Template talk:Free screenshot

Add this to autotag list

When you upload images, you get the list for licensing. In the Software section, this should be added.

Not a copyright tag

If another copyright tag is needed -- "which should be indicated beside this notice" -- then this is not an image copyright tag. This template should be replaced with just a category membership. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 18:20, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

What if a line to state the license was added, like there is in commons:Template:Free_screenshot? -Fadookie ^Talk 07:46, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Done. –EdC 01:12, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Just a Question: Website Screenshot Copyright Tags

This is real quick, but how come wikipedia doesn't have a copyright template for a website screenshot. Like lets say I want to upload a screenshot of a website like NFL.com. What do I do then for all the logos and things in the big screenshot? D3ed3eded23 03:58, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Left alignment

Please keep all copyright templates as left-aligned to keep uniformity. Wikinger 09:01, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Intent?

I don't understand the intent of these tags.

I don't see how the output of any program (including screenshots of algorithmically generated graphical output) has anything to do with the license of the source code that produced it.

In some cases, possibly many cases, the graphical elements of a program may not even be released under a similar license as the source code For example, Second Life, has GPL source and creative commons GUI images, and potentially all rights reserved work displayed in-world. A more common example might be a screen shot of a open source web browser, rebranded with an ISPs trade dress, displaying a copyrighted web page.

Additionally, the BSD tag seems to assert a copyright assignment to the uploader just because a screen shot was of a BSD-licensed program. I'm sure quite a few programmers that release their work under BSD would have a problem with that assertion.

I think the idea of these templates is flawed, as the issues involved are way too complex and program-specific to make these sorts of sweeping assumptions about the copyright of a screenshot image.

Gigs 23:30, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

The BSD template does indeed need work. However, the point of this template is to try and explain the relationship between the source code license and the screenshot license. Screenshots are derivative works of the source code and thus fall under the same license. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 00:31, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

"Screenshots are derivative works of the source code".... Since when? The output of a program is not a derived work of the program. If that were true, programs compiled in gcc would be forced to be released under the GPL. Gigs —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 23:39, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Screenshots aren't the "output" of the program in that sense; they're a static representation of the program's interface. In a screenshot showing an interface, all the copyrightable content typically arises from the work of the program's (and possibly GUI toolkit's) designers. EdC 07:46, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Even if that is the case, I still object to this template on the grounds that the interface and content displayed may very well be under a different license than the work that is illustrated by it. As I said above, Second Life uses Creative Commons GUI artwork with a GPLed client. Notepad might be displaying a copyrighted ebook. Photoshop might display a copyrighted image. A BSD licensed program may well use a LGPL licensed GUI Tool Kit. I really question the usefulness of tagging things this way. It seems prone to cause confusion. Gigs 06:40, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, in such cases clearly the template would not be appropriate. Perhaps some clarification would be in order - do you have any actual instances to hand of this template being misused in such a way?

In general, though, any content displayed within a screenshot should be replaceable with a public-domain, uncopyrightable (e.g. lorem ipsum) or license-compatible alternative - unless the content is the main subject of the screenshot, in which case it could be decoupled from copyrightable user interface elements. EdC 21:12, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

(deindent) Hm. You may have a point. Looking at Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Free_screenshot (transclusions only) there are quite a few instances of misuse:

• Image:Reco spam.png - GPL interface, but Apache License content not tagged
• Image:Asvaboy.jpg - proprietary icons, unknown desktop background (will tag for deletion)
• Image:Kompare.png - GPL interface, but GFDL content not tagged

That's just on the first two pages, (of about 20 transclusions, I think). [1] (also Commons) has:

Note: if the screenshot shows any work that is not a direct result of the program code itself, such as a text or graphics that are not part of the program, the license for that work must be indicated separately.

We should probably include that or similar. EdC 21:40, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Have proactively added such, crediting Commons in comment. Have tagged free-content images above, and ifd'd the other. EdC 22:20, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for looking into this. My main concern was that these templates might mislead people, and must be used very carefully if they are going to be used at all. Gigs 21:40, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Please don't add "no license" tags by default

