Page 1 of 1

New cowsay cow, & associated questions

Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2011 10:12 am
by AlmightyDoerOfStuff
I just created a King of Herrings, or Giant Oarfish, "cow" for cowsay. I know this doesn't have much to do with Linux Mint, except for the fact that it contains cowsay/cowthink and mint-fortune, but I don't know where else to post about it. I have several questions.

First, would it be reasonable to release the oarfish cow under CC-BY-SA, or would that be incompatible with cowsay's and/or Linux Mint's licenses? I don't care if other people use or modify it commercially or otherwise, as long as I'm credited with its original creation, and that any derivative works are labeled as such, in such a way that it shows I do not necessarily endorse the derivative work. This seems to be the gist of CC-BY-SA. Is this correct?

Second, I used this image as a guide. I did not plug it into an autogenerator or anything. I created the cow freehand (freekeyboard?) using the image only to make sure, by eyesight, that my cow actually looked something like an oarfish. It's fairly similar, but not a modified version of the image. Furthermore, I question whether the license connected to that image is even valid, as the oarfish in that picture is on public display in a museum, and is in fact not a creative work, but an actual dead fish, and as such I'm not sure it's even subject to copyright. Do I need to cite the photographer in my oarfish cow's comments? Should I?

Third, once all the licensing terms are ironed out, where might I upload my oarfish cow so that others can see, download, and use it? I'm not sure anyone but me WANTS a giant oarfish cow, but who knows? :P

I've loved giant oarfish ever since I saw a video on Discovery Channel's website, depicting the first captured video of a live oarfish in its natural habitat. It was annoyed by the camera and swam away, which I thought was so cute! :D I think lots of weird animals are cute. :P

Re: New cowsay cow, & associated questions

Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2011 10:41 am
by richyrich
Take a look in /usr/share/cowsay/cows .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowsay

Re: New cowsay cow, & associated questions

Posted: Thu Nov 17, 2011 3:43 pm
by AlmightyDoerOfStuff
Thanks, but I know what cowsay is and what its standard licenses are. I don't like the standard licenses, because they don't include protections against people modifying the content and then not distinguishing it from the original. CC-BY-SA would include that protection, but would using that license somehow conflict with its inclusion with distributed copies of the cowsay program and/or Linux Mint? Is it not "free" enough? That's what my first question was about.

Thank you.

Re: New cowsay cow, & associated questions

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2012 3:00 pm
by AlmightyDoerOfStuff
I've been meaning to post this for a long time, but I never got around to it. Considering I don't understand legalese, nor do I understand the implications of using vaguely-worded non-legalese licenses, I decided to just skirt the issue by just not putting my name on it at all. Here it is, the King of Herrings, or Giant Oarfish, one of my favorite fishes, in cowsay cow form.

Code: Select all

##
## The King of Herrings, or Giant Oarfish
## This cowsay cow is released under the standard cowsay license.
##
$the_cow = <<EOC;
   $thoughts    //
    $thoughts  //   ///
      /|| ///
     /||/||
    /|/||
   /|||
  /|||-----------________
 /_--------------________-----------___________________
/ o ii|||||||||||||||||||-----------___________________-------_____
\\     |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||--------..___\>-_
\\  O |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||,..\>\>
 `\\---------------------------------------------------------------`
   \\\\
    `==============\8
EOC

Re: New cowsay cow, & associated questions

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2012 6:09 pm
by dagon
Awesome!

Now, needless to say, you're off to cowsayize his holiness! Right?

from:
http://www.retrojunkie.com/asciiart/logos/flyingsp.txt

. _ _(o)_(o)_ _
. ._\`:_ F S M _:' \_,
. / (`---'\ `-.
. ,-` _) (_,


Ps. I don't think there are licenses around that truly covers ASCII versions of marine creatures of any kind.

Re: New cowsay cow, & associated questions

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2012 7:57 pm
by AlmightyDoerOfStuff
I might at some point, although I'm sure there's plenty of ASCII FSMs out there already that would do.

I have a great picture to work with in my Jolly Roger though. My fiancée drew it for me in pencil years ago. He's drunk and holding a mug of beer, and it's a fairly simple design. :)