"This license requires you to release the source your entire project under the same license or one with similar terms, such as the GNU GPL."
I think this is still incorrect - the licence can only be distributed under the same (or later version of the same) licence, i.e., CC BY-SA.
I think this misconception came about because the "human readable summary" contained the phrase "similar", but this was never in the licence itself. Instead it said you had to use one of the licences listed at https://creativecommons.org/compatiblelicenses ,but it says "Please note that to date, Creative Commons has not approved any licenses for compatibility". They've now updated the human readable summary to just say "same license", together with a link to the compatible licences URL.
Similarly for "This license requires you to release the any modifications to the art under the same license or one with similar terms, such as the GNU GPL." should just say "same license".
"Does using CC-BY-SA art require that an entire project be released as open source?"
I think the question of whether the SA requirement apples to the entire project is a red herring - even if it did apply to the entire game, it would mean that the game has to be released as CC BY-SA. Which is an Open/Free licence, but doesn't require that one must release the source code.
So I'd say that we can definitely say that there's no requirement to release source code - but it's unclear whether they would have to release the game as CC BY-SA.
* If OGA went with a tick box, I would hope it's made clear that the recipient can choose whether to accept the waiver? (At first you might say, why would anyone want the more restrictive version? The answer is, if I want to distribute an Open Source game with a straightforward CC BY asset, rather than some modified licence.)
* Whilst I think the proposed OGA BY licence should be relicencable as CC BY, to be sure, perhaps to be explicit, it could be set up that choosing OGA BY also automatically selects CC BY, as a dual licence.
"Removing the anti-DRM clause still forces any derivatives of the asset to be released under the same license"
But if I distributed my derivative of that asset in a DRM game where it wasn't possible to redistribute/edit/get-hold-of that asset, then users have lost the rights they were supposed to have under the original CC BY-SA licence.
It's not a useless licence as such, GPL v2 managed fine for years - but it does give a loophole to those using DRM. I'm not sure why an artist would want to choose a version of CC BY-SA without the DRM clause, but still wanting the strong copyleft clauses?
I agree that CC BY-SA shouldn't apply to a whole game (indeed, therefore I think it ought to be fine if someone puts DRM on the binary, so long as it doesn't restrict the derived asset in question).
I see that anything related to No Additional Terms has been removed - e.g., the bit about not imposing additional terms that restrict the terms, not just the DRM bit. And this is a good thing - this makes it a true "permissive" licence, and makes it a useful and distinct licence to CC-BY. Licence proliferation is indeed a bad thing, but I agree this really does seem to be a gap in the available choice of licences. It's also better than people simply offering waivers to CC-BY, since it's vague which bits of the legal licence have actually been removed. This is why I'd also oppose a tickbox - a legal licence needs to be explicit, and any modifications must be explicit about how it's changed, not just a vague description of waiving terms (and simply waiving the DRM bit doesn't remove the other restrictions).
I agree that an OGA-BY-SA is pointless, as someone can just use DRM to get round the licence. Indeed, I'd argue it's actively bad, as it effectively rewards people for using DRM. There is also the issue that breaking DRM to regain those freedoms is in some countries a criminal offence, whilst legal terms would be a civil issue. I'm not sure why artists would want such a licence, or what it would be useful for(?)
So I'm in entire agreement.
Ideally we'd want any new licence to be acknowledged by the FSF and OSI as a Free licence (and preferably Debian too, though they are always very picky...) One of the issues as an Open Source developer is that even if a licence looks fine for me, it's useful to be something that is accepted as "Free" to ensure distribution on Free channels.
Though as you note, OGA-BY can trivially be relicenced as CC-BY, so perhaps this isn't an issue anyway.
Well, it got long - there're a lot of points already raised in the discussion, and I wanted to do a single post instead of several replies :)
My biggest points are probably: * It's not just about anti-DRM, see the "No additional restrictions" clause. * I don't think this is a small technicality, but a core part of CC BY (albeit unfortunately not widely publicised until recently). * Artists should choose what they like, and there's no need for us or OGA to have any kind of consensus. This is the age-old "GPL vs BSD" debate in a different form I think - it's not something that I think there will ever be a consensus on in the Free/Open community :)
What's most important imo is that people individually choose what their art is licenced under, and as long as it's a Free/Open license, it's okay for OGA. I don't think there should be a need to try to persuade everyone to use more permissive licences, or waive clauses.
