Icons and Strings
By
Peeter P. Mõtsküla on September 1, 2006 in Developer Blog.
A few days ago, Peter Kalmström wrote about more than 2600 Skype UI strings having been made available to the developers in 27 languages. Today, we have also published over 100 Skype icons in 5 sizes.
All these components are licensed under Skype Component License which allows everybody to use them in their applications free of charge as long as they follow some simple and reasonable restrictions, like using the icons and strings only in the original context, not allowing their applications to do anything evil, and making sure their users can get in touch with them if needed.
UPDATE on 2006-09-13: Skype Emoticons are now available under the same license.
We wanted the license to be as permissive as possible. As most of our example code is already available under the BSD license, we have considered using the same license for the icons and strings.
However, we decided to create a new license for three main reasons. First, icons and strings are non-functional components; they are not code and therefore any source code license would not be appropriate for them. Second, we didn't want them to be modified in any way. And third, we decided to reserve the right to revoke the license if a developer does something harmful to the Skype user community. We are confident, though, that the developers are reasonable folk, and we have good reasons believe that we'll never have to actually revoke this license.
Comments
I recently posted two skype status buttons on my blog (http://sustain.ca/wpblog/), but when the the 'skypeCheck.js' script is called, I am prompted to download skype, even though I have the latest version of skype up and running. I am using firefox, on a mactel machine. If there is abetter support forum to post this comment to, please let me know.
arossti | Sunday, Sep 10
arossti, check out http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=40736
searching on forum.skype.com can work magic for you
ppmotskula | Tuesday, Sep 12
Is there any intention to make the Chat Smileys available as well? I'm doing a Chat application, and it'd be nice to have the smileys matching the ones my users see on "real" Skype...
TesterBoy | Tuesday, Sep 12
A few questions for clarification.
If I want to use them as-is on T-shirts, and sell those shirts on CafePress or a similar site, may I? Does the license permit that?
On another issue, I'd think you'd want the community to modify the art to create related but derivative themes. For example, my footballer client might have a file transfer icon adjusted to show a passing kick (animated). Or my goth-themed client might need a darker, grayer, more somber color pallette. Why not open up further and let the community adapt Skype's look and feel to its needs?
evanwolf | Wednesday, Sep 13
TesterBoy, your wish is granted
The Skype Emoticons are now available under the same license from https://developer.skype.com/Download/SkypeEmoticons.
evanwolf, the license only permits the components to be used in your Skype-enabled applications. So you'll have to get in touch with our marketing folks to get permission to use them in any other way. Otherwise, our legal folks may want to get in touch with you, or change their licensing policy to something more tightly controlled.
Finally, the license specifically says that these components must be used without modification or not be used at all.
ppmotskula | Wednesday, Sep 13
Excellent - thanks, Peeter! Now all I have to do is make my list box draw them in the right places...
A related question: my Skype plugin is (obviously) part of a larger app (open-source). Is it valid for the *remainder* of the app to use these icons/emoticons/etc in non-Skype-related portions? (Since they're so cool!)
TesterBoy | Wednesday, Sep 13
I guess there's no reason why you should give your users two different interfaces to one program, TesterBoy. Of course I can't tell for sure without seeing the app itself (but if the application's core communication functionality is **largely** dependent on Skype then I think even our lawyers would say it's ok -- use your common sense
)
ppmotskula | Thursday, Sep 14
Please bring back the "eyes rolling" emoticon and consider adding a "wagging finger" animated emoticon.
KanyonKris | Friday, Oct 27
We are developing an application that interfaces with Skype through the Windows message based API. Is it legal to use the Skype icon (the icon for Skype.exe) as our application's icon? (i.e. the icon that will appear for our application shortcut in Windows' Start Menu).
bo.skjoett | Thursday, Aug 23
No, it's not legal, bo. You should use your own icon for your application; Skype Icons can only be used for referring to Skype and services provided by Skype.
ppmotskula | Thursday, Aug 23