I guess many points come into play there. Particularly in open source projects the value of graphics or design is rarely admitted (and Google have built a reputation for not caring enough about it), so joining these efforts may be much less attractive for graphics people than for programmer-types. In particular as the latter may derive experience and bragging rights from that, which may be much less applicable for the graphics people.

And I suppose you’ll admit that you creating your own project in your own time to satisfy your own needs and possibly boast your reputation is quite different from a project by some mega-corporation wanting free artwork. In particularly you have pretty much full control of your project while the artists may even see their work being trashed by ignorant geeks. I consider that a highly asymmetrical situation. And I think the only way to make it work is to create an application which some designer-type would like to improve the graphics for along with a community that appreciates such efforts. (Which, if you think about it, is pretty much how open source stuff seems to work on the side of code as well: people get into it by scratching their own itches and seeing that it’s appreciated.)

Jens:

This is an interesting point, and it’s something I’ve noticed as well.

I think Jeff Johnson’s comment hits on a really, really good point, although I do think that programmers in general, would be more receptive to being approached to contribute to a big-name open source project. But certainly it’s a distinction that would be important to some.

There are definitely programmers who have this same mentality - people who don’t want to “give away” anything, and there are certainly artists who are happy to donate time to projects they feel are worthy, so I don’t want to over-generalize here, but I’ll take a stab.

Programmer’s who think like this are not very common in the Cocoa community. We’ve got a nice playground here where almost everyone is happy to share their toys. The Open Source OSes also tend to play nicely (outside of occasional license conflicts), which makes sense since it’s the very foundation of their work.

When you get into other non-academic programming environments, however, there are many people who zealously protect their code, who do not share and who will use the law (sometimes abusively) to protect their work. I don’t know what percentage of programmers are like this. It’s probably a minority, but they do exist. This is more an attitude of corporate management, but the idea that this is your livelihood and you shouldn’t “give away your work” is not completely unheard of among programmers.

But, in the realm of artists, it does seem to go very much the other way. If you’ve seen anything about the orphan works act, for example, many artists (almost certainly a majority) are absolutely up in arms over it, to the point of spreading blatantly incorrect information to try and keep it from passing because they see it as a threat to their livelihood. Communities of professional artists on the web will always advise (sometimes even threaten) new people breaking into the field to not work on spec, and to not work below customary rates. Giving IP rights away, either intentionally or by failing to prosecute abuses, is generally seen as “bad form” among most professional artists unless you’re giving the rights away to a specific non-profit charity.

Some of that may have to do with rates. A competent but not stellar programmer probably makes, on average, two or three times what a competent but not stellar commercial artist makes. In my opinion, most talented artists are underpaid given how much time and effort went into developing their skills. But, for whatever reason, the market has deemed their work to be less valuable than ours, and perhaps that plays into their attitude a bit.

Before I sign off, I do want to remark on a few of Grzegorz’s comments above. First, artwork is not inherently un-reusable. There are whole industries that have grown up around creating re-usable art (stock photos, clip art), so to say that the reason artists are less likely to give work away is because their work can’t be reused is simply wrong. Most commercial artwork isn’t reused because of zealous corporate enforcement of fictional legal rights, but that’s absolutely true of software as well. I have a lot of code I’d like to share, but can’t because it was written as a work-for-hire, so it’s not mine to share.

More importantly, Grzegorz’s last sentence condemning Jens for “dismissing” artists is completely uncalled for. Jens posed a question. He stated in his post that his first reaction was that the artists were being perfectly reasonable in saying no to Google. But then he drew a parallel to programming and asked why the two communities respond differently to the idea of giving work away for free. I didn’t read any judgment into it, just intellectual curiosity, so I think Grzegorz is, perhaps, being a little unfair. Besides, the idea for a GUI didn’t originate with artists. Today, we would probably be working on less aesthetically pleasing GUIs if it weren’t for artists, but we still would have GUIs without them.

Fluffy:

Linden was most likely telling you that you were competing against people whose work they already knew and who they knew already had a familiarity with their codeline through their work one the open source project. You can take that as an insult or as advice. It sounds like you took it as an insult. I doubt it was intended as one.

Telling a top-tier designer to do work for free because it’s “good for their portfolio” is pretty damned insulting.

