You may have noticed all the beautiful images that adorn this website. Every one of these gorgeous images (at the time of writing) have been taken from Unsplash.
A picture says a thousand words, so here are a couple thousand words.
Images hosted by Unsplashed are released under Creative Commons Zero. This license means you can modify or distribute for personal or commercial use with no license granted for copyright or patent claims.
While there is no legal requirement that prevents the sale of images from Unsplash, the community is vocal about their disapproval of this practise. The generally accepted approach is to use the images in a derivative work and sell the modification.
Selling free content is frowned upon in most freely distributed projects. This make a lot of sense as the image itself is free, so why would anyone pay for it. These notice appears in other free applications as well, such as paint.net’s installer.
As with the note above about commercial sale, attribution is not legally required for Unsplash images, however it is recommended. Unsplash recommends the inclusion of the photographer’s name and a link to their Unsplash profile.
Prior to writing this article, the theme I was using for this website did not support attribution for images. While each file I use does include the photographer’s name in the file path, as supplied by Unsplash, I found this an insufficient means of providing credit.
I’ve enchanced the theme to allow me to add attribution names and links on every post. Every post has been updated in time with the addition of this article.
If you enjoyed the content please consider leaving a comment, sharing or hiring me.
Cheers,
Michael