$12256 / $11500
It would be great to have a set of licenses available which are specifically intended for open game art. From the discussions I have seen, it seems to be widely agreed that the gpl licenses are unsuitable for open artwork. There also seems to be some varying opinions and ambiguity about what constitutes a derivitive work in the CC BY SA 3.0 license.
Would it be possible for some modified versions of the creative commons licenses to be created specifically for this site? I would suggest a separate donation button to be added to the site to fund the legal costs for these licenses. At the end, each artwork submission could clearly state whether it requires attribution, requires the game to be open source, requires other used artwork to be licensed in the same way and whether the art can be used in a commercial game.
I think of most value would be a version of the CC BY SA license which explicity requires direct modifications of the artwork to be redistributed under the same license but doesnt require the entire game or other artwork to be licensed the same way. Currently, its very difficult to make use of any CC BY SA licensed art because its unclear whether it can be used in combination with commercially licensed artwork. Theres a ton of great CC BY SA artwork on the site but for a developer like me (artistically challenged) to use it, I would need to fill in the gaps with artwork released under different licenses, such as the license used on the unity asset store. And if the artwork is not getting used then its no benefit to artists or developers.
Artwork submitters on the site may also benefit from a license which allows all of the freedoms of CC BY 3.0 for non commercial games but if used in a commercial game, the artwork would automatically revert to a commercial license as specified by the copyright holder. I think a lot of the hobbyist game developers would be aspiring towards proffessional/commercial game development and would not begrudge a portion of generated income in return for a selection of good quality artwork to choose from. I know this is probably out of the scope of this website, however im guessing the reason why a lot of artists submit artwork with the CC BY SA license is to prevent others from reaping profits from their hard work. There must be a way forward which gives artists the confidence to submit high quality artwork under an open license without being exploited and also gives developers the confidense to use that artwork in potentially commercial games without fear of having to remove artwork later. I think this would have an immediate effect on the quality of submitted work as artists are not incentivised to hold back their best work.
This website's content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Hey Ryan - I've been looking at some of the CC 4.0 stuff that was released this month, and I think there's some interesting points to be had there (and I also hope we'll look into adding those buttons soon).
So a few points:
My understanding is that this is really what the GPL buttons are for under the licensing choices - maybe we should separate those out from the "License(s)" section of the artwork sidebar to a "Preferred Games" or similar section?
The huge chunk here can be taken in two parts.
-----
-----
4.0 has a handy chart to clear this up. Stay in the green and you're good - http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions#If_I_derive_o... Specifically note the sentence,
So CC-BY-SA derivatives must be CC-BY-SA.
if you check out Section 2, a, 5, C (and I Am Not A Lawyer, though I'm tempted to ask one at work), you can't put any additional restrictions, so I don't think something can be CC-BY AND require use only in an open source game, so I understand your desire there.
Next bit:
I don't think there's a ban on putting CC-BY-SA and non-Copylefted material into the same game, if that's what you're asking; it's essentially just a collection displayed by a computer program in a certain way, right? Maybe there's something out there that gives a better idea on this. I'd specifically look for working on collages (for visual) or remixes (for audio) to try and find a hint in the wider CC community.
I don't think that's the idea at all; personally, I'd like to see free culture spread. If I post something for others to use, I'd like to see them give back. This is the essential idea behind share alike, as well as the GPL. It's not to stop someone from making money; it's to promote More Free Culture. If they use my stuff, I want to be able to use their work that they adapted from mine, yeah?
To the final point: if the goal was to keep someone from profiting off of my work, I'd want to be licensing as something CC-NC anyhow. A straight up CC-BY-SA says:
No ban there on the licensee making money, eh?
thanks for sharing your analysis of the license. I think the ambiguity with cc by sa is whether the game is considered to be an adaptation of the artwork used and hence would all need to be released under the same license. I have seen varying opinions on this point and having read the license, i cant say im clear about it. Logically you might expect it to apply seperately to a single asset but i wouldnt say that its clear in the license. On the commercial side, im referring mainly to the contributors that submit a sample of their work and post a link to their website. a commercialy restrictive license would allow them to submit all of their work foor use in non commercial projects.
After some thought, im convinced that CC BY SA work cannot be used together with commercialy licensed assets.
Lets say you took a CC BY SA background image and a closed licensed character sprite, used gimp to place the character on the background and redistributed the resuling image file. Since the new image file was made from a CC BY SA asset, the new image also has to be redistributed under the same license. Since the image was also derived from closed license artwork, this would be a breach of the owners copyright.
This above is really no different than what a game does. For each frame rendered, a bunch of different assets are combined to make one image and displayed to the player. Its doing it in a different way but the resulting image is the same. The fact that the rendered frame is not a saved image file is irrelevant since the player could capture the image by taking a screenshot and saving it.
So in the worst case, the game itself would not be required to be released as CC BY SA or another open license, but all of the game outputs would be.
Just had a look at CC NC. I think this would make a good licensing option for this site. For the artists that depend on commercial game development to make a living out of their artwork, it would give them a lot more freedom to share their work.
You mean for artists who depend on commisions for their living?
No, there are actually many differences and it's not that clear. When player plays the game and takes the screenshot, isn't the player actually creating the new work? If I redistribute GIMP and include CC-BY-SA licensed image and proprietary image and package all of them in zip-file so that someone can create new image where they are both visible, would that breach owners copyright?
