LGM

10-14 April, meaning right now, in Madrid is taking place the Libre Graphics Meeting conference, is the biggest event getting together developers working on and designers using Free and Open Source graphic tools. Is a very good conference with program packed with presentations, workshops and various meetings, making this community feel like a big family.

Unfortunately this year a conjuncture of various live evens keeps me away from the conference and friends there, but I hope to meet them again at the next edition taking place in Europe (it will be a while until then). Have the best of fun and some fruitful time!

#FREEBASSEL

Have you ever used the Open Clip Art Library or the Open Font Library? Both of those sites are powered by the Aiki framework, which was used with openclipart.org as its primary target. The main developer behind Aiki is Bassel Khartabil and he is in need of our help, being detained in Syria.

Bassel by Joi Ito, on Flickr

His friends launched #FREEBASSEL, a global effort to gather information and leverage that will help lead to his release, here's a quote from the campaign website:

On March 15, 2012, Bassel Khartabil was detained in a wave of arrests in the Mazzeh district of Damascus. Since then, his family has received no official explanation for his detention or information regarding his whereabouts. However, his family has recently learned from previous detainees at the security branch of Kafer Sousa, Damascus, that Bassel is being held at this location.

Myself, I have little faith (none at all in fact) in dictatorships like the Syrian one but I signed the petition, think is a worthy cause and invite you to join. Solidarity is the best thing we can have in such situations.

I didn't knew Bassel directly, we exchanged mails on the OCAL mailing list, but I used his work, both as an contributor and used of both OCAL and OFL. But even if I didn't knew him, for crying out loud, he was detained 4 months ago and nobody, not even his family, have any info. That's not acceptable.

The dice, the manga and the anime

I am not sure: the world is small after all or the little things we do really change it, even if a tiny bit. Either of those should be true.

Last week-end I was (with my camera, of course) at Nijikon, the anime convention taking place every October in Bucharest: there was cosplay, manga, anime, plush toys, really many things. And while wandering around searching for some photographer's prey, I noticed a wheel of fortune improvised at a manga booth:

Something there looked familiar, but I wasn't sure about it and had no way to verify it on the spot. In the evening, I was really tired arriving home, and forgot to check, so the next day couldn't ask the guys about it the second day, I checked only after the event ended:

Yup, the dice image is part of my Free clipart collection - one of my first drawings with Inkscape, made many years ago, so it looks quite weak, but still they found it useful.

Thise clipart images somehow managed to leave home, make a trip to California and return home by the way of the manga. Yes, the world is small.

For cosplay pics, I am sure my readers know where to look :p

Clipart spotting: 2D Photography

Not sure how many of my readers remember how excited I was half a year ago when I spotted on YoutTube one of my clipart images being used by the Marina (very few probably know she did it again and again and she even blogged about it - awesome!). Today is one of those days again: a friend of mine wanted to make my day brighter by showing a funny photography-related Rube Goldberg machine and watching it I spotted something familiar: go to the 3:21 minute and notice a little cardboard rocket moving... it is my Public Domain rocket clipart, part of my free clipart collection, an image for which I even wrote an Inkscape tutorial.

Not sure about the total number of views, but only on YouTube the video has over 430.000 views so far, so I guess I made the world a tiny bit better. Then why do I feel so crappy?

The Moods Project

Moods is my latest free graphic project and in a long while the first not linked to openclipart.or of Fedora Design (from the first i am on extended leave and from the second on temporary strike). What is this project? Is best described with a quote from its own page:

This project started after I noticed myself saying a lot "pics or it didn't happen" so the idea was obvious: make a drawing, based on my free clipart images, to illustrate this classic line and then just pass a link to it. Obviously, as everything I do, it had to be Free and shared with the world. The next logical step was to develop it by adding additional mood images, which is a never-ending work, fuelled by own mood but also by the feedback received and the usage level, so use the images and it will be an incentive for me to add more.

Of course, it is made with Inkscape and SVG sources are really easy to get hold of if you know where to look (or know my working style). And sorry, but CreativeCommons made me reinvent the wheel with the license.

Clipart spotting: HotForWords

I do watch constantly a single one YouTube channel, HotForWords where the "teacher" Marina Orlova has weekly lessons about the origins and meanings of various English words, made in a funny style, with a very cute Russian accent and sometime with a sexy blond wig. The show has millions of viewers, is really popular.

Today I was effectively floored seeing in the latest video one of my clipart images, a pencil (used there to illustrate the term "-graphy", "write") appearing suddenly on the screen (around minute 1:19). I have no idea it was taken directly from my clipart collection or from OCAL, but this does not matter, my day is already a lot better see how my Inkscape made, Public Domain released, clipart is used in my favorite show and going to be seen by millions. In an episode about the origins of the word "porn", no less. I feel like I made a difference.

Update: minutes after I published this, here is a folow-up on Marina'a blog. Thanks a lot.