However this isn't just about the DRM clause, but also the "no additional restrictions" on "legal terms" too. From the human readable page on CC BY 3.0:
"No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits."
Firstly, waiving the DRM clause isn't enough if IOS also requires additional terms that prevent distribution(?). More generally, I'd argue it doesn't seem consistent to waive the "technological measures", and not the no additional "legal terms" clause (similar to the point people are making about doing so for CC BY SA - you don't want me putting additional legal terms that prevent people from using CC BY, but it's okay to use DRM to do the same thing?)
But given that CC BY has the "No additional restrictions", it's not clear to me that CC BY was ever meant to be a "permissive" licence (in the same sense as say BSD). It's also clear that Creative Commons seem very against DRM ( https://creativecommons.org/tag/drm ) so it's not like this was some mistake (or "fine print technicallity" as Curt says) that slipped in. Also remember that Creative Commons was created for far more than just games, and the issue of DRM exists on many fronts (music, video, books).
As William.Thompsonj notes, the only extra protection of CC BY SA is that it also extends to derivative works. Indeed, could this mean that CC BY _can_ be used on DRM platforms after all, if people create a derivative work of the art, e.g., creatively modifying the art for their game (since that can then be relicenced)? Though the catch I guess is it may be unclear what counts as a derivative work, rather than simply being the original.
So I'd argue that CC BY is actually a copyleft licence (that limits its use for developers, but is intended to use copyright law to preserve freedom for users), albeit "weak copyleft" (since not all derived works inherit the copyleft licence), as opposed to CC BY SA which is the "strong copyleft" version.
I think much of the problem is that, as MoikMellah notes, until recently the human readable summary didn't mention the "No additional restrictions", so people (myself included) thought of it as a very permissive (BSD-style) licence. As I say, this isn't just about the DRM clause - the requirement for no additional legal restrictions also makes it a form of (weak) copyleft.
It's also a problem if there isn't a BSD-style licence for art - one that requires attribution, but otherwise doesn't prevent people from putting additional restrictions (legal or technological). Are there any existing licences out there that would fit this, I wonder?
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I note that William.Thompsonj - I think - seems to be talking about what "OGA" or "we" should do - in my opinion, OGA is a site to host art under Free licences, but otherwise it's up to the authors to choose what licences there are. There is no need to come to a consensus here (which clearly isn't going to happen anyway). I think supporting licences that are Free/Open (as defined by FSF/OSI) is a good thing, but the copyleft-vs-permissive debate should be left to individual artists to choose.
@William.Thompsonj: "If the content isn't usable in a closed-source environment like iOS and Steam it's not available for anyone outside the open-source community."
Not sure if I misunderstand you, but it's available for use for anyone as long as they abide by the terms, and most platforms do not have this requirement where DRM or additional terms are enforced on users. Indeed, as you say yourself later on, there are a long list of platforms where people could use CC BY art in closed source games. (Also consider than an Open Source IOS developer still _couldn't_ use CC BY art.)
The point about "No additional terms" is not to keep the work to Open Source, it's to preserve the freedom for the art.
(Does Steam force DRM upon developers, or is this a choice?)
"The entire idea behind waving the anti-DRM clause in CC and GPL is to sanitize our free assets so major developers can use them."
Well for GPL, there's no point waiving just the DRM clause imo, since that still has copyleft provisions such as "No additional restrictions", and would limit use in other ways (such as requirement to release source code of derivative works). Developers who want their work to see maximum usage would pick LGPL (if its a library) or something like BSD (otherwise). But I guess this is part of the issue - for developers, they have these options, but it's not clear if there are permissive licences for art, other than CC0.
"Wouldn't you be proud if you made something awesome and you saw it show up in the #1 game on facebook?"
Well, different people have different motivation, plus this may vary depending on the work. From my own point of view as a developer, if I write code I want to be useful to other developers, I would go for a BSD-style licence, but for larger projects I go for GPL. If some BSD code/library I wrote was used, I'd be happy whatever platform it was on; but if my GPL code was ported and distributed on Apple's site, they'd get a takedown notice. People should pick the licence they want, there isn't a right licence for every case.
Remember if all you want is to maximise the chances of it being used, and say "I made that" if it's used in something popular, there is CC0 (whilst they don't have to attribute you, this doesn't mean people can falsely claim they made instead - you're still the creator, even if copyright law no longer applies).
