A tag with the pattern's author would be really useful for licensing questions: at least the license is clear for all CL patterns while it is very vague for the others...

Actually, the ideal would be to have a license tag for every pattern (and palette).

Have you noticed that all non CL patterns and patterns made by CL users have a a byline and a link to the author's page in the info section?

That's true on the webpage but not in the xml sent by the api.

Olivier wrote:

A tag with the pattern's author would be really useful for licensing questions: at least the license is clear for all CL patterns while it is very vague for the others...

Actually, the ideal would be to have a license tag for every pattern (and palette).

Do you mean the username of the CL user who created the pattern / palette / color? Or do you mean the name of the person who created the vector files the patterns are created from?

I'm talking about the author of the original file. The other name is already there.

Let's take a recent pattern: Family

on the webpage you can read "This Pattern Originally By: x_1013_x"
http://www.colourlovers.com/pattern/253802/Family

but there's no clue of that in the xml produced by the api
http://www.colourlovers.com/api/pattern/253802

When you know it's based on a CL pattern, you know the license is BY-NC-SA (hence the SA!).

All patterns have at least our "Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported" license.

You're free to use them for personal projects, but not commercially. You can get permission from the original creators for commercial applications.

-D

COLOURlover wrote:

All patterns have at least our "Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported" license.

All patterns? In the FAQ, I read

If the pattern wasn't created by ColourLovers.com you will see it mentioned at the bottom of the box. Under "This Pattern Originally By:" the name of the creator and a link to their website will be present. In this case, you may not be allowed to use the pattern.

http://www.colourlovers.com/group/Sharing_the_Love/conversations/2123/All_About_Terms_of_Use

That's why I'd like to be able to select out all the patterns where the license isn't clear. An api is meant for automation, so if you can't automatically know what you're allowed to use, that's a pity...

Since I'm the one who wrote this sentence, I should add that I have no idea which types of licenses the non-CL patterns have so I erred on the site of caution. I agree that some more clarification is needed about terms of use, api issue aside.

Ok, to clarify...

All patterns have at least a "Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported" license.

Meaning you can use them in a non-commercial usage with attribution... If you want to use a pattern commercially you'll need to get further permission from the original creator.

-D