And that repo includes all the assets including the heroism song, all in ogg format and explicitly licensed as GPL 3.0 with no further 'source' files provided. So I think you could reasonably assume that ogg is the 'preferred' form for the authors.
Friday, July 22, 2016 - 22:03
no worries, you picked a good asset to search for!
care to share any info on the project you used it in?
Friday, July 22, 2016 - 22:02
@Duion: Oh no! That sucks too!
Do any of the admins know how approval for profile url changes are supposed to work?
Is this just a case of no one getting around to it, or is there something missing in the system to where these things don't get flagged for admin attention?
Don't even start in about 'compatible licenses'! That's a whole 'nother discussion!
I feel like we've circled right back to my first comment on this thread, which doesn't really surprise me much because my point was that it's a bottomless argument, and lo here we are going in circles about this project defines 'preferred source' this way and that group defines it this other way.
It doesn't end.
I understand the point your making here and I appreciate the predicament the heroic submission has put you in, but honestly, if you want the song in another format just ask. If the author says no or doesn't respond, tell debian .ogg is the preferred format as provided by the original author. If they don't accept that, find another song to use that has 'source' or is licensed differently.
I think you'll find that's a much more productive approach than trying to get OGA to enforce some new rigid yet amorphous standard on submissions.
As for the problem more generally, I wouldn't worry about that either. It's only a tiny fraction submissions that even present the potential of being an issue, and even then, as pointed out above, that'd only be in the bizzarro world case where an author submitted something in one formatband then got mad because it wasn't being distributed in another format.
About Debian, what can be said except that the various 'exceptions' and contradictions in their 'gold' standard only show how arbitrary it truly is and just further highlight the wisdom of bart's more flexible, non-dogmatic approach.
I also get why having songs in alternative formats might be helpful for editing and generally useful for the site. But again, if you'd like that, just go ahead and ask. If you get even one submitter to post a more 'preferred source' file then you've just made OGA that much better. And if not, just by asking and making it known that there's interest in that sort of thing, you'll still have accomplished more than you will trying to get OGA to enforce some new standard or worse purge all the existing GPL submissions on the grounds of impurity.
To touch on some earlier points:
re: implicit distribution agreements
I get that if you go to some random website and start uploading pictures or what have you without ever having seen or agreed to some distribution agreement or license for them, then you are, by your actions, implicitly giving the site permission to redistribute the work.The difference is that on OGA a submitter explicitly choses a license or licenses for the work thus setting the terms for its distribution. It's just impossible to believe that someone clicks GPL or CC-BY but then intends to let OGA distribute the work under some other terms.
To bart's question of what if anything to do about GPL submissions moving forward. I think this discussion well highlights the myriad of issues around GPL'd submissions and the tiny percentage of the overall archive they represent. Given that, I don't think removing them or at least not accepting new GPL submissions would necessarily be such a bad idea. But, of course, the flip side of that is true also. They are not many GPL'd submissions and despite all the 'potential' issues they have yet to cause any major crisis for the site, so maybe keeping GPL as an option isn't the worst thing either.
ps:apologies for the funny formatting, I don't know what I did wrong but for the second time on this thread, I got stuck in some mode where new lines just would not appear in the final text no matter what I did. They show up in the edit box, but not in the final comment. So the best I could do was stick a bunch of empty bullet lists in here to break things up.
Using the main search with any art type, all licenses and no keywords yields 14,439 results.
So by some quick calculations, about 10% of submissions check a GPL license, and about 2.5% check only a GPL license.
This is not to diminish the contribution any submission makes to this site, Heroic is a great example of a fantastic submission that we'd hate to lose. But I think it is good to understand the scope of the issue.
Given these numbers, I think it's possible to say that the removing GPL only submissions would not be hugely devastating to the archive or the usefulness of OGA as a source for freely licensed game art. And moreover removing GPL as an option for new submissions is unlikely to have a strong negative impact on the site. That's even more true if you assume some portion of the existing GPL'd work is from older projects and new works are een more likely to use a CC license instead.
I guess a follow up search to test that last assumption would be a count of GPL only submissions by year.
