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Ask HN: Is the new Unsplash license compatible with open source licenses?
2 points by rustc on June 29, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments
I love Unsplash and use their content in my websites and open source projects. I recently found [1] that Unsplash has changed the license of their content from CC0 to a new custom license which I don't believe is compatible with most (all?) open source licenses:

> More precisely, Unsplash grants you an irrevocable, nonexclusive copyright license to download, copy, modify, distribute, perform, and use photos from Unsplash for free, including for commercial purposes, without permission from or attributing the photographer or Unsplash. This license does not include the right to compile photos from Unsplash to replicate a similar or competing service.

Am I correct that I can no longer use it in MIT/BSD/GPL licensed projects, at least not without switching to a "the code is MIT but this image is only free as in beer" license?

(I wonder if there's a list of images that were uploaded before this license change...)

[1]: https://unsplash.com/license



I don't see anything in that license that says you can't redistribute an unsplash image with an open source package.

Only that you aren't allowed to create a competing image aggregation site that uses Unsplash's content.

(I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.)

What about that license seems to you to be incompatible with open source projects?


It's open source compatible, but it is NOT Free Software compatible. Free (as in Freedom) software cannot limit the user in any way, though open source can.




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