| The Open Clip Art Library |
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 The Open Clip Art Library (OCAL) aims to create
an archive of user contributed clip art that may be freely used. The
project's reason for providing this clip art is to make open source
applications more useful to users; for some users, the availability of
good clip art that can be quickly dropped into a document to dress it
up can be as important as any other feature in the application.The project was started in early 2004 as a spinoff from Inkscape by Bryce Harrington and Jon Phillips as a way to help consolidate SVG images contributed by Inkscape users with similar collections from other projects. It was directly inspired by the Sodipodi Flags Clipart project from 2003. "We want to build a rich collection of reusable clipart that open source programs can leverage for their users. Currently, if one wishes to create a quick document using clip art, the easiest solution is to use a proprietary program since they tend to have clip art included along with them, or massive creative archives because of the longer history of support for the closed source standard design applications. We want to turn that around so that it ceases to be an argument for not using Open Source. " -OpenClipArt.org FAQ The library currently incorporates over 5000 images from over 500 artists, and offers the entire library as a free download. According to developer, Jon Phillips, "The Open Clip Art Library provides a service for all levels of graphics users with low social and technical barriers to encourage maximum submissions in order to gather a diverse collection of vector graphics." The images are in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format, with thumbnails in Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format. All graphics submitted to the project are placed into the Public Domain according to the Creative Commons Public Domain Declaration.  "A creative work is said to be in the public domain if it may be used without legal restriction. There may be no laws which establish proprietary rights in relation to the work or the work or its subject matter may be specifically excluded from existing laws." -Wikipedia "We select the Public Domain for the clipart in order to provide maximum flexibility and ease of use to the user. You can put the clipart into your own drawings without any affect on the copyright or license of your work. There are no requirements to include attribution of the clipartist. You can edit and modify the clipart as you wish and redistribute it under your own terms." -OpenClipArt.org FAQ Due to the success of the "OCAL 5K Pledge," their next goal is for 10K images (10,000 clip art images) by the end of 2005. The development community encourages all types of artists to contribute images to the library this month in support of the theme, Pets -- one step towards the end of year OCAL 10K Pledge.  To support the 10K Pledge we are having a Open Clip Art Challenge in the Kollaboration forum for the rest of this month. Please submit your images to the Open Clip Art website and give us a sneak peek on this thread. The artists who submits the most images will be "Featured Artist of the Month"and will be interviewed on the front page of this site. The Open Clip Arts theme for this month is Pets but you can submit any image you want. Need some ideas? http://openclipart.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ClipartRequests http://openclipart.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ClipartTopics Excepts were taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Clip_Art_Library http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain http://openclipart.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?PrAnnouncement http://openclipart.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?FAQ http://www.openclipart.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OOoConAbstract2004 |
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| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 13 September 2005 ) |
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