Re: Stock image illustration (licensing)

[Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>]

Bagas Sanjaya <bagasdotme@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi,
>
> Imagine that there is a new Linux kernel contributor, contributing
> documentation patches. As it is the habit from her company, she adds
> stock images from various sources (which may or may not be related
> to the doc), e.g. freepik or pexels [1], as illustration.
>
> However, on the source file, the image requires attribution. Yet,
> the attribution instruction doesn't mention image license (she
> attributes as "Illustration of foo by bar on pexels"), hence
> all rights reserved. Can that stock image be added to the kernel
> docs (which is licensed under GPL)?

I am rather curious as to why you are asking this question.

Images, like everything else, need clear licensing.  Images that do not
have a GPL-compatible license cannot be added to the kernel.

But we are certainly not in the habit of decorating our documentation
with "stock images", so this is not a question that has ever come up.

jon