much less complicated. Thank you very much!

You wouldn't happen to know if there are brushes included in Krita, e. g. by other artists, that are licensed differently? If I remember correctly, MyPaint used to group its brushes by their creator's names, but I couldn't find any such information in Krita.

Also, sorry if all this seems nitpicky or paranoid. I just think that liberal licenses (like CC) can only work if they are taken seriously, too.

We have the following Readme in krita/data about these resources:

The gbr, gih and vbr brushes and gpl palettes shipped with Krita come from
David Revoy's Chaos and Evolutions brush set and from Ramon Miranda's
Gimp Paint Studio project.

The distribution and the files are under the creative commons 3.0 attribution.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Attributed to: David REVOY | www.davidrevoy.com
Attributed to: Blender Foundation | www.blender.org

See also: http://www.ramonmiranda.com/2011/04/gim ... lease.html

Exception:

* You are free to use those palette files to draw / paint a commercial project without attributing.
* You can show them in a screenshot of your workflow or in a video screencast freely without attributing.
* You can show them in your school if you are a teacher or a student and do a presentation about on a CMYK ( paper / print ) support or a RVB ( video / Internet / presentation / Tv ) without attributing.
* If you are a developer of an open source software, you can use them for the default preset in your code for your software without attributing.

boudewijn wrote:Exception:

* You are free to use those palette files to draw / paint a commercial project without attributing.
* You can show them in a screenshot of your workflow or in a video screencast freely without attributing.
* You can show them in your school if you are a teacher or a student and do a presentation about on a CMYK ( paper / print ) support or a RVB ( video / Internet / presentation / Tv ) without attributing.
* If you are a developer of an open source software, you can use them for the default preset in your code for your software without attributing.

Yes, those were the exceptions I found on David's site a while ago, if I remember correctly. I didn't find the same exceptions for Ramon Miranda's resources, though (at least the main GPS site doesn't mention them).

But let me make sure I understand the situation right:
* Presently, there are two sets of resources incorporated in Krita, one by David, another one by Ramon.
* Considering what David wrote above, both sets now have different licensing (CC-0 and CC-by-sa).
* There's no way for a (new) user to know whose resources he's employing (except doing manual research for each brush he intends to use).
* If he's using Ramon's stuff, he must give credit and licence his work under CC as well, honouring CC-by-sa.
* A (new) user may be totally unaware of all this. Unless he's the type to read text files in the doc area of his directory structure, he will remain so and may publish his work without giving credits.

Is this correct? Or am I sliding in naysayer mode too much?

Hi furryspider,

Sorry for the late answer, I'm just back from LGM where I couldn't find the time to follow what's happening online

So actually about the new default bushes/presets pack , I did the pack , with all details in my blog here:
http://timotheegiet.com/blog/illust/new ... a-2-4.html

Basically, I worked in collaboration with David and Ramon to gather the best from our presets, then tweaked them where needed, redid all icons to be consistent, and renamed them in an organised tagged way.

And so yes it's totally free to reuse, I'd say they have the same GNU GPL license as Krita as a part of it.

(we didn't discuss precisely this with david and ramon, but I suppose that was a logic thing to have such free license and that they agree…)

Hi Animtim,
thanks for this information, and also for the work you put in the nice and cleaned up brush/preset pack!

It is this quote that still keeps me a bit uneasy:

Animtim wrote:(we didn't discuss precisely this with david and ramon, but I suppose that was a logic thing to have such free license and that they agree…)

Ramon writes on the GPS site:

Ramon Miranda wrote:GPS is only a starting point for presets and brushes and is intended to highlight the expansive flexibility of GIMP. It is also intended as a way to learn from and share with each other within the GIMP community. That is why GPS comes with the Creative Commons license.

He seems to favour the share-alike idea over the public domain approach.
Also, if you say the brush content has a GPL like license, it would also follow that a work created with the tools has to be licenced similarily, just as a program using a GPL library has to be GPL'd as well.

The latter may indeed be the intended approach. But this would be radically different from other graphic applications, where the artist can freely decide which license to use for his work.

At any rate, I feel there should be a clear, up-to-date and documented licensing statement from all artists who have contributed brushes, patterns or whatever, and, if some content requires credits or precludes commercial use, the program should present this information to the user, who may not be expecting that kind of thing.