Creative Commons retiring the Public Domain dedication

I strongly believe in not re-inventing the wheel, not only in the technical parts but also in licensing, this is why I use and promote Creative Commons licenses (despite their flaws) and this is why I supported using the Creative Commons definition of Public Domain for projects like the Open Clip Art Library. And it worked well for a while.Until Creative Commons was unhappy with the Public Domain dedication, probably not branded enough for their taste and for their need for attention, and "invented" a replacement, CC0, which was received not as warmly as they hoped.

Now we are at a new milestone: Creative Commons is retiring their Public Domain definition, they leave many of us, users of their licenses, in the dust, with only two options: embrace their new CC0 license or use a scary Public Domain Mark, plastered with "not recommended" disclaimers. Take the poison of your choice! That much for trust and continued services... I had better expectation from a community project.

Now projects like OCAL are at a crossroad, having to decide a way forward. People like me are also in trouble: I used the PD dedication quite a lot to share many resources, now I have to update some of my websites and not sure how... I can see two ways:

• write my own dedication, as much as I hate re-inventing the wheel and writing one
• use a more restrictive license, that will harm my users and the usefulness of the shared items

. There is one thing that is guaranteed I won't do: migrate to CC0... on top of the objections I had before, now I feel Creative Commons betrayed me. And for betrayal, there is no forgiveness.

Icons uploaded

After a well deserved delay, I uploaded, complete with SVG sources, the Public Domain Event icon set made for WorldLabel.com to the Open Clip Art Library and also to my own clipart collection, download them from any of those sources, they are equally Free.

At least this circle is closed.

Events icon set released

The icon set for events, holidays and occasions is available for free download.

Creating icons is not my primary field of expertise, I know about it enough to understand how hard it is, so I am contributing only a tiny bit to desktop icons, but when WorldLabel.com asked for this set targeted at web use I happily accepted, knowing I won't have to struggle with pixel optimization as such awful sizes as 16x16 and 24x24, but I can focus on the thinks I like: metaphors and shapes. Added bonus was the freedom: the set is truly free, released under the Public Domain (this is an experience we learned from the Open Clip Art Library), so people can use them absolutely as they like. In a couple of weeks the images will also hit the library as well as my own clipart collection.

The icons were created with Inkscape 0.47, assembled into collages with GIMP 2.7.1 (beta), all under Fedora 13. They will be available as PNGs rendered at various resolutions as well as sources in SVG.

I propose two games, please participate to them in the comments below:

• look at the images, understand the metaphor and guess the event/holiday/occasion they are intended for
• name your favorite - bet you like some more than the others, I saw very divergent opinions, let's make a top!

And, of course, do not forget to go to WorldLabel.com and download the good stuff.

LGM 2010, Last Day

The last day of any conference is lighter on content, so that was also the case with Libre Graphics Meeting, but it still had a couple of presentations (albeit, they were not very technical):

And a panel discussion:

And plenties of "thank you" for everybody: participants, speakers, sponsors, crew, etc. (now is my turn to say thanks to Femke and the rest of the team):

And we had a last lunch with the leftover from the previous days (real food, here I come!)

And the conference ended formally with a planning session for the next year:

But of course we said goodbyes, took photos, daid goodbies, shaked hands, said goodbyes, sometime hugged, said goodbyes:

and said goodbyes again for maybe the million time:

And if that was not enough, got in the city for the evening with a new round of goodbyes:

LGM 2010, Day 3

The third day of LGM was a tough one, I wasn't able to write about it at the end of the day (still, I managed well, some of us not only overslept, but AFAIK they are still sleeping now), so here I am, on the conference room, listening to Rejon' presentation and doing my blogging...

The day started with quite a cultural shock for me, didn't expected to see such a bazaar on the streets of the Western Europe:

But back at the conference... the highlight of the day for me was the opportunity to listen to presentation from I people who I respect for a long time and learned a lot from, Jimmac talked (unfortunately a bit too general) about creating icons with Inkscape:

Alexandre Prokoudine presented a free solution for digital photography;

And AndyFitz making the audience enthusiastic with his Inkscape world domination talk:

It was also the day for the traditional group photo, where everyone was invited (it was a bit rainy outside, but we didn't really care):

Late in the night we went to the movies: the Blender team gave us a preview of their upcoming animation film, Sintel and the audience was charmed (I will deny any rumour about someone sneaking a pocket camera, recording [pirating?] everything [while the developers looked the other way and putting their fingers in the ears to not hear anything about pirating] and planning to release it on the net)

And of course, we partied late in the night with the Blender/Project Durian people, why else would be so hammered in the morning?

LGM, day 0.5

Continuing the story from where I left, we finally meet Pierros and inevitably went for the Delirium experience where we got Martin Delirium devirginated.