You’re making another assumption - which is that Google was telling them to work for free to improve their portfolio. Seems like a stretch. If Google knew about these people, chances are they knew they didn’t need portfolio pieces. However, having a piece in your portfolio from a high-profile product like Google Chrome could be of value even to “top tier” designers, some might want to contribute to the product because they use it (for free) and want to make it better. And on top of all that, they were free to say no.

Thanks to the success of my book, I turn down programming work on a regular basis right now. To draw a parallel to these “top tier” artists, I don’t “need” anything for my programming “portfolio” right now. But, I wouldn’t be insulted if someone asked me to join a high-profile open source project. I would be flattered that they thought of asking me, and then politely tell them no. I don’t see why there needs to be any more to it than that. I don’t see why this has to be some kind of holy artists’ crusade.

Nobody is making anybody do anything. There might be artists out there who want to contribute to this project, so can’t these artists just say “no thank you” and go back to their life. Why can’t they looking for insults where none were intended and stop trying to dictate what others should do. My gosh. This just shouldn’t be this big of a deal.

An application-icon is the very definition of single use. It’s the face of Google Chrome — it can’t be used for anything else. Unlike a stylesheet, I don’t see how it can serve as the starting point for something else.

There’s a notion of identity with art. Hiring a designer isn’t just about making your stuff look good, it’s also about making it reflect you. Copying someone’s design is like writing letters on their letterhead. It doesn’t make sense for them or you. Both Jens and I use wordpress for our blogs, and it’s good for both of us if we use the exact same PHP code. But I wouldn’t feel right using his exact stylesheets, even with his blessing, because that’s the face of his personal writing. I should speak in my own voice.

As I see it, many kinds of art fundamentally cannot be open sourced. I can’t build my own painting by extending of someone else’s.

—

Programming is a uniquely open profession. When I share my original code, or share my solution to a problem, I get feedback on my work. This has helped me fix holes in my code and understanding. If I contribute to an open-source codebase, I improve something that I can use in all kinds of different projects. Even programmers who are ideologically opposed to open source still collaborate with other programmers every time they use google to answer a question.

My point is, as a programmer I get a direct benefit from being more open.

So perhaps as programmers we have an unrealistic view of how giving people should be. Just a thought. But someone using WordPress does not obligate them contribute back to it, let alone to a different collaborative project, and I felt that was implied in the article.

Speaking of WordPress, my goodness Jens, you really need to update your version! 2.0.4 is way too old. I’m surprised someone hasn’t pwned it yet.

So, I live with a professional artist. She’s good, (I’m biased, but she’s still good), and she is constantly, CONSTANTLY dealing with the following:

“I can’t pay you now, but when we sell a bazillion books…”
“I can’t pay you, but it would be great exposure…”
“I can’t pay you your normal rate, but…”
“If it’s on the internet, it’s free…”

along with shit like people stealing her work, removing her copyright, replacing it with their own, then getting snarky and telling people not to steal “her” artwork.

Also, there is in fact, a really good community of artists online. Several in fact. They help each other out, they advise, give, etc. The whole bit.

They even, (shockers), *donate* work as they feel like it.

But when you come to them, as a multibillion-dollar multinational, and tell them “Oh you should work for us for free, because it would be good for you, we’re Google”? Really? A sphincter says what?

The problem is the talent vs. work issue. People see programming, and think “God, that’s hard, it takes a lot of work and time to do that”. People see art and either think “Oh, art’s easy, anyone can draw, all you need is photoshop” or “Well, that’s just talent, it’s not like she has to work at it.”

Which is bullshit. Artists work to become better exactly as hard as programmers. My wife finally had to get over her avoidance of 3-d backgrounds, and sweat blood beating that knowledge and ability into her across many long days and nights, simply because she had to do it to become a better artist.

But they are prickly about being asked to take the same level of work they do for anything, and apply it to work for a company that is going to use that work to make an assload of money. There’s an ROI on Chrome, and if you don’t believe that, then you need to start living in the real world. If Google wanted to use their work, then Google should have approached them as professionals, with a professional - level offer, not like they’re stupid kids who don’t know which way is up.

Contrary to some of the comments here, Chrome is not some community project. It’s a corporate project built on Open Source. The difference is, the artists approached aren’t all starry-eyed about Google. To them, Google isn’t magic, it’s yet another in a long line of people who think they’re suckers, asking artists to work for free, that Google can make money off of free work.