On the flip side, it also indicates that the scope of the problem is pretty small, meaning if we can live with a little grey, there's no burning need to change the status quo.
I'll add the numbers also suggest that the task of chasing after submitters for 'source' would be difficult and time consuming. 351 isn't a big number relative to 14,439 but it is a lot of submissions to review, contact the submitters and collect 'prefferred source' file for. And the number is 5x worse if you consider any submission with GPL not just GPL only ones.
I'll be frank, if it's a choice, I'd much rather admin time was spent fixing search than hunting down 'preffered source' files.
@gslipen: Funny you mention LGPL as I'm pretty sure that it was once a supported license on OGA but was removed to reduce clutter.
Finally, I just can't resist adding that the discussion of Debian and which games in their repo have or don't have 'preffered source' files for their music and art, highlights exactly how arbitrary their 'standard' is and previews the kind of fruitless tail chasing discussion we ca expect around every GPL submission if we choose to go down the same path.
Thursday, July 21, 2016 - 17:58
So if there's a common theme to this discussion and something I think everyone would agree on it's that GPL is not a good fit for artworks.
Given that, I guess it is reasonable to ask if OGA should continue to support it as a license for submissions.
There also seems to be a general sense that GPL is frequently selected by mistake. It's either outright clicked by accident or added to a list of licenses by an artist just trying to make their work as useful to others as possible.
In that way, supporting GPL maybe doing more harm than good. Or at the very least taking it away as an option wouldn't necessarily impact new submissions much.
One can also ask how useful it is to support a license that needs to have a bunch of flashing warnings around it because it's such a poor choice to use for art.
It'd be interesting to do an 'and' search and see how much GPL only artwork is on OGA now.
In terms of new submissions, just from what I've seen randomly clicking on new works over the past two years or so, I'd say GPL is a pretty rare choice, and GPL-only even rarer. But that's just an impression, nothing scientific. Still, my guess is that the CC licenses are far better known and understood now than they were back when OGA started up.
I'm not against grandfathering in older submissions but I am starting to think maybe removing GPL as an option for new submissions is not such a bad idea.
Most definitely. In my experience, 200mb would getting off light.
I'll also add that with the musicians I've had the privilege of actually watching work on a track live, the number of different tools, programs, plugins, sample banks, etc. etc. they use to produce a single song is stupefying. It goes waaay beyond layers in a PSD. And each musician does things a little bit different, to where wven if you had all the 'source' files for each step of the production, you'd probably still need a written guide to exactly reproduce the final track.
Thinking about it, source code has a similar 'everyone does it differently' quality to how it's assembled into the final binary. But there you have make files or VS project files that provide a standard format for describing the process. This just highlights again how the 'source code' analogy doesn't really work when applied to art.
I do get the idea of trying to be strict with license standards at OGA. Just look at gsliepen and the heroic song submission, it's exactly the case you'd want to avoid, developer tries to use a work in accordance with the specified license but can't because there's a problem with the submission.
But honestly, lacking a clearly defined standard for what constitutes 'source', it doesn't seem worthwhile or fair to try and require submitter's provide it. Especially since, as pointed out, it's the submitter who would ultimately have to file suit for someone redistributing the work without 'source'.
I think OGA should strive to be strict about licensing, but also think one of the wisest decisions bart has made with the site is not to make it dogmatic about what is 'free' or 'open'. In this case, I think it's debian that's being dogmatic by setting up requirements that go beyond a simple reading of the license and are ultimately arbitrary as only they decide what they are and when you've met them.
@Redshrike: I'm sorry but I strongly disagree with that interpretation of how permission and distribution work on OGA. OGA must distribute works under some explicit terms, and those terms are the licenses selected with a submission.
The alternative is that submiters are implicitly granting OGA the right to distribute the works however it likes or under some other unspoken terms, which makes no sense.
The bit about removing works upon request is just a courtesy and bear in mind even that is explicitly stated as conditional. That is the site docs don't commit to removing works upon request, they merely state that OGA will try to honor such a request is possible.
Thanks! This post was my first stab at my later 'Site Administration' post. I wanted to offer to help w/o complaining about anything.
Anyway, the offer still stands, and I'm happy to just keep posting and helping folks out as I can.