I'm not a lawyer, but I would argue that an image is not a derivative of the brushes so the image wouldn't be under GPL. They are also not embedded in the image. Just like the license of Krita isn't applied to an image that you paint with Krita.

Of course an image made with the brushes is not a derivative, and doesn't need to share the license.
Like if you use a font on a text, this text doesn't need to share the font license (it would be crazy)
There's a difference between the tools and the contents produced with these tools

Also about the quote that worries you, I've then discussed about it with David, who confirmed me GPL is no problem, and that he already discussed such thing with Ramon and that he shared the same opinion… So now I can say for sure it's ok!

I'm not a legal person myself, but I don't think the GPL says anything about the 'assembled form' of the brush (which is the thing we'd use in Krita), but only about the stuff it is made up of (the code, e. g. of a preset). So if you use a GPL'd brush as a template for a new brush, your new brush must be GPL'd too.

The content, on the other hand, is a matter of copyright, which is retained by the creator, who can choose to make his work (the brush) available to others under certain usage conditions, e. g. a CC license. If no such use terms are specified, it remains unknown if and how the brush may be used by others. By choosing CC-0 (public domain) for his brush set, David made it clear that anyone may use the brushes for their work without having to give credit / pay fees / whatever.

Animtim wrote:Of course an image made with the brushes is not a derivative, and doesn't need to share the license.
Like if you use a font on a text, this text doesn't need to share the font license (it would be crazy)

Right, the use terms of a font usually don't make demands on the license of your document. But you may not be allowed to publish/distribute/mass-print your neatly font-formatted document without paying fees to the font vendor.

I think the question whether a painting is considered 'a work based upon' the brushes is at the core of the issue. Afaik there are different views on this. It may also depend on the kind of image you create, e. g. how clearly a brush is visible in its original form. Ultimately, it is a legal question with an uncertain answer.

Of course, I may be way off here and severely too nitpicky. Am I getting on your nerves yet?
But I do think this issue is worth clarifying, even if it's just in a textfile within the code repo containing statements from the artists.

I understand your concerns furryspider, however, IANAL* and I still can see why the license of the brushes is irrelevant to the license of one's finished work.

Many propietary programs come with a long list of presets and brushes, they have very draconian licenses that do not let you do anything with the software without their explicit permission; however, have you seen anyone ask if they can use their brushes for finished pieces?, No, we all take them for granted, because they are simply brushes. Even if all you do is placing a single "dab" of a brush on the canvas, it's not copyright infringement. The preset is a configuration setting, not a bitmap; and even if it includes a bitmap, the bitmap is part of the configuration setting, not a work of art that could be considered original or special and unique enough to be copyrighted. I don't know about copyright law in other countries, but in mine, if something is doesn't have anything distinctive about it (is original, is special, is evokative, etc), it cannot even be copyrighted, it's just generic.

Brushes are brushes, you paint with them. In real life, you use brushes to paint, and you don't worry about about the rights of the brushmaker. In the proprietary digital world, we don't worry either, despite their draconian license terms. Why your worry then, furryspider?.

* I Am Not A Lawyer

furryspider wrote:He seems to favour the share-alike idea over the public domain approach.
Also, if you say the brush content has a GPL like license, it would also follow that a work created with the tools has to be licenced similarily, just as a program using a GPL library has to be GPL'd as well.

I'm sorry to double post but I feel the compulsion to correct a mistake here.
No, it does not follow.
The program created using a GPL library _needs to be linked to it_. In other words, the library becomes part of the program.
Do you attach brushes to your work?, Does your finished piece contain the Brush Preset File itself?, No. Both cases are different, they are not similar, the analogy does not follow.

furryspider wrote:At any rate, I feel there should be a clear, up-to-date and documented licensing statement from all artists who have contributed brushes, patterns or whatever, and, if some content requires credits or precludes commercial use, the program should present this information to the user, who may not be expecting that kind of thing.

The artists already describe the license with which they released their brush packages. It doesn't require you to credit them, except for derivative works.
Even harshly licensed software doesn't claim ownership of the work you create using it, and under the copyright law of my country (Chile, which is very similar to that of most of Europe), a painting made with a digital brush does NOT qualify as a derivative work of the brush; I'm almost sure it doesn't in the USA either (it'd be really a long stretch).