For a while recently, this template would automatically apply a {{no license}} tag if no license parameter was given. This seems to have caused OrphanBot to tag any images using this template without parameters for deletion, even if they had a valid separate license tag. As a result, Image:Kolourpaint-screenshot.png, for example, actually got deleted despite being clearly tagged as BSD-licensed (I've undeleted it now). Given that the license parameter for this template used to be considered optional until quite recently, I'd like to strongly suggest that people refrain from adding such "clever hacks" in the future, at least not without consulting with Carnildo and the operators of other image tagging bots first to prevent such problems reoccurring. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:08, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry a properly licensed image got deleted, you should talk to the deleting admin about that, but this tag has been heavily abused, and that little hack helped root out several dozen mistagged images. It was quite deliberate to use that tag so that OrphanBot would come by, that way all uploaders where warned in advance. Now that most of the "legacy" iamges are hopefully cleaned out I see no reason not to have this template apply {{no license}} by default on new images it's added to. Or better yet we could just get rid of this pointles template and actualy have people apply the apropriate license tag directly... --Sherool (talk) 09:04, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

People applying a proper license tag directly, rather than through this template, is what got us into this mess to begin with. (It wasn't just one properly licensed image, by the way. I've been going through OrphanBot's deleted contribs and undeleting any free screenshots that did have a proper license tag: so far I've done about 30, and that's just because I got tired and mostly undeleted just the ones that actually were used in articles. There's several dozen more waiting. I do admit it caught a couple of incorrectly tagged ones too. And yes, I've been meaning to have a word with Quadell about that...) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:30, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

What I mean is that a lot of people seem to have been under the impression that this is a valid "stand alone" license tag (and I guess it might have been intended as that in the start). I think there would be less confution overall if we just depreciated this tag, and just manualy removed it form the images and replaced it with the apropriate licnese tag and just add the extra category directly to the image. There are only about 480 images using it. I could go though that in a couple of days myself, just want to make sure I'm not mass reverted if I try... --Sherool (talk) 16:28, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

The template exists on Commons, and we probably should keep it if only for the sake of harmonization. In fact, I'd rather support making the local version exactly like the one on Commons (except English-only). Anyway, I'm not sure where you've seen "a lot of people" using this template without a license tag; certainly, among the incorrectly deleted one I've reviewed, I've only seen two or three images like that. (By far the most common combination I saw was "{{free screenshot}} {{GPL}}".) Anyway, I tend to feel that the proper way of handling such cases is not by template hackery, but simply by having a bot tag images that lack proper license tags (of which this isn't one). A bot can do things that template syntax cannot, such as looking at an image page and observing that it indeed lacks a license. In fact, I think OrphanBot does this already. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 06:49, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Yeah I guess... I removed it from the list of license tags though seeing as it isn't one. I think that was part of the problem. It has been listed as an "any purpose" copyright license tag for quite a while, and it's probably on OrphanBot's "whitelist" too... --Sherool (talk) 07:41, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Multiple licenses

Unless I'm mistaken (I might well be), this template does not allow for the inclusion of multiple licenses. Often programs are released under multiple free licenses, and this template should have the functionality to display them. --Storkk (talk) 15:52, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Try {{Free screenshot|license={{GPL}}{{LGPL}}}}. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 20:10, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Non-free artwork in a free (GPL) game

There's a couple screeshots of OpenTTD that are tagged with this template. However, since they use non-free images (from the original Transport Tycoon Deluxe game), they need an additional license. The most reasonable template I've seen is Template:Non-free game screenshot. However, that one implies that the game/software is non-free, which is clearly not the case. Is there a template that I can use for non-free artwork in a free (GPL) game? Andareed (talk) 08:02, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Does it rely matter? Non-free content rendered by GPL software is still non-free, there is no difference in the way the image can be used on Wikipedia. Just tag it as non-free screenshot if you are worried about the text on the tag not fitting 100% just put some additional explanation and stuff as plain text in the summary. Having a seperate tag for "non-free content rendered by free licensed software" would just add more complexity and potential confution to the mix IMHO. --Sherool (talk) 20:32, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Template Parameter requests

There's a non-free software screen shot template, and no free software template. I'm sure there's other cases/subcategories that could be used Either new templates for sub categories need to be created, or there needs to be parameters added to allow distinguishing it, unless this template is actually "free software screen shot", and the software part was just omitted. ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 01:16, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

License migration change

{{edit protected}} {{{license|{{{1|{{#if:{{{template|}}}|{{{{{template}}}}}|{{red|Warning: }} should be changed to {{{license|{{{1|{{#if:{{{template|}}}|{{ {{{template}}}|migration={{{migration|}}} }}|{{red|Warning: }}. See Commons:Template:Free_screenshot for an example. multichill (talk) 18:06, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

 Done —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:37, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Replace image

File:BSD daemon ANSI.png has been deleted. Administrators, replace the file with this one (File:Beastie_ANSI.png):

File:Beastie ANSI.png

¨¨¨¨ 1337: 7H3 6U713RR3Z ¨¨¨¨ (talk) 23:34, 24 November 2009 (UTC)