I've used Apache code throughout my products for years, including JServ and Tomcat, Xerces and Xalan, SOAP, Log4J, some Xang, and now Struts. Apache has saved me countless hours of effort, for which I've tried to repay Apache by helping where I can. However, there is one common component to my products that I've had to deal with on my own, even though it has little to do with my products' actual function: the artwork. It sounds so simple, and to a graphic artist it may be, but creating icons to represent people, files, images, and so forth, and buttons, tabs, and on and on can take me forever, and my creations never look as good as those in Microsoft Windows or on major Web sites.
Of course, I can't just grab Microsoft's Windows icons due to copyright and licensing issues. Microsoft has made some images available at http://office.microsoft.com/clipart/, but they aren't of much use in developing a business Web app. Neither can I grab icons from Mozilla nor most other open-source projects with good artwork because of their GPL-like licenses. That leaves me with only four choices: 1) Create my own icons and artwork, even though I'm no artist and they won't look professional 2) Hire a graphic artist for ~$120/hour to create artwork each and every time I have a need 3) Buy artwork from a design house, like StockIcons (http://www.stockicons.com/) 4) Start an LGPL-like project where many share in the free creation and use of the artwork As you can probably guess, being a major Apache fan and user, I favor the latter option. Not only would a shared library of artwork benefit me because of others' free contributions and improvements to the collection, but those choosing to use the artwork would contribute to a stardardized UI for the Web, much as the GUIs from Apple and Microsoft have become the stardard for PC interfaces. Similar to the Fedora Artwork project (http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/artwork), the Apache Gallery project would be licensed under Apache's more liberal LGPL-like license, which wouldn't force me to open-source my work, and thus destroy my livelihood. Once incubated, I'm not sure if it would best belong under Commons or Jakarta. Wherever it would land, it would consist of icons of various sizes (16x16, 24x24, 32x32 raster, and resizable vector) and styles (B&W, soft, sharp, etc - see http://www.stockicons.com/browse.asp for example), as well as other artwork appropriate to the creation of a Website like buttons, arrows, tabs, etc. With the exception of some custom artwork for branding, the bulk of my creative graphical needs would be met by Apache Gallery; The rest would just be fancy text, which I can easily handle using PaintShopPro. Forgive me if such a project already exists or has already been proposed, or if non-code projects are taboo for Apache, but I believe that there is a need here that we can help solve. I can't afford to hire out the creation of all of my graphical needs and then give the work to Apache, but I can contribute some, then others can join me, as is the way of Apache. Jay Zylstra [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
