What is the copyright on the images in the opencv documentation? For example there are some images in the documentation for pose estimation OpenCV: Pose Estimation but I do not see anything on the website stating this as CC-BY, etc.
I would like to include some images from the docs in a figure for a research paper, but obtaining copyright usage rights is ambiguous.
OpenCV recently changed licenses but that’s a minor point.
the documentation falls under the same license as the source code itself, which is now opencv/LICENSE at master · opencv/opencv · GitHub
likely what you want falls under “fair use”, so attribution should be enough.
I am not a lawyer.
Thanks, actually reading that license closer I now see it does mention documentation falls under it.
Its a bit confusing though from a non-lawyer perspective though. i.e., needing to include the source and original license etc. for using an image.
I don’t think you need to do that. for a scientific paper, citing OpenCV is plenty. you don’t have source code you are distributing. even for a slide set/presentation, a tidy citation under the slide should be enough. the computer vision research community “steals” slides from each other all the time (with credit).
don’t be surprised, OpenCV likes to get cited with the original release from around the year 2000, but you should also note what version you are referring to.
practically, there is a difference between science and commercial use. in science, it’s about abiding by academic standards, and citing fulfills that because you declare the cited work to be someone else’s, giving credit. licenses are mostly intended to regulate commercial use, i.e. determine if companies can make money from the library, and if they have to mention the library, …
Laws in countries may differ -for example, the “fair use” concept is mostly a US thing and the rest of the world acknowledges no such thing. Generally, use of figures in scientific context is not allowed without permission / license. Crediting is simply not enough. That’s why researchers tend to redraw any figures.
yes, you’ll want to inform yourself on the rights you have in your country. in many countries, people have the right to cite things, especially in an academic context, where that is vital. that includes pictures.
talk to someone at your institution, if you have one, or a local/national science society. they will know what is usual and legal in the context.
the pictures on that tutorial you linked seem trivial enough that you could recreate them, if you think that is required.
Yes I was hoping to avoid recreating images for the sake of time as I already spent some time putting them all into a flow diagram.
Anyway, the procedure from the Uni/Publisher perspective is to get the permission from the source. There are pipelines setup in publishers for requesting image use from other papers. It didn’t seem like github issues was the place to ask, so I hoped this forum would be the way.
I imagine I can’t be the only one to have this question (or maybe the only one that bothered to ask), so it may be helpful to have a link or another FAQ on the documentation to either clarify its useable or contact info for where to request permissions.
there is Contact Us - OpenCV
it is possible that they goofed with the installation of that site… the captcha appears to be broken. good luck submitting an inquiry 
you can try admin at opencv dot org. that used to be available some years ago, maybe not anymore.
edit: great, captcha works now