Let me put it another way. If the artists asked Google, the company, to spend a lot of time creating a new product for their use, oh, and “do it for free, because it will make you look good”, Google, the company, would laugh them out of the room. PEOPLE in Google might not, but Google the company would.

I think the entire concept was insulting as hell, and whomever at Google that thought they could get away with this should have to live with some of these folks for a few months to see how insulting it really was.

The way open source generally works: there is an app that people use. Something about that app isn’t quite good enough for someone, so that someone decides to contribute time and effort to improve it.

The way open source generally doesn’t work: a corporation sponsors the creation of an app as an act of charity, notices something wrong with it, and then approaches other people who have absolutely no interest in the app (and who don’t necessarily see it as charitable) to make it better for them.

Vincent:

I believe it’s my comment that you’re (mis)representing here, so let me respond:

Designers use open-source tools. But unless they commissioned them, they are under no obligation to reciprocate, in the same way I’m under no obligation to support a church, just because they decided, on their own, to pick up trash in my neighborhood.

I did not state and did not mean to imply that by using these open source tools that the artists were under an obligation to participate or contribute to some open source project. In fact, I have stated several times that I think it’s perfectly reasonable for an artist (or programmer) to say “no” when asked to do so.

However, to use your analogy, if the church stopped by your house and politely said “hey, we’re doing another trash pickup this weekend, would you care to join us?” Would you yell at them and chase them off your porch for having the audacity to ask you to participate? Would you whine that you should be offered money to go help them out? Of course not. Would your behavior be any different if a large grocery chain was sponsoring the church’s cleanup drive or providing bags and bottled water to the people participating?

My complaint has nothing to do with whether there’s an obligation, and really isn’t even about whether people should participate. People should not behave like a baby whose lollipop has been stolen simply because that’s the way mature people behave. That’s all. It’s completely regardless of whether there’s an obligation or not. People ask others to contribute, donate, and participate to projects for the public good all the time. If you can’t or don’t want to, you just say no and move on with your life. You don’t cry or moan and you don’t actively try to prevent others from participating.

Now, if Google was refusing to take no for an answer, or using some form of coercion or trickery to get artists to contribute, then it would be perfectly appropriate to get upset and shine the spotlight of public opinion on their behavior. But just because somebody asks you if you’d like to donate/contribute/participate is no reason for a mature adult to do that.

It shouldn’t matter if “Anonymous” uses the GNU Image Manipulation Program, because it’s totally separate from chromium — so why did we bring it up here?

I pointed out that most designers use some open source software not to imply an obligation but merely to show that there is a public benefit when people do bother to contribute/donate/participat to projects such as this. It’s not just the megacorporation that sponsors the project or contributes to it who gain a benefit, so the loudly-made claims that this is “insulting” because Google can afford to pay for these artists’ services are unjustified. I pointed this out to show that some artists MIGHT want to be involved with a project that helps their fellow man (or even themselves) and to show why those who don’t want to participate shouldn’t be actively trying to prevent other artists from accepting the invitation from Google. It’s one thing to say no. It’s another thing to be offended. But it’s yet another thing altogether to actively try and prevent others from participating in a project from which a great many people (including, undoubtedly, some of the artists who are whinging loudly about it) will benefit.

This is a disingenuous comparison. The search engine is a commercial project, Chrome is open source. The analogous situation would be Google asking a programmer to work on Chrome for free, and I content that that’s not offensive.

Chrome is not commercial in the sense that Google is not charging for it. however, if you think that Google does not have a very real ROI in mind for Chrome, and that they are not planning on it generating revenue for them, then you are either very idealistic, or are just ignoring that everything Google does is designed to make them money. They are a publicly traded U.S. company. BY LAW, they have to have an eye on Shareholder value for every action they take, esp. one as big as Chrome.

They are most certainly not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. They are a multi-billion-dollar multinational. Their heart is a checkbook, just like every other company’s.

But you, yourself, draw the parallel between artists and programmers saying artists “work exactly as hard as programmers” to get better. It looks to me like you’re justifying a bit of a double standard here. As a contract programmer and writer, I deal with many of the same issues that freelance artists deal with. But it’s not offensive to me if somebody asks me to contribute to an open source project, even if it’s corporate sponsored. If I went off on a holy rant in my blog because Google asked me to join the Chrome team, people would think I was acting childish. If that happened, I would say no, but I wouldn’t rant about it and try to get all my programmer friends in an uproar over even being asked. I’d say no, and take it as a compliment that somebody thought of asking me.

