Specifically, I want to know what the license is for the following images?
I see a lot of potential to use them as OSM mascot.
BTW, I love this kind of commit messages “making sign-up page fun.”. Now, everything is too formal, too serious.
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I have not received any answer yet, but I hope this derivative work is under a CC-BY license or public domain.
I call it Osmie.
Do you think it need legs?
The image was created by Mapbox (probably by Saman Bemel Benrud) in the course of the OSM infrastructure project financed by the Knight Foundation. Aka the $500k that led to iD and the partial website redesign.
So I guess it is GPL 2.0 licensed. But that doesn’t really make sense as a statement for individual files, you are really making a single file derivative project that is GPL 2.0 licensed and any later additions / files to that project (for example a website) will have the same terms.
Most OSM website images are under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license, but it’s best to verify each image individually or check with the team. Glad you appreciate the fun commit messages—serious doesn’t have to mean boring!
The GPL is not a file based licence, you cannot have individual files/works (obtained from the same place) with different terms.
I created a parallel thread on GitHub: What is the license of the images on the OSM website? · Issue #5966 · openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website · GitHub
GPL is not the best suited license for artwork. Many projects have multiple license in a repository, one for code, one for documentation and one for artworks.
Can we think to have a different license for these artworks?
You can’t license the work instances in the repo on different terms than the GPL 2.0. The rights owners could naturally make instances available outside of the openstreetmap-website repo with different licences.