Make comics, decide to abandon the copyright and hope to live in capitalist
lands, but what an idea! Yet this is what cartoonist and book activist DavidRevoy decided to do. Back on an extraordinary journey in the commons. ----Libertarian alternative: Hi David, your main work narrates the adventures of theyoung witch Pepper and her cat Carrot, and you distribute your works under freelicenses. What led you to make your works commons ? ---- David Revoy: At thebeginning, free licenses scared me, I was afraid that one of my characters wouldbe taken over, that my style would be imitated, that I had no control over it.---- In the years 2009-2010, I worked for the Blender Foundation, the CreativeCommons was compulsory and under its aegis, it scared me less. I did some conceptart and it went well, I saw some nice derivations, fan art and no unpleasantderivations, it reassured me a lot. I even saw beneficial effects of spread,audience and enthusiasm. There was added value, it became a common good, asandbox that other designers could reuse.When I did my own comic book project, Pepper & Carrot[1], it became a no-brainer.David Revoy is a French comic book author, publishing all of his work under afree license.A community collaborates in your universes, is it integrated into the creativeprocess?It is not fully integrated, I use a software forge to make my collaborative spacewhich is abused like a forum, and we have instant messaging on the side. I made aspecial script forge, where people can release their Pepper & Carrot scriptsunder a free license, to see if it can inspire me to do an episode. But you don'timprovise yourself as a screenwriter and I have a lot of scripts that start withvery good ideas but which don't manage to make falls or plot-twists. That's a lotof snippets of ideas that I'll sometimes take up, some episodes are signed bydrawing inspiration from things that have been proposed to me.What really happens as a collaboration is a return. I will show my storyboard andthe community will rather tell me the things that we could avoid having, like aproofreading before publication. For example, two boxes that were badly linkedand we did not understand why the character comes from the right and there comesfrom the left, and why there is a bubble that says that at that moment. It allowsme to anticipate these questions and know if they are desired or if it isuncontrolled, if something is not understood.After the collaborative space will mainly be for translation, there are now sixtylanguages and about a hundred people who gravitate around the project, includingtwenty active people.How do you manage to live from your art by renouncing the usual models?Since all my work is under a free license and accessible without paymentbarriers, to create an economic model around it, there are not 3,000 solutions,there is only donation, the voluntary patronage of readers. Only a smallpercentage of the readership is going to help the author have a means of survivalby making a donation for the next episode that I publish every two months.Home page of the site www.peppercarrot.comWhen I made Pepper & Carrot in 2014, it was very frowned upon to ask like that,for web-comics it was donations on Paypal and e-shops, the one-time donation, butnot the donation recurring. Now it's really democratized and almost every artistwho starts has a system of recurring donations, this system has spread a lot.Since 2016, Pepper & Carrot has been published by Glénat in paper albums. Did youapproach them or did they come to you after online success?Glénat clearly came to me after the online success, the publishing house waslooking for web-comic authors and they contacted me to publish Pepper & Carrot. Iwas offered the classic contract following their process, with their standardcontract from their legal department. It is they and they who have a force toimpose on the author; unless you already have a lot of sales, when you're a verysmall author, you don't tend to talk too much.Except that I told them that's not the concept at all, that there was the freetool, the free culture, the exclusivity that I didn't want. They were convincedby the concept, which is out of the ordinary and serves as an experiment. We justsigned the Creative Commons together. It bothered the legal department a bitbecause it's not their usual process and they are aware that a competingpublisher like Delcourt can publish Pepper & Carrot, it's completely legal.Glénat pays me back when I release a new comic strip, as a patronage, and I haveno copyright on the books. When I do autographs, whether I sell a million ornone, I don't make any money, but I help Glénat to help me in return. Besides, Ilove signing books and I can't sign web-comics, there's a kind of synergy, wehave a relationship that's based on trust.Last October, you shared your annoyance when you discovered that the Bulgarianedition removed a lesbian relationship from the story. If the license grants themthis right, how do you reconcile the desire to create commons and preserve yourpurpose?We had a legal battery at our disposal, Creative Commons doesn't take away moralrights, so if this edition had put a red cross on the lesbian kiss box, it wouldhave been an expressed opinion to say "that's not well" and there I could haveexpressed my moral right and made a lawsuit against that, because that is notwhat I want to express as an author. The fact that she removes the box from thestory does not mean that the author is against it, because it does not takeanything away from the story, there is an omission because the editor did notwant to be invited in the media anymore because he defends an opinion that is tooprogressive for his country.I couldn't exercise my moral rights on it, it's annoying but there was a movementof readers who organized themselves to print the box and stick it back in theiralbum, it became a militancy sign of patching paper album.You also promote the free tools you use, like the drawing software Krita. What doyou gain by using these rather than proprietary tools like Photoshop?Mainly freedom. Not the one not to pay because I have a support subscription onKrita equal to what Photoshop costs, but I can install it on as many machines asI want, use it in a computer room and tell everyone world "we're doing a Kritaworkshop, set it up".I have been helping with the Krita project since 2010 making a comeback and havehad many accommodations for my needs. Krita has become tailor-made to my drawingtechnique, I have all my reflexes, it's ultimate comfort. Then I'm sure there'sno telemetry. I don't know how to read Krita's code but I know there's a wholecommunity that reads it and can assure me that at no time will there be a line ofcode that will say which documents I'm using , what tablet, how much time I spendon my drawing, it will guarantee me protection of my privacy, no advertisements.Illustration taken from the 37th episode of "Pepper & Carrot", David Revoy, 2022.To discover on the peppercarrot.com website.If tomorrow Adobe is bought by a billionaire, people who use Photoshop have norecourse. On Krita, there is the Krita Foundation which develops it, but if itstops, its free license ensures that the code must be published somewhere andaccessible. There will definitely be another group, even me personally, who willcontinue to build Krita and use it. It assures me that I can still benefit in theyears to come from my level and my drawing practice, which a Photoshop usercannot guarantee.You also participate in the promotion of free software and culture byillustrating numerous Framasoft campaigns. What political significance do you seein librism?I see it as an online sandbox where you can try your hand at collaboration. Youcan try a pyramid structure with a boss or a boss, or a horizontal structure witheveryone who is there on personal initiative, who will want to develop theproject, know how it works. I think that this sandbox will allow us to developreflexes of appreciation of certain models which will make us adopt certainpolicies a posteriori.I do not really believe in someone who will arrive with a ready-made policy.School is not made like that, hobbies in France are not made like that, we alwayshave a master on a stage, and there all of a sudden, we will be able to reallyhave a space for experimenting with what a collaboration is. I have already seenin booksellers' festivals, when it is necessary to repack, how people organizethemselves. This is where free software has a great political force: to trainpeople to collaboratehttps://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Entretien-avec-David-Revoy-Au-debut-publier-en-licence-libre-me-faisait-peur_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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