Just because programmers and artists both work hard does not mean programmers and artists are the same. Everything is not exactly the same, two different fields cannot be judged the same, and if artists are pissed off about this, then it is perhaps reasonable to assume that maybe, just maybe, an ARTIST is better qualified to know what is and is not bullshit in their profession than a PROGRAMMER is.

I don’t tell programmers how to code, I just ask that the end result play nice on networks. I leave the coding and the rest to them, because they are the SME’s on those issues. I don’t tell them what to charge, or if to charge. I may not agree with what they want, and at that point, we negotiate, but I would never, ever, ever, as a representative of a company, ask someone to spend time to contribute work to a project that I was paying in-house people to work on for free.

Never. It would be insulting. In fact, I don’t even ask my wife to help out on work-related stuff without an offer of payment approved, because it would still be insulting to her abilities, even though she’d probably say yes. There is a BRIGHT shiny line between a company rep seeking someone out and asking them to work for free and someone in the Chrome community just doing it. Big, fat, bright shiny line.

Is everyone on the Google Chrome team working on that project for free?

No.

Did Google say “Hey, if you want to contribute art, here’s a place you can do so if you want?”
No. They went to professional artists and in an official capacity, asked them to work for free.

That is “bullshit”, and it is as neat and nice an example of “bullshit” as you will see not exiting an actual bull. Unless the Chrome team inside of Google are all working for free on that project, it is in fact insulting to ask a professional to work for free on the same project. Period.

If someone, on their own, wants to contribute art to Chrome, that is their choice, and good on them. But don’t ask someone to work for free on a project you’re paying other people to work on. That’s just insulting.

Google Earth? Calendar? Gmail? By generating publicity and bringing people to Google domains, they generate money, but to argue that Google wouldn’t consider doing something for the public good because it doesn’t generate money seems unfair. To claim they’d “laugh” at the idea seems patently so.

Ever hear of a little thing called “Google Apps for Business”? Google is directly making serious dosh off of mail/calendar/et al.

Google Earth isn’t a revenue generator? Hmm…there’s this thing called “Google Earth Pro”, doesn’t appear to be free. Do you want to print hi-res images? Import gEarth data into a spreadsheet? Get email support? Get area measurement/GIS data imports?

$400 bucks payable to Google.

Want GPS data import?

Annual fee, paid to Google.

Want custom implementations of Google Earth? that’s Google Earth Enterprise, and you have to talk to a salesman to even GET a price. So you know it ain’t cheap.

Google is there to make money, and they make a gob of it, even off of Gmail and Google Earth.

You say that “Chrome is not a community project. It’s a corporate project built on open source”. I can’t agree with that assessment, either. That sounds more like a description of OS X or Safari then Chrome. Chrome is sponsored by a corporation, but it is an open source project with a community of contributors that goes beyond Google employees.

Does the term “Webkit” mean anything?

That’s the “Open Source” version of Safari. You can contribute to that all day long. But Safari, which is built directly from webkit, is still a commercial product. So is Google Chrome.

The fact that Chrome is also open source does not make it a non-corporate project. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Now, I’m not saying Google should have asked these artists in the first place, and I’m not saying the artists should have said yes. But I completely disagree that it’s insulting for Google to have even asked. Stupid, perhaps, but insulting? Only if you’re oversensitive. These artists are adults; they were free to say no. But the behavior of the people asked has gone far beyond that (and isn’t very adult like, IMO). From the outrage, you’d think Google held a gun to these artists’ heads and said “draw an icon for us for free or your dog gets it” rather than just being asked if they’d be interested in contributing.

After the hundredth time someone with money wants you to work for free because they can’t be arsed to treat your talents and abilities the way they’d want theirs treated, you stop taking it so innocently. If they were good enough for Google to seek out then they were good enough to be offered terms worthy of the skill and talent that got them noticed in the first place.

An artist creates art for pay. That’s their livelihood. A programmer creates code for pay. That’s their livelihood. A programmer working on a community project is creating code - their professional work product - which is becoming part of the project. An artist who participates is creating art - their professional work product - which becomes part of the project

There’s a difference between someone in the community being asked to do something by the community and someone outside the community being asked to contribute to a project they aren’t a part of.