$12256 / $11500
Based on a number of different comment and forum threads that have come up recently, I present the following request for site FAQ and submission guidelines changes:
- Synchronize text between Site FAQ and Submission Guidelines, so they agree and the same information/guidelines are present on both.
- 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.
- Add language explicitly prohibiting 're-licensed' or 'compatible' license submissions (eg. BSD submitted as CC-BY, etc. etc)
- Add language recommending (though not requiring) that submitters obtain permission before submitting someone else's work.
- Make link to submission guidelines more prominent on submission form
- Add language detailing what constitutes a derivative work (eg. traceovers, copies, anything that uses another work as a 'base', re-colors, use of trademarked characters, etc) to submission guidelines
- Add language explicitly stating that preview images fall under the same license as the submission and that they should not include copyrighted images, etc. that are not part of the submission or released under the same license as the submission.
None of this is meant to be critical of the existing stuff, just some adds that would help clarify a few things and hopefully prevent some of the issues that have come up with recent submissions.
This website's content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Thanks for starting this thread. When I have some spare cycles I'll chime in too.
Looks good. I'd also add the "no additional legal terms" clause alongside mentioning no DRM. I'd say it's simplest to base it off of creative commons's own readable summary, how about "You may not apply legal terms or technological measures (DRM) that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits".
What about submissions like http://opengameart.org/content/pixelantasy, where license is GPL, but file inside of submissions cleary states:
● These specific terms and conditions apply to the free products or assets we are offering for free:
● The Free License grants you (the member or customer) a non-exclusive, global license to create one end product from the Assets orProducts you have selected for your own personal use that you may notcharge anyone for. Ex. a game or application you publish on any platform or app store that you do not charge users for. In-App purchases are allowed.
● The Free Licence does notallow the Customer to:
○ Sell, share, transfer, giveaway, sublicense or re-distribute the product in any
way, shape or form. To distribute our free products you must use our marketplace links.
@mdwh: Yes, I like the idea of borrowing from CC's own language, but think it'd be good to add a real explicit summary to the end also, something like:
CC-BY and CC-SA licenses include a clause prohibiting the use of additional "legal terms or technological measures (DRM) that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits". In practice, this means artwork using this license may not be legally distributed on platforms that use any form of 'Digital Rights Management' (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). Please be aware of this restriction when submitting work and/or choosing work to use in a project.
Is that too long? Just figure it won't hurt to really spell out exactly what the clause means.
@Nikita_Sadkov: I would file that one under improper submissions. Aside form any issues those clauses may present for GPL licensing, the goal of OGA (as discussed ad nauseum in the pregenerator to this thread) is for things to be licensed directly and simply under the selected license. I see the author already ammended the submission notes, perhaps they simply forgot to do the same with the license file in the archive, trying pinging them again to fix it and if they still don't, we'll just have to hope a mod takes notice.
I suppose as it pertains to this thread, we could also consider adding langauge to the faq/submission guidelines stating clearly that the work must not contain additional restrictions/license provisions beyond the selected license(s).
https://withthelove.itch.io/
That seems fine to me, though a minor change I'd suggest is "Please be aware of this when submitting work and/or choosing work to use in a project." (i.e., remove "restriction") - I fear it reads like the FAQ would be trying to persuade people not to use it when we should just be stating the info, but I think not calling it a "restriction" makes it seem much more neutral :)
@mdwh: Yes I agree, it's better without the word 'restriction' in there. So we have:
CC-BY and CC-SA licenses include a clause prohibiting the use of additional "legal terms or technological measures (DRM) that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits". In practice, this means artwork using this license may not be legally distributed on platforms that use any form of 'Digital Rights Management' (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). Please be aware of this when submitting work and/or choosing work to use in a project.
https://withthelove.itch.io/
Anything I can do to move this forward?
