What does it really mean releasing an image on public domain, and how should one go about doing it?

An additional subset of the first question I really want to know is if whatever the benefits of a public domain image are, if they're applied to anyone anywhere, universally, or only to specific countries.

donom wrote:What does it really mean releasing an image on public domain, and how should one go about doing it?

AFAIK you simply mark as such once you make it public. Embed in it any metadata the format supports I also think would be wise. Though, once it's PD anything can be done with it. I think someone can even take ownership. I'm unsure there though.

donom wrote:An additional subset of the first question I really want to know is if whatever the benefits of a public domain image are, if they're applied to anyone anywhere, universally, or only to specific countries.

I'm unsure.

Personally, depending on your needs, I'd look at the CC Licenses.

donom wrote:I really want to know is if whatever the benefits of a public domain image are

Arguably, for you as an individual there is no benefit. But as a member of society, if you let anyone benefit from your work then you help that society grow and then you may benefit from that. It's like the people on this forum--they put their knowledge into the public domain. They could keep it to themselves but then the Inkscape community wouldn't grow.

Thanks for replying, guys. I'll try to look further into embedding metadata into images (I think I barely understand it in HTML to start with) and read up the CC website.

I don't imagine any of my creations would be as constructive as this and most other forums though. But it sure won't hurt trying to contribute. :p

There's a page in the document properties dialog for selecting licenses and adding metadata. Just fill in the boxes and inkscape should do the rest.

If you want your images to be free and to remain free try using a Creative Commons licence or the Free Art Licence http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en/. There are some guys over at the Open Art Network who are creating a licence too http://three.org/openart/

Creative Commons licenses are great if you want to share the final form of your image (such as a PNG or JPEG), and there are lots of neat ways to share them (such as metadata-embedding via CC Publisher or CC search options in major search engines like Yahoo and Google.

On the other hand, if you really want to maximize the ability for others to re-use your image, you should consider an Open Art License. This license gives all downstream users access to the source files as well as the final form (eg, PSD as well as JPEG, FLA as well as SWF). As an Inkscape user, you know how valuable the original version is, in terms of manipulating individual elements, layers, scale, etc.

In all these options you can choose terms--like noncommercial or sharealike--that restrict or prevent others from commercializing your image.

Good luck!