[development] Where to find free icons?

[Nedjo Rogers]

Separately downloading and installing each icon for each module is 
prohibitively inefficient. Would we choose non-GPL feed icons for our core 
distribution and instruct users to download the icons separately?

Our handbook instructs module developers to use Tango icons:

http://drupal.org/node/35416

noting however that we can't include them in CVS. We should instead choose a 
GPL icon set and use that as our default.

Probably we need to either:
a. Choose a non-GPL standard set, e.g., Tango, and implement it through a 
helper module so that users need to download the full set only once. Contrib 
modules would do something like  theme('iconelement', '[iconname]') to 
output an icon.
b. Choose a GPL icon set (and, possibly do the helper module approach too).
c. Put in place a technical solution that combines CVS code with externally 
sourced files to create a single download, or

c. sounds difficult. Personally, I'm for b.

Here's another listing that includes several GPL sets, with preview samples:

http://www.maxpower.ca/free-icons/2006/03/05/