Well, egoboo is available as source under GPL 3.0 here:
https://github.com/egoboo/egoboo
And that repo includes all the assets including the heroism song, all in ogg format and explicitly licensed as GPL 3.0 with no further 'source' files provided. So I think you could reasonably assume that ogg is the 'preferred' form for the authors.
no worries, you picked a good asset to search for!
care to share any info on the project you used it in?
@Duion: Oh no! That sucks too!
Do any of the admins know how approval for profile url changes are supposed to work?
Is this just a case of no one getting around to it, or is there something missing in the system to where these things don't get flagged for admin attention?
Any luck approving SpiderDave's account?
Don't even start in about 'compatible licenses'! That's a whole 'nother discussion!
I feel like we've circled right back to my first comment on this thread, which doesn't really surprise me much because my point was that it's a bottomless argument, and lo here we are going in circles about this project defines 'preferred source' this way and that group defines it this other way.
It doesn't end.
I understand the point your making here and I appreciate the predicament the heroic submission has put you in, but honestly, if you want the song in another format just ask. If the author says no or doesn't respond, tell debian .ogg is the preferred format as provided by the original author. If they don't accept that, find another song to use that has 'source' or is licensed differently.
I think you'll find that's a much more productive approach than trying to get OGA to enforce some new rigid yet amorphous standard on submissions.
As for the problem more generally, I wouldn't worry about that either. It's only a tiny fraction submissions that even present the potential of being an issue, and even then, as pointed out above, that'd only be in the bizzarro world case where an author submitted something in one formatband then got mad because it wasn't being distributed in another format.
About Debian, what can be said except that the various 'exceptions' and contradictions in their 'gold' standard only show how arbitrary it truly is and just further highlight the wisdom of bart's more flexible, non-dogmatic approach.
I also get why having songs in alternative formats might be helpful for editing and generally useful for the site. But again, if you'd like that, just go ahead and ask. If you get even one submitter to post a more 'preferred source' file then you've just made OGA that much better. And if not, just by asking and making it known that there's interest in that sort of thing, you'll still have accomplished more than you will trying to get OGA to enforce some new standard or worse purge all the existing GPL submissions on the grounds of impurity.
To touch on some earlier points:
re: implicit distribution agreements
I get that if you go to some random website and start uploading pictures or what have you without ever having seen or agreed to some distribution agreement or license for them, then you are, by your actions, implicitly giving the site permission to redistribute the work.The difference is that on OGA a submitter explicitly choses a license or licenses for the work thus setting the terms for its distribution. It's just impossible to believe that someone clicks GPL or CC-BY but then intends to let OGA distribute the work under some other terms.
To bart's question of what if anything to do about GPL submissions moving forward. I think this discussion well highlights the myriad of issues around GPL'd submissions and the tiny percentage of the overall archive they represent. Given that, I don't think removing them or at least not accepting new GPL submissions would necessarily be such a bad idea. But, of course, the flip side of that is true also. They are not many GPL'd submissions and despite all the 'potential' issues they have yet to cause any major crisis for the site, so maybe keeping GPL as an option isn't the worst thing either.
ps:apologies for the funny formatting, I don't know what I did wrong but for the second time on this thread, I got stuck in some mode where new lines just would not appear in the final text no matter what I did. They show up in the edit box, but not in the final comment. So the best I could do was stick a bunch of empty bullet lists in here to break things up.
@p0ss: Thanks!
Using the main search with any art type, all licenses and no keywords yields 14,439 results.
So by some quick calculations, about 10% of submissions check a GPL license, and about 2.5% check only a GPL license.
This is not to diminish the contribution any submission makes to this site, Heroic is a great example of a fantastic submission that we'd hate to lose. But I think it is good to understand the scope of the issue.
Given these numbers, I think it's possible to say that the removing GPL only submissions would not be hugely devastating to the archive or the usefulness of OGA as a source for freely licensed game art. And moreover removing GPL as an option for new submissions is unlikely to have a strong negative impact on the site. That's even more true if you assume some portion of the existing GPL'd work is from older projects and new works are een more likely to use a CC license instead.
I guess a follow up search to test that last assumption would be a count of GPL only submissions by year.
