I'm in the process of redeveloping the website for a webcomic I draw using Inkscape. One of the features I'd like to include is a link which people can follow to download the original SVG version of each comic strip.

I'd like to use inkscape.file.png as the icon for that link, but I'm not sure whether doing that would violate Inkscape's license. Can anybody help me clear this up?

Thanks.

Hi theyranos,
I found this in Help menu > About Inkscape > License tab: "GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE" - a nice long read! So that might be something to look into, while waiting for others who are more informed about this. I know a few members here put out web comics, and at least one in particular offers the SVG file, like you want to. So if no one else, I'll bet he'll have your answer

I can interpret the GPLv2 either way with respect to that particular file.

Either: using it in that way makes my website a derived work of inkscape.file.png, and I have to release my website under the terms of the GPLv2, which I'd prefer not to do because of the ASP loophole.

Or: inkscape.file.png is not part of my site, but rather just a file served by my site, so while I have to also provide inkscape.file.svg to comply with GPLv2, there are no implications regarding my own site's license.

I honestly don't expect anybody's going to come after me over this, but Inkscape is awesome and I don't want to offend the developers in any way.

Explicit permission is probably the best route anyway. Anybody know how to get in touch with the actual copyright holder(s)?

brynn wrote: I know a few members here put out web comics, and at least one in particular offers the SVG file, like you want to. So if no one else, I'll bet he'll have your answer

I guess that might be me!

We make the Inkscape SVG files for our comic available for download for a few reasons:

• To encourage people to download, and experiment with, Inkscape
• To give Inkscape users - especially new ones - something to dissect and learn from
• To allow people to modify the comics, according to the CC license - which we hope will eventually lead to a few more translations
• To promote the use of SVG as a format. The more SVG files are out there, the more incentive there is for browsers to do a good job with them, or Google to index them
• It lets us hide quite extensive Easter Eggs in a number of different ways (off canvas elements, hidden layers, Javascript code, and so on) other than the usual ALT-text or extra image that you get with some comics

Because a couple of our Easter Eggs require the files to be opened in a browser to trigger Javascript code, we didn't want to label our files as specifically "Inkscape", but rather as "SVG" (but with plenty of references to Inkscape throughout the site). As such we decided to use the official W3C logo for SVG:

http://www.w3.org/2009/08/svg-logos.html

If you want to see it in situ, visit any of our comic pages and the download link is at the bottom of the commentary text. It also gets called out in our key on the left of the site.

I'm not sure what you mean by "inkscape.file.png"? Do you mean the Inkscape logo (mountain and spilled ink), the one that's seen on this forum's header? Or here:

Either: using it in that way makes my website a derived work of inkscape.file.png,

"inkscape.file.png" seems to refer to Inkscape, the program?

Aside from that, though, this appears at the top of the GNU General Public License, to which I referred you already:

"Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA"