I was reminded about this while looking at Help & Manual's Wikipedia article, which is illustrated with the screenshot below. The image has to be illegibly small to satisfy Wikipedia's rules for non-free software screenshots. It turns out that most proprietary software comes with restrictions about how screenshots can be used (e.g. Adobe's policy, Microsoft's policy). To create a free screenshot that can be uploaded at full size, Wikimedia commons advises:
- "Use a free program with a completely free skin. (A KDE Program using Crystal images is an example.) If you are using an operating system with a non-free theme (like Windows), make sure it fits something like {{PD-ineligible}}, e.g. has only flat-colored backgrounds and buttons and no complex icons. See Commons:Threshold of originality for examples of images, or image modifications or other actions considered trivial or non-trivial in different countries.
- "Cut away all possibly copyrighted elements. Only show the relevant content.
- "The content of the screenshot must be free too. Make sure the screenshot does not contain unfree text or images.
- "If the screenshot contains photos or other works (e.g. a shot of Wikipedia's main page), be sure to mention and follow the terms of each license."
In respect of their first point my idea is to have the skin (the UI) be re-usable under cc-by-sa-4, explain that everything apart from the OS and browser chrome is freely republishable, and to post a notice to this effect on the product website. I fully understand this means someone could mess about with the screenshot in distasteful ways and then republish it, but it seems to me that having my product more widely seen than my rivals is a benefit that outweighs the risk.
What do you think? All comments are welcome.
Thanks.