Unsplash's company blog covers its free photo licensing, hosting costs, scaling with a small team and its business model.
HN commenters cite it as an example of focusing on the product with a small team, and debate whether the Unsplash license is truly equivalent to CC0.
Thank you for your reply.
IANAL, but yes, I think your license is not CC0.
CC0 is "public domain". It is intended to
abandon all copyrights. So if you want to publish music under the license, you can't argue any restriction.
And, Unsplash license is currently not CC0. It WAS originally CC0.
I like your philosophy, so I want to agree with you, but I cannot help concerning about licensing issues on FLOSS or mix-in usages...
References:
https://medium.com/unsplash/why-we-moved-from-the-creative-commons-zero-license-to-the-unsplash-license-598f76386489
http://wpandlegalstuff.com/unsplash-gpl-compatibility-concern-red-herring/
https://make.wordpress.org/themes/handbook/review/resources/#restricted-websites
They talk about it from their Series A announcement:
> The funds being invested today will be going toward defining a new economic model around photography. It won’t be a model where photos are going to be paid for with cryptocurrency. It will be a model that leverages the unprecedented distribution Unsplash photos gain to bring as many opportunities to contributors as possible while maintaining the open, free-to-use principles of the community.
- https://medium.com/unsplash/we-just-raised-7-25-million-for-unsplash-to-build-a-new-economy-around-photography-cedc8a999239
Even if they are currently eating out, seven days a week, that was a decision to focus entirely on the product without any distractions.
https://medium.com/unsplash/scaling-unsplash-with-a-small-team-fbdd55571906
It's absolutely nothing for them to be ashamed of. We can all disagree with the decision and say that we wouldn't do the same, but we shouldn't call it a bad of shameful decision.
I think it's all about focus. There is a limit to how many goals/projects you can focus on at once. Every new thing you build distracts your focus. You should minimize what you build in-house to just the things that make you unique. I like Unsplash' blogpost about this: https://medium.com/unsplash/scaling-unsplash-with-a-small-team-fbdd55571906
[Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/) is a site that offers photos licensed almost one-to-one with CC0. I'd strongly recommend giving it a shot.
- Unsplash license: https://unsplash.com/license
- Compare with CC0: https://medium.com/unsplash/the-unsplash-license-f6fb7de5c95a#083e
Like what Unsplash did?
Introducing Unsplash for Brands. A new model for imagery and brand building.
https://medium.com/unsplash/introducing-unsplash-for-brands-3b60d1b4ad0c