Site FAQ/Submission Guidelines Updates/Changes - PART 1

Site FAQ/Submission Guidelines Updates/Changes - PART 1

withthelove's picture

In order to keep discussion a bit orginized, I am splitting my drafts for the updates outlined in http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/site-faqsubmission-guidelines-updatesc... into several parts.

 

This part addresses the following two changes:

> Add/link short form license description to submission guidelines/site faq.  Something like what is currently at: http://opengameart.org/content/faq#q-proprietary but tweaked to include all available licenses on OGA.

> Add explicit mention of anti-DRM clause in descriptions of CC-BY and CC-SA licenses.

 

The FAQ contains two sections that describe the licenses on the site:

'Explanation of the licenses allowed on OpenGameArt.org'

http://opengameart.org/content/faq#q-licenses

and  

'What do the licenses mean? I'm a commercial (closed-source) game developer. Can I use this art?'

http://opengameart.org/content/faq#q-proprietary

 

 

The first appears to be a dead link.

 

I suggest two sections:

 

'What do the licenses mean?  Explanation of the licenses allowed on OpenGameArt.org'

 

and 

 

'I'm a commercial (closed-source) game developer. Can I use this art?'

 

 

 

For: 

 

'What do the licenses mean?  Explanation of the licenses allowed on OpenGameArt.org'

 

I suggest the following text:

 

Below are summary descriptions of the licenses supported by OGA.  These are provided to help artists and developers familiarize themselves with the broad outlines of each license.  Nothing written here is gaurenteed to be correct or intended to be used as legal advice.  Please read the complete text of each license before using it for a submission or using a work submitted under that license.

 

Creative Commons 0 (CC0)

This license is the creative commons team's equivalent of public domain.  Works released under this license maybe copied, modified, distributed, performed or otherwise used in anyway without asking, crediting or notifying the creating artist.  

If you are using art, that means commercial use is ok.  

If your submitting art, that means you are giving the work to the public domain.   

Full license text available here (link to http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)

 

 

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (CC-BY 3.0)

Works released under this license maybe copied, modified, distributed, performed or otherwise used in anyway without asking, subject to following restrictions:

1) You must state that you have used the work and credit the original artist

      Approriate credit includes providing the title of the work, the name of the creator and attribution parties, a copyright notice, a license notice, a disclaimer notice, and a link to the material.  

2) You must indicate if you have made changes to the work

3) You may not impose any additional restrictions on the redistribution of the work

    In practice, this means the work may not be not used on distribution networks that use some form of 'Digital Rights Management' (DRM).  

If you are using art, that means commercial use is ok, so long as you provide appropriate credit and don't distribute the work in a way that includes DRM.  

If you are submitting work, this licenses means people are free to use your work but must credit you as it's author and can not use it on platforms that impose some form of DRM.

Note that many popular game distribution networks do use DRM (ie. Apple iOS, Xbox Live, Sony PSN) and others may or may not use DRM depending on how a particular game is pacakged (ex. Steam, Google Android).   

Full license text available here (link to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)

 

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 (CC-SA-3.0)

This license is an extension to CC-BY 3.0 which includes provisions stating that derivative works must also be distributed under the same license.  Works released under this license maybe copied, modified, distributed, performed or otherwise used in anyway without asking, subject to following restrictions:

 

1) You must obey all of the restrictions of the CC-BY 3.0 license (enumerated above (link))

2) If you make derivative works, you must distribute them under the same license (CC-SA-3.0) 

   Derivative works inlcude modifications of the original work, but do not include entire projects or games which merely use the work in it's original form.

If you are using art, that means commercial use is ok, so long as you provide appropriate credit, don't distribute the work in a way that includes DRM, and release any derivative works as CC-SA 3.0.  

If you are submitting work, this licenses means people are free to use your work but must credit you as it's author, can not use it on platforms that impose some form of DRM, and must distribute any changes they make under the same license.

Full license text available here (link to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)

 

OGA-BY 3.0

 

This license is a deravitive of CC-BY 3.0 which removes the restriction on placing 'additional restictions' (ie. DRM) on the redistribution of the work.  It was created to provide an option for artists wishing to be credited for their work but not wanting to restrict it's distribution on DRM using platforms.

Works released under this license maybe copied, modified, distributed, performed or otherwise used in anyway without asking, subject to following restrictions:

1) You must state that you have used the work and credit the original artist

      Approriate credit includes providing the title of the work, the name of the creator and attribution parties, a copyright notice, a license notice, a disclaimer notice, and a link to the material.  

2) You must indicate if you have made changes to the work

 

If you are using art, that means commercial use is ok, so long as you provide appropriate credit.  

If you are submitting work, this licenses means people are free to use your work but must credit you as it's author.

Full license text available here (link to http://opengameart.org/content/oga-by-30-faq)

 

 

GNU GPL 2.0 and GNU GPL 3.0

These licenses were written with source code in mind, and are included on OGA for compatibility with projects that use GPL licenses.

If you are using art, commercial use maybe ok depending on how the work is loaded but generally should only be considered if you are also willing to release your entire project under a GPL license.

If you are submitting art, you should use these licenses only if it is part of a bigger project that uses a GPL license and/or you have read the full license and know what you are doing.

Full license texts available here (link to http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html and http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html)

 

For:

'I'm a commercial (closed-source) game developer. Can I use this art?'

I suggest the following text:

This depends on the license under which it is submitted.  Please see ''What do the licenses mean?  Explanation of the licenses allowed on OpenGameArt.org' (link) above for a summary of the supported licenses as well as links to their full text.

Note that if a work is submitted under mutliple licenses you may choose which of the selected licenses you wish to use it under.

 

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Well, I think they run a little long, so any help shortening them would be welcome.  It does seem slightly redundant with the summaries already provided by the Creative Commons folks.   On the otherhand, I tried to make sure everything was spelled out pretty clearly and that I addressed most of the really common license questions/issues that we see pop up again and again.  So in that sense, I think it's ok to run a bit long, as long as it accomplishes the goal of helping clarify things for submitters and developers.