Happy to toss out a sample re-write of the relevent FAQ portions if that would help.
https://withthelove.itch.io/
Good work @capbros, I think these are very thoughtful changes! Here are my thoughts:
> Synchronize text between Site FAQ and Submission Guidelines...
I almost think that the Submission Guidelines should be entirely moved onto the FAQ. Or at least more easily available through the website - I didn't even KNOW there were submission guidelines until after I had submitted a couple pieces of art. I also think the only really useful parts of the guidelines are the first two sections ("General", and "Copyright and Trademarks"). The rest seems relatively trivial and/or unenforced.
> Add/link short form license description to submission guidelines/site faq
Again, I think it should all be on the FAQ, including adding OGA-BY to the site faq. Also, the link on the top table of contents goes to "faq#q-licenses" which is now out-of-date, and instead should be "faq#q-proprietary" as in @caps link.
> Add explicit mention of anti-DRM clause
I think this is VERY important, I definitely did not know or understand that when I first started visiting the site. Given the current structure of the FAQ, I think it would be better to compress your DRM paragraph down to one or two (tops) sentences appended to both the CC-BY and CC-BY-SA descriptions. Something like
"Furthermore, you may not restrict the ability of those who receive a CC-BY(-SA) work to exercise rights granted under the license. Note that many popular game distribution networks may impose DRM or other restrictions incompatbable with this requirement. (Perhaps add a relevant link)"
Then under description of OGA-BY, you can just say "Identical to CC-BY, but with the anti-DRM clause removed to allow for distribution on networks incompatible with CC-BY(-SA)"
> Add language explicitly prohibiting 're-licensed' or 'compatible' license submissions
This is tough, because there actually is language explicitly PERMITTING this. Since it would be unreasonable to manually list all licenses which may be relicensed into OGA, I don't know how to deal with this beyond just saying something like
"OpenGameArt.com only accepts artwork which may be licensed under one of our explicitly allowed licenses. Some unlisted licenses may be legally re-licensed to an allowed one, but it is your responsibility to ensure such compatibility. In such a case, you must explicity declare that you have relicensed the work."
> Add language recommending (though not requiring) that submitters obtain permission
Great idea. I would add a requirement that whether they obtain permission or not, they explicitly declare it. On the submission page, if the submitter selects "No" under "Is this your own work?", they must select another "Yes"/"No" radio button saying if they obtained explicit permission, with instructions to describe what they have done in the description. Perhaps here they can also have a raido button to declare whether they are relicensing the work.
> Make link to submission guidelines more prominent on submission form
YES! Like I said, I didn't even know there was a set of submission guidelines when I first submitted. Then I later had a hard time finding them again, because I didn't know you had to be on the Submit Art page to even see that link. Perhaps if users click the "Submit Art" link, it takes them FIRST to the Submission Guidelines, then they have to click a link on the botton saying they have read and understand the guidelines (so they can't miss it).
> Add language detailing what constitutes a derivative work
I think this is a really complex topic, but I think a brief description could be helpful. As long as it's clear that the description cannot be complete, and is not legal advice.
> Add language explicitly stating that preview images fall under the same license
I agree with you that this is the only sensible solution, and that it should be stated explicitly.
Overall, I think you lay out some very good suggestions, and hope that they get considered!
> Good work @capbros, I think these are very thoughtful changes!
thanks, but I can't take too much credit for all this. It's mostly just my paraphrasing of a lot of good ideas suggested by others across several different forum discussions. :)
> I didn't even KNOW there were submission guidelines until after I had submitted a couple pieces of art.
wow, yeah, so a case in point. I think someone suggested once that submitters should have to view the guidelines and check an 'I read and understand the guidelines' box on their first submission.
> I also think the only really useful parts of the guidelines are the first two sections
> ("General", and "Copyright and Trademarks"). The rest seems relatively trivial and/or unenforced.
I don't know, I think the other stuff isn't bad to have around. Maybe it's not all critical info, but I could see some of it helping folks out, especially artists that are just getting started and maybe not too aware of of the common conventions for how people do things.