Then, after a night of profound sleep (not sure about the others, they choose softer beers but I gradually went from 8% to 9% anf 10.5%) we reached in the morning the LGM location, De Pianofabriek

Here Pierros got almost out of control with making customised buttons (more on that later, I hope):

And then the conference began:

Now I'm off to work, have to do some small tweaks to the Fedora presentation that will be delivered later today, around 17:00.

OCAL 2.0: Finally, an usable Open Clip Art Library

This is new and awesome: the new interface for the Open Clip Art Library is at least what we waited for all those 6 years since the project was founded. Not the images can be browsed visually (can you imagine an image gallery lacking such feature? OCAL was it...)

The site is powered now by Aiki Framework, a "a new and flexible PHP+MYSQL platform that allows designers and programmers to easily create and work with content management systems from the web" (quote from the press release).

Actually, I think is not very accurate to call it "OCAL 2.0", I think it should more like "3.0", the 1.0 version was the mess put together by us at first that compromised freedesktop.org a few years ago (that happens if you force artist types code :D), then 2.0 was ccHost, that was not really intended for images but for music and now we have a third version which is something usable... hmmmm, I can think about a big software company in Redmond which is famous for having its products usable only starting with the third version, it must be just a coincidence :D

Now I think I should upload some more clipart...

10by10by10: Support LGM2010!

I am in a hurry, working on some cool (for myself!) stuff which I will probably write about in a couple of days, so I will reproduce the announcement verbatim:

The Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM) is the annual working conference for free software graphics application users and developers. The fifth edition takes place 27-30 May 2010 in Brussels, Belgium. Teams from GIMP, Inkscape, Blender, Krita, Scribus, Hugin, Open Font Library and many other graphics projects gather to improve their software and discuss new ideas for interoperability and shared standards.

LGM2010 has launched a fundraising campaign called 10by10by10 to raise $10,000 USD from grants, $10K from corporations and $10K from the community. The funds raised from granting organizations, public, and corporate partners will allow participants who have no other means of sponsoring their travel to Brussels to attend the event.

Please contribute to the community campaign at: http://pledgie.com/campaigns/8926

All donations are tax deductible for US taxpayers. For larger donations from corporations and individuals, you can contact us directly at lgm AT gnome DOT org

This year we may have a healthy Fedora presence at the event... I should look into details and see if I can call that a FAD.

Some FOSDEM 2010 photos

Now that I can see beyond the snow is time to follow the Day -1 with more photos showing what happened during the event.

Travelling with a sponsorship from Mozilla (thank you guys a lot!) and being a rabid Fedora fanboy I shared my time between the Mozilla room and the Fedora booth:


And hanged with people from both communities:


Also, had the opportunity to take part in a planning for the upcoming Libre Graphics Meeting, where it looks like the Fedora Design Team will have a good presence:

It was impressive how many people have attended, many presentations had the rooms jam-packed, with more people in the audience than seats available:

Being there with two groups, one night I partied with the Mozilla people (food, drinks, bowling and laser tag):


And the other with my Fedora friends (food, drinks, jokes, photography)


I don't know from which project they were, but some people seems they had partier even harder than us:

It was not all fun, jokes and trying to impress girls:

I even managed to get some work done (if you can call that work):

Oh, the irony! Take better care of your avatar...

I had the laugh of the day (of the week?) when bmbogdan showed me this:

I found it very funny and ironic when you take your current avatar/hackergotchi, delete the Fedora logo from his T-shirt, submit the SVG as Public Domain to the Open Clip Art Library for everyone to use it freely and it ends as an illustration to an article about photo managers in Ubuntu. That's sharing! Lets all hold hands and sing "Kumbaya".

Note: the guy has NOT a happy face, maybe because of the GIMP removal? (he definitely looks like a pro)

Inkscape 0.47

Even if this is pretty much a non-event for us, Fedora users who can make use of the development builds since before F11 (half a year ago), it is still a milestone and the developers deserve congratulation for releasing at last the new and feature packed Inkscape 0.47 (could you endure the wait?).

I for one can't endure such waiting, so I am glad I use Fedora and be on the bleeding edge.

This is a small world

This morning when going to work I somehow noticed (I usually don't look for such things) this small poster glued on the wall of a building close to my office (less than 50 meters away):

Noting out of the extraordinary, some small firm advertising for pet services, but what drew my attention was the drawing in the top-right corner with a dog head. It was looking familiar, as it is one of my drawings published at the Open Clip Art Library and it made my day!

I made it years ago, exercising original drawing made with the mouse, so the result is not great, but I submitted it to the library anyway, as I do with all my drawings which are not made for a specific project. And I found awesome how a little graphic contributed to an international project found its way back to a few meters away of me. Either the world is very small or what we are doing is really useful for the people.

Now to be honest, I can't say for sure if the image is taken from openclipart.org, from my own website, where the images are also available, or from one of the many other websites redistributing, grace to the PD dedication, the openclipart.org content. But this is irrelevant, the goal was achieved.

PS: is not wise to base your company logo on Public Domain clipart, but for very small companies this is not a real problem, they don't have real branding.