This is also the reason why I think any brush package that requires you to credit the person who created it is a useless package. It is akin to an art supply manufacturer requiring every artist to credit them for using their products:
"Thank you Pilot(tm), Bic(tm), and Van Gogh(tm) for making my work possible!."
I wonder if it's even legal to demand someone to credit you for using your brushes.

Hi Pentalis,

thanks for your thoughts!

I agree that much of the argument seems overly anal and constructed. I myself, even though I've created the thread, am not enjoying this discussion at all. However, as someone who is respectful of other's whishes for the intended use of their works, and who'd like to post his own stuff in several places around the internet expecting the same kind of respect, I'd like to know what I can and can't do as clearly as possible.

Concerning the presets, I agree with you that they are just sets of config options that don't constitute themselves an original copyrightable work. I believe though that it may be different for brushes, textures and the like.

I think we're dealing with three questions:
1. Is a brush an original work of art?
2. Does an image made by using a brush count as containing the brush?
3. Is an image that contains the brush a derivative work?

Pentalis wrote:Many propietary programs come with a long list of presets and brushes, they have very draconian licenses that do not let you do anything with the software without their explicit permission [...]

I never owned a proprietary art program, with the exception of a Photoshop Elements 1 OEM version some 10 years ago or so. I haven't read all the small print, but my expectation would be that the permission for use and certain redistribution of the bundled resources (brushes etc) is included in the license acquired with the purchase (or registration) of the program.

I'm pointing back to the font example. Similar to a brush, the font is just a tool for me to create something. It may get embedded in a PDF file I put on my website, just a helper facility to get my message across. However, if I happen to use a font by one of the big font licensing corporations, I'm usually _not allowed_ to distribute it, and can therefore not publish my PDF file without acquiring an appropriate license.

Pentalis wrote:Even if all you do is placing a single "dab" of a brush on the canvas, it's not copyright infringement.

How do you know this? Can you point to a legal decision backing this statement?
I think this is a most important point in this discussion: If some artist has created a brush using his own artwork, and I create an image in which I use this brush in such a way that the original artwork is depicted more or less plainly, why should it not be considered a reproduction of the other artist's work? Sure, many brushes don't constitute a work of art worthy of the name, but in the case of the excellent brushes made by David and Ramón, I think they are indeed original artworks.

I also don't think that your comparison to a 'hardware' brush works well, as the artistic value of the brush's imprint (which in itself is flexible and changing with a multitude of parameters) is probably not high enough to be considered an own work of art. That's different for a digital brush, where the 'brush tip' is an image created by someone else. And expanding our body of tools a bit, I could probably not, in good conscience, create an image on canvas made up of imprints of a certain 'hardware' seal stamp without crediting the artist who made the stamp.

Pentalis wrote:Does your finished piece contain the Brush Preset File itself?, No.

Correct, it does not contain the presets. But it contains the _artwork_ portion of the brush. Assuming that the brush is artistically valuable enough to be copyrighted, and assuming the author has chosen a license that requires credit for derivative works (not derivative of the preset, but of the actual brush appearance), you'd have to pass along a line of credit to the brush maker every time you publish your new image. I'm not a lawyer either, but in order not to need one some day, that's what I'd assume.

Pentalis wrote:Even harshly licensed software doesn't claim ownership of the work you create using it[...]

True: they don't claim ownership of your work. But providers of resources may prohibit you from freely publishing your work if you don't buy a license from them for what they consider their 'contribution' to it. See the font example. Not saying that this applies to David or Ramón, but in general, I think digital artists should be considerate about the possible strings that might be attached to their tools, and so should the creators of free/libre artistic software.

Pentalis wrote:[...] I think any brush package that requires you to credit the person who created it is a useless package.

I feel exactly the same way.
However, such a requirement might be okay for others. My point is that it should be clearly stated if and when giving credit is required.

So coming back to the questions above:
1. Depends. Some sure are.
2. Probably depends also, but for many, if not most, brushes and textures, I think it does. Ultimately, this is a judge's decision.
3. Also hard to say for a non-lawyer. If I want to be on the safe side, I'll assume a 'yes' here.

To make a long story short: Given the currently available information in conjunction with the licensing terms of some of the resources bundled with Krita, neither you nor me can say _for sure_ if crediting is required or not.

That is, of course, only my personal view, which may be entirely wrong. And I'd just love it if somebody could actually prove that I'm wrong on this.