> because there actually is language explicitly PERMITTING this.
oh wow, you're right, that's wild!
Although, I guess that works because WTFPL is such a permissive license. Almost an anti-license in a way.
I have to say, I think it'd be better to enumerate the few cases that are acceptable to the site than open it up for submitters to police themselves. It just opens up a whole grey area of potential issues. It has the potential of introducing improperly licensed work since not everyone agrees on what licenses are and aren't 'compatible' with one another. It degrades the integrity of 'by license' search results, since you must double check that any results are not improperly 'relicensed' works. It risks pissing off an original artist who finds their work here under a license they didn't intend (whether it's compatible or not). And when you consider that any 'relicensed' submission is by definition a third-party submission w/o the original authors explicit approval, you are talking about a slim minority of submissions, so I don't know that allowing them is particularly worth the potential troubles.
>> Add explicit mention of anti-DRM clause
> I think this is VERY important, I definitely did not know or understand that when
> I first started visiting the site.
Somewhere there is a forum topic on this subject and it is literally amazing to see how many artists, many long time and prolific contributers, were saying the same thing. It's just a really easy thing to miss. Although, in fairness, I think the CC gang have tried to make it more explicit in their more recent docs.
> I think it would be better to compress your DRM paragraph down to one or two (tops)
> sentences appended to both the CC-BY and CC-BY-SA descriptions. Something like
hmm... I think your wording works pretty well. Actually seems a bit more even-handed than what I'd proposed, which is a goog thing, as the goal isn't to knock CC-BY/SA just to make sure submitters (and downloaders!) know about the DRM stuff. Also, I agree shorter is better, but I do think it's nice to name a few names. Otherwise, the next logical question is 'Ok what game distribution networks impose DRM?' So maybe:
Furthermore, you may not restrict the ability of those who receive a CC-BY(-SA) work to exercise rights granted under the license. Note that many popular game distribution networks (ie. Apple iOS, Xbox Live, Sony PSN) impose some form of 'Digital Rights Management' (DRM) which is incompatible with this requirement and still others may or may not use DRM depending on how a particular game is pacakged (ex. Steam, Google Android).
Although, that's still a bit roundabout. I do like the fact that the other wording is very explicit about what it all means, 'eg. In practice, this means...'
> I would add a requirement that whether they obtain permission or not, they explicitly declare it.
I agree. I know there's a resistance to adding new hoops to the submit process, but the potential for trouble with 3rd party submissions is high enough that I think adding that button might be worth it.
https://withthelove.itch.io/
Hi. I don't have enough spare cycles at the moment to come up with my own writing, but if you're willing to rewrite the relevant sections (with the changed bits in bold so that I can revirew them), I'll take a look and try to merge the changes into the FAQ.
> Add language explicitly stating that preview images fall under the same
> license as the submission and that they should not include copyrighted images,
> etc. that are not part of the submission or released under the same license as
> the submission.
I think there are valid cases of including stuff into a preview which is not part of the submission itself. I have done this in the past when extending previous submissions. One example is http://opengameart.org/content/lpc-candy. It was designed to work with LPC stuff and I included some original LPC art to prove it. At the same time it was made for a challenge, the occasion of which mandated very permissive licensing. More permissive than what the original LPC art had.
The trouble with explicitly stating that the preview images must fall under the same license as the actual files is that that might not be true for some older preview images, and it's impossible to know which ones that doesn't apply to. caeles points to a completely legitimate edge case.
We already have a rule that the preview images have to reflect what's in the actual content, but I prefer that this be kept a judgement call rather than an absolute hard and fast requirement. The key is to avoid misleading previews.