On the flip side, it also indicates that the scope of the problem is pretty small, meaning if we can live with a little grey, there's no burning need to change the status quo.
I'll add the numbers also suggest that the task of chasing after submitters for 'source' would be difficult and time consuming. 351 isn't a big number relative to 14,439 but it is a lot of submissions to review, contact the submitters and collect 'prefferred source' file for. And the number is 5x worse if you consider any submission with GPL not just GPL only ones.
I'll be frank, if it's a choice, I'd much rather admin time was spent fixing search than hunting down 'preffered source' files.
@gslipen: Funny you mention LGPL as I'm pretty sure that it was once a supported license on OGA but was removed to reduce clutter.
Finally, I just can't resist adding that the discussion of Debian and which games in their repo have or don't have 'preffered source' files for their music and art, highlights exactly how arbitrary their 'standard' is and previews the kind of fruitless tail chasing discussion we ca expect around every GPL submission if we choose to go down the same path.
So if there's a common theme to this discussion and something I think everyone would agree on it's that GPL is not a good fit for artworks.
Given that, I guess it is reasonable to ask if OGA should continue to support it as a license for submissions.
There also seems to be a general sense that GPL is frequently selected by mistake. It's either outright clicked by accident or added to a list of licenses by an artist just trying to make their work as useful to others as possible.
In that way, supporting GPL maybe doing more harm than good. Or at the very least taking it away as an option wouldn't necessarily impact new submissions much.
One can also ask how useful it is to support a license that needs to have a bunch of flashing warnings around it because it's such a poor choice to use for art.
It'd be interesting to do an 'and' search and see how much GPL only artwork is on OGA now.
In terms of new submissions, just from what I've seen randomly clicking on new works over the past two years or so, I'd say GPL is a pretty rare choice, and GPL-only even rarer. But that's just an impression, nothing scientific. Still, my guess is that the CC licenses are far better known and understood now than they were back when OGA started up.
I'm not against grandfathering in older submissions but I am starting to think maybe removing GPL as an option for new submissions is not such a bad idea.
> yes, source for one song can be over 200mb
Most definitely. In my experience, 200mb would getting off light.
I'll also add that with the musicians I've had the privilege of actually watching work on a track live, the number of different tools, programs, plugins, sample banks, etc. etc. they use to produce a single song is stupefying. It goes waaay beyond layers in a PSD. And each musician does things a little bit different, to where wven if you had all the 'source' files for each step of the production, you'd probably still need a written guide to exactly reproduce the final track.
Thinking about it, source code has a similar 'everyone does it differently' quality to how it's assembled into the final binary. But there you have make files or VS project files that provide a standard format for describing the process. This just highlights again how the 'source code' analogy doesn't really work when applied to art.
I do get the idea of trying to be strict with license standards at OGA. Just look at gsliepen and the heroic song submission, it's exactly the case you'd want to avoid, developer tries to use a work in accordance with the specified license but can't because there's a problem with the submission.
But honestly, lacking a clearly defined standard for what constitutes 'source', it doesn't seem worthwhile or fair to try and require submitter's provide it. Especially since, as pointed out, it's the submitter who would ultimately have to file suit for someone redistributing the work without 'source'.
I think OGA should strive to be strict about licensing, but also think one of the wisest decisions bart has made with the site is not to make it dogmatic about what is 'free' or 'open'. In this case, I think it's debian that's being dogmatic by setting up requirements that go beyond a simple reading of the license and are ultimately arbitrary as only they decide what they are and when you've met them.
I don't know, from gsliepen has described, when it comes to art it sounds more like an arbitrary standard than a gold one.
@Redshrike: I'm sorry but I strongly disagree with that interpretation of how permission and distribution work on OGA. OGA must distribute works under some explicit terms, and those terms are the licenses selected with a submission.
The alternative is that submiters are implicitly granting OGA the right to distribute the works however it likes or under some other unspoken terms, which makes no sense.
The bit about removing works upon request is just a courtesy and bear in mind even that is explicitly stated as conditional. That is the site docs don't commit to removing works upon request, they merely state that OGA will try to honor such a request is possible.
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