I would say that taking a screenshot is the same as copying the image but the game engine is still creating the image in the first place.
For the zip file, I would consider this as a collection rather than an adaptation. The difference with the rendered frame of a game is that a single image is being produced using a combination of other images.
But the game isn't actually creating a derivative work - just displaying the work "in whole or in part." The original image still exists somewhere in the game as a png or a jpg or a gif or whatever, right?
For the screenshot example, that'd fall under fair use anyways, and the terms of the license are pretty irrelevant.
ryan.dansie: "Artwork submitters on the site may also benefit from a license which allows all of the freedoms of CC BY 3.0 for non commercial games but if used in a commercial game, the artwork would automatically revert to a commercial license as specified by the copyright holder."
As you note, BY-NC will do this. However, any licence considered "Free" or "Open" by the FSF and OSI respectively must allow commercial redistribution. My understanding is that Open Game Art is for licences considered "open" by these definitions, to support the creation of complete Open Source games. I think this is a good thing - one of the great things about OGA is that every art is guaranteed to be Open, which includes commercial reuse.
Also note that even for freeware authors, non-commercial restrictions become a pain. What if I want to distribute on a website that has ads? What if my game could be included on a commercial magazine Cover CD?
I agree it is a problem that it's unclear if CC BY-SA art can be used in a game, without putting the whole game under CC BY-SA too. This vagueness is even a pain for Open Source - if I use CC BY-SA art, but the game code/binary is only licenced as GPL, is that a violation because CC BY-SA says derivatives must be released under the same licence? Indeed I think this vagueness is one of the reason why GPL isn't a preferred licence for art.
I don't know if a game would be considered a derivative work, rather than a collection, but the problem is that this uncertainty exists. It's a shame that AFAICT they haven't cleared this up with version 4.
A lot of this stuff has come up in the past and been discussed extensively, so I'm going to briefly explain OGA's positions on it:
Artwork submitters on the site may also benefit from a license which allows all of the freedoms of CC BY 3.0 for non commercial games but if used in a commercial game, the artwork would automatically revert to a commercial license as specified by the copyright holder.
This is the same as an NC license. There is simply no way of doing this in a way that is compatiable with open source and free software. Furthermore, before OGA, there was a huge glut of NC-only art all over the web that was impossible fo use for serious projects. That art is still out there and available, but putting NC-only artwork on OGA would dilute overall userfulness of the archive (right now, every single piece of art here is available for use in open source software, and a significant portion of it can be used commercially). NC-only art is really only usable for hobby projects. It severely limits what you can actually do with it, how you can distribute your games, etc.
Note that OGA has nothing against NC licenses; they're just outside the scope of the site. I really don't like to shut discussions down, but this particular one has been rehashed a lot, and there just isn't any room to negotiate on it.
I think of most value would be a version of the CC BY SA license which explicity requires direct modifications of the artwork to be redistributed under the same license but doesnt require the entire game or other artwork to be licensed the same way. Currently, its very difficult to make use of any CC BY SA licensed art because its unclear whether it can be used in combination with commercially licensed artwork.
You might be onto something with this -- that is, some sort of weaker share-alike requirement that allows people to combine the works with non-sharealike works. However, for a license like this to work, it would need some clear criteria about when the sharealike clause would be in effect and when it wouldn't. The criteria would need to be strong enough to keep someone from including a tiny portion of another piece of art just to break the license, but not so strong as to discourage legitimate use. I'm open to suggestions.
That said, in all honesty, the thing about licenses is that there are already way too many of them. I've had my own ideas for licenses, and I'm hesitant to put them into practice because the fact that a piece of art uses a new license means that license needs to be reviewed and approved by legal experts. That in itself would limit the usefulness of art content. While there are some ambiguities in the licenses we already have, there are certain well-defined areas where people know that they can be used. Introducing a new license would set things back by forcing people to go through the vetting process again. As such, I would be very hesitant to do so unless there's strong demand for it.
The usability of the art, and the initial size of the archive, are what hooked me.
Seeing art that wasn't restricted by NC, ND, and wasn't commercially licensed is what kept me here. GPL has it's quirks, so does CC but they serve a reasonable purpose.
As far as determining derivatives of something licensed as CC-BY-SA 3.0, would it be reasonable to talk to the person who made the original work and ask for their blessing? I've done that with success several times without problem. If you're giving away art most artists will be flattered that you want to use their stuff and won't be hard to work with.
If you license something a certain way and you state a modification you wish to make to that license I don't see how you can go wrong. If you license something CC-BY-SA 3.0 and explicitly state in the description or attribution instructions you don't require the whole project to be under the same license then that's enough for any normal person to understand you've waived that stipulation of the license.
My experience as a software developer is mostly with MIT and GPL licensed goods. When I started dealing with CC it didn't make a lot of sense. After reading through the simple descriptions it's not hard to understand the intended meaning. If someone really has a problem with how you've licensed a free asset they'll probably just ask you. I've never heard of someone getting sued over something given away under a CC or GPL license.
If you're worried about mixing commerically licensed content with CC-BY-SA or GPL licensed goods just talk to the author. 99.9% of the time they will tell you in writing that it's okay to use their stuff for whatever you're doing as long as you give them credit.