Furthermore, I would actually kind of prefer that the preview images not be freely licensed, unless the author explicitly says they are. When I get around to preserving the pages of deleted content, I want to be able to preserve the preview images so that people can identify what the content was, and if the preview images themselves are freely licensed, then in many cases that's essentially the same as allowing people to download the originals against the artist's wishes. (Note: I also plan to watermark the images on deleted content and perhaps do some other processing so as to make them otherwise impractical to use).
Flagging license issues is something I really hate having to do, particularly since a lot of time if it happens on someone's first post, they just abandon it and never come back. I really would prefer to avoid adding additional situations where it would be necessary to do that. I'd much rather tell people that preview images are all rights reserved unless otherwise noted.
@bart: Would be glad to take a stab at drafting updates for the docs. I think synching/merging the two docs into one is probably the biggest task. If it's alright, I'll leave that for last, and maybe just tackle the other changes one by one. Seems like maybe the best way rather than dumping a HUGE text blob here and fielding feedback on so many changes all at once.
@bart and caeles:
re: licenses for preview images...
Yeah, I hadn't thought of a case like this where you are making a work explicitly to work with another work that maybe licensed differently. Although, strictly speaking this is a case where you might like to include other work in the preview, I don't think it's a case where it's absolutely required. I think most people would take your word that the set worked with LPC sprites. And indeed, anyone whose working with LPC stuff could probably quickly eyeball it and judge for themselves if it would work with the set or not.
And if you look at the submission it well highlights the issues raised by this kind of preview. You (caeles) did the right thing and meticuoulsy sited where the non-submission work came from and what the license(s) for it was, but darn if that doesn't make for a dense blob of 'Notes' and 'Attribution' text. It's easy to see how:
a) not every submitter is going to have the wherewithal to site preview inclusions this well
b) this makes searching the site more onerous. Search for CC-BY work, see something you like? Ok great, now go parse the notes and attribution section to make sure what you liked in the preview is actually part of the submission and licensed the same way...
I'd also just say generally that unless you put a giant blinking notice up there people are going to assume that what's in the preview is in the submission and it's covered under the same license. It maybe wrong but I think it's a pretty logical assumption to make.
If there preview is not under the same license as the submission, then what license it is under?
It can't be no license. It can't be copyright the submitter, he/she may not have the right to copyright the images (as in caeles case). Should we make submitters explicitly agree to grant OGA distribution rights for the preview when they submit? This is how the commercial store fronts (Steam, etc) work. But again, as in caeles case, submitter may not have right to do that.
Re: deleted submissions, we might just be stuck. If the preview image was not covered by the submission license (and for older submissions you'd have to assume not since it is not explicitly part of the guidelines now, meaning you cannot assume the submitter meant to license the preview the same), then how can OGA know it has the right to re-distribute the preview at all after it has been deleted?
If you want to avoid this discussion and keep it grey, how about:
1) A explicit and strong recommendation that preview images contain only art/work from the actual submission. I do think this is covered by the existing langauge in spirit, but I think it'd be a good idea to state it explicitly.
2) a requirement that if the preview does contain work not in the submission, that work should be noted and credited properly in the notes section.
3) a clear statement in the faq/site docs that preview images are not part of the submission and not covered by the submission's license
4) a note to the same effect by/under the preview image itself
> Flagging license issues is something I really hate having to do
Totally agree here. Sorry if I am coming off all law and order here. Not my intent at all. In fact, the hope would be that by clarifying a few of the rules (and making them more prominent in the submission process), we could actually avoid future license flags by helping submitters understand potential issues upfront.
Finally, I must fess up, that I realize my own Instant Dungeon! art pack submission contains work from outside the submission :( The preview is just a few screen shots from the game, it's almost all art from the submission, but if you look on the top edges you'll see some text written with the 'Bold Boxy Fat' font. What can I say, I guess that makes me a hypocrite, guilty as charged! :)
https://withthelove.itch.io/
Just a note, to keep things organized, I've decided to break the suggested changes up into a few parts.
First part here:
http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/site-faqsubmission-guidelines-updatesc...
https://withthelove.itch.io/