Multiple licenses for some assets on the site
Multiple licenses for some assets on the site
Hi there!
This is my very first post here, so first of all I think I should introduce myself. My name is Fernando Bevilacqua, I am a Computer Science professor and indie game developer. I run a site about game development called As3GameGears.com, which is aimed at helping other indie game devs out there like me. I think OpenGameArt is a great place for game developers, thank you all for that!
Ok, my question. Some time ago I started listing some OpenGameArt assets pack on my site. I always highlight the author and the license to be used, so it makes things easier for everybody. When I first did that, I noticed some assets on OpenGameArt have multiple licenses and I thought the game developer was supposed to choose one of them to use. Is it correct?
I am asking because these days I read more carefuly the license description on OpenGameArt and found the following (below the license icons of each asset on the site):
The authors of this content agree to license it under later versions of the licenses they selected above.
Maybe I am too paranoic (or noob =), but ss far as I can understand, I am supposed to use all licenses together. If it is not the case, I think a better text would be:
The authors of this content agree to license it under later versions of any of the licenses they selected above.
I am sorry if this is not the place to ask/discuss this. Thank you!
"The authors of this content agree to license it under later versions of the licenses they selected above."
This means that the original artist has agreed to allow future versions of the specified licenses. For instance, Creative Commons licenses are version 3.0, but 4.0 will be the standard one day (and 5.0, etc). This is our way of saying the artist has already accepted future versions of this license.
You as the user of this art are still free to choose any one license.
Thanks for your answer, Clint. I understand that, I just think the text does not state clearly the user can choose any license.
For instance, analyzing your Cave Tileset license options, I can choose GPL 2.0, GPL 3.0 or CC-BY-SA 3.0. The one I will choose depends on my game needs and/or license. Someone can misunderstand that and think one must apply those three licenses to your assets in order to use them.
I don't see that single word change clearing up the confusion, honestly. As a user, you use content under the license of your choice, but as an author, you release content under all of the licenses of your choice. Since the checkbox is about the licenses the content is released under, using 'any' there doesn't really make sense. I'll see about putting some small descriptive text under the licenses to make it clear that users can choose which one they prefer.
This does appear to keep coming up. Having a note under the licenses on each page might be a good idea.
@bart You are right. After reading your explanation, I think the use of the word "any" makes no sense at all. I never released anything other than software and when I do that I always choose a single license. That's the reason why I got so confused with all those licenses there.
Your idea of putting some small text under the licenses is great! It will help a lot.