Are you participating in the LPC coding contest? To enter, you need to release your code.

[For the record, there's no "CC" license. The license here is CC BY SA 3.0 (this is important to always clearly state, as some of the many licenses published by Creative Commons explicitly prohibit commercial use).]

There's an art phase (over) and a coding phase (currently ongoing). If you participate in the coding phase, you have to release the source under GPL3.

http://lpc.opengameart.org/content/lpc-rules

You keep ownership over the code though.

As for using art licensed under GPLv3 and/or CC-BY-SA in commercial games: it should be possible but you should better take close looks at the licenses.

Does anybody have links to the most recent discussions about using copyleft art in commercial games? There's no FAQ entry yet unfortunately.

quodop I think you mean this :-

http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/using-the-art-for-commercial-project

Just do what I do: contact the author and let him know about your intentions, talk about the license, the way to credit his work, modify it and redistribute it. Even if the license tells you those things already.

If not, it's as simple as having all your game's assets accesible on the same folder, with some txt's with the license and agreements... your binaries and code are a separate thing. You're just separating what's commercial and secret from what's free and open. And nooned can complain you're trying to pass others' art as your own.

Just testing something, feel free to remove this post. Some permission issues apparently.

It's just me apparently...

Vaughan: Here's how the contest works:

You have to release the code to participate in the contest. At the end of July, you release a fully open source "1.0" version.

After the contest is over, you can continue working on the code, and if you wrote the entire project and the libraries you used allow you to, you can work on 1.1 on a propietary base, without distributing the code.

The fact that ownership isn't transfered to OGA means that you can license the code you write with as many licenses as you want, including the "Its mine, hands off" license.

As for the art, from what I understand, you can use CC-BY-SA 3 art on a propietary game, but it gives anyone that plays the game permission to take your game's art (and its modifications) and make a game of their own.

Just one thing, commercial doesn't mean proprietary, just like proprietary doesn't mean commercial. In other words you can have a commercial game that is free as in freedom (a.k.a. GPLv3 licensed).

Indeed - and in fact, Free or Open Source licences explicitly allow commercial use.

It's unclear if the OP is asking whether you need to release source code to enter the competition (to which the answer is Yes), or whether using art submitted in the competition requires you to release source code?

For the latter question, there's nothing in any Creative Commons license that requires you to release source code.  

And also, if it's your code or work, you're free to do whatever you like with it - you own the copyright, so you're not bound by the terms of any licence it's released under (but you can't retroactively stop other people using something you release under the terms of the licence).

Yeah, it was the intention of the GNU GPL's authors to allow selling of GPL'd software.

To understand better you might want to learn about the license and why it was written:

What is meant by free as in freedom is articulated here: http://gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

On selling free software: http://gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

Just FYI, Every single DRM scheme is broken eventually. DRM only encumbers those that *do* purchase the game.

I'll give you an example. I bought Plants vs Zombeis on Android, but can't play it when I'm offline (Such as in an airplane). Pirates can play it with or without Internet connection.

I should've bought the game and installed a pirated copy, as currently, I believe I have the crappier one.

If you're basing the source release on DRM... well, you're only pissing on those that do wish to buy your game.

Best DRM is no DRM. Even pirates buy stuff when it's good enough.

Not really. I plan to sell my game on the Android Market, and link to the github. Most Android users are either too uninterested in setting up the Android SDK to compile it themselves or would actually end up downloading it off some shady website. That's fine. They play the game without paying me, but hopefully, they'll end up telling their friends about it.

Those that want to support the devs, will do so. Those that don't, will figure out ways to steal it. Source or no.

I forgot to add, those that do download the source, might be enticed to help out with the development of the game, or provide patches at least, which in turn means less work for ya :P

I think there's a few separate issues:

First there's the question of whether using art released under "Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0" means your game has to be released under a "same or similar licence" (whether a game counts as an "adaption" or a "collection"). This seems to be an undecided area.

But if it does, there is a problem. I would disagree with the bit that says "or one with similar terms, such as the GNU GPL". The actual legal text refers to "a Creative Commons Compatible License". This is defined in the licence as "a license that is listed at http://creativecommons.org/compatiblelicenses that has been approved by Creative Commons as being essentially equivalent to this License".

But here's the problem - http://creativecommons.org/compatiblelicenses says "Please note that to date, Creative Commons has not approved any licenses for compatibility"! So it does not seem to be true that the GPL - or any licence - can be used.

So if it were true that the CC BY-SA terms applied to a game as a whole, rather than just the artwork file itself, then this wouldn't just prohibit proprietary use, but would also prohibit any open source games using the artwork. The only allowed usage would be if the game as a whole was also released as CC BY-SA, which isn't really suitable for code. I guess one potential workaround would be to release the game binary as CC BY-SA, then release source without art as another licence, but it's a bit awkward (and no use for when you want the source archive to include the data files). To me, CC BY-SA seems a bit of a mess - I don't know if anyone has any references for solutions to this problem?

So I'd be wary of making claims like "You can't use CC BY-SA in proprietary games", because even if it was true, open source use seems to be just as problematic if the licence is read that way. The catch is I guess someone might be more likely to sue someone reusing it for commercial closed source, rather than non-commercial Open Source; also perhaps a court may rule that GPL counts as a compatible licence anyway since it's in the same spirit.

The second issue is to do with making money. You are fine to sell Free/Open Source content, including any derivative works. However some licences require you licence it under a similar term. So supposing you used a CC BY texture in a derivative work ("adaption") that you sold - it would be fine to say that no one can redistribute that derivative work. But if you used a CC BY-SA texture, then your derivative work must also be CC BY-SA. You can sell it - but anyone who buys it can then redistribute it for free.

Trying to use DRM to physically prevent redistribution creates another source of problems - IIRC, some licences have been updated to say you can't do this (e.g., GPL v3).

"My concern is not to DRM or not to DRM - but providing a direct download in my product description to - "Hey! Download the source and don't give us a penny.""

Well yes, that's exactly the point. People writing "copyleft" licences weren't doing it so that they could work for free so you could make money :) It was so that people had to add value to make it worthwhile that people would pay money for it. But there are plenty of licences that do allow use in game that isn't itself under a Free licence. It's just the unfortunate problem with CC BY-SA that we have no idea what it falls under, as I say above :)

Well, if you're worried about conficts between CC-BY-SA and the GPL then artists who want their art to be useable in gpl'd games but also want the attribution/copyleft of that license could explictly provide an exception that the art can be paired with (L)GPL'd software without the software itself being subject to the terms of CC-BY-SA.