But really, this is just the age-old GPL-vs-BSD debate, but for artists. There are points of view for both sides, and you're not going to get a consensus. The difference is that whilst more permissive licences maximise freedom for developers, copyleft licences are meant to preserve freedom for users. The paradox is that you can't have both - which means we cannot resolve this.
So for someone who wants to preserve freedom of the art, saying "But it could be the #1 game on X" doesn't mean much, if on X means that the art is no longer free.
"If we allow a blanket exception to the CC and GPL for Apple apps we aren't just doing it out of pride; we're expanding our market into the biggest and widest possible list of users around the world."
I think if one doesn't believe in the No Additional Restrictions, just waive that for all - it shouln't be a special exception for one company (N.B. IOS isn't the biggest number of users, never has been - Android and Windows are the largest platforms. Although even if it was Android or Windows enforcing the DRM, I don't think that really matters - one could just as well argue that if DRM is being enforced on large amounts of software, that's all the more reason to support the platforms that don't do this.)
@Curt: "I don't know if there is a grudge against Apple in here or what, but a tiny website like OGA isn't going to do anything about how Apple handles their licensing. Infact, the only people that the anti-DRM affects are small indie developers who do games usually for a hobby, usually making little to nothing."
I don't see any evidence of a grudge, that to me implies people dislike Apple for other reasons, and are choosing CC BY just to prevent the use on IOS, which seems unlikely. It's the people who dislike these restrictions who are bringing up IOS. And if someone doesn't like Apple because of their restrictions, then it's entirely consistent to be supporting for the anti-DRM clauses even if it limits the use for IOS.
It's Apple's restrictions which hurts IOS developers. Indeed, the fact that Apple isn't going to change makes me confused - developers who choose to develop for IOS know full well that these restrictions exist, and aren't going to go away, so I don't see why it's a surprise that they the can't use other people's work in a way that they don't want. If you want permissive, go with CC0 - I mean, I could say "I don't want to give attribution to anyone, and your CC BY licence isn't going to ever make me change my mind, so therefore you're hurting me if you don't licence as CC0".
"It is a little parisite that noone wants on their artwork"
I think that's a question for Creative Commons - I can't believe no one wants those clauses. Creative Commons seem to strongly believe in those clauses - if everyone else disagrees, they probably shouldn't be using CC licences.
"If you want your artwork to sit on a website, have no one use it, and absolutely not used for commercial use.. then use CC-BY-NC-SA. CC-BY, on the other-hand had a much different intent."
This is not what anyone is saying. Available for 100% of PC platforms and 80% or so of mobile platforms isn't "have no one use it", rather it's the debate about maximising use for developers, or preserving freedom for users. If all you care about is maximising use to the fullest extent, you don't need CC BY, since there's CC0. I don't know where your "absolutely not used for commercial use" comes from, since copyleft Free licences have always allowed commercial usage. It's just that copyleft is about preserving that freedom.
Consider that with a "permissive" CC licence (e.g., CC BY without the No additional terms), I could create a website hosting such material, but slap a new licence of them saying, e.g., "Not for commercial use" (or, use DRM to limit its use). I assume that Creative Commons knew what the intent of the CC BY licence was, when they wrote the No additional terms clauses :)
That sounds good! There's also this post on user-tagging: http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/user-tagging . I don't know if allowing user tags would make the problem of miscategorsation worse (because of more people doing it inconsistently) or better (since we already have the problem of poor choice of tags, which other people can't fix) though :)
One of the issues I've found is due to the scoring/ordering of search results being poor. Completely irrelevant results can be shown before ones that might be more relevant. In some cases, something is included in the results because someone happens to say the word in the comments - e.g., see how the top result for sword is http://opengameart.org/content/flare-portrait-pack-female-edition because someone says it in the comments. Okay, there is a sword in the picture, but this probably shouldn't be anywhere near the top result if someone is searching for sword :)
The problem with it being hard to find the LPC base assets is that it doesn't get the top hit (or anywhere near it). Extra categorisation wouldn't help here. (Compare say with Google, which has no trouble finding the LPC assets on that search term - Google also does better with the sword example I think.)
If Solr's sorting is better, then I think that would be a big improvement in itself (though the proposals for better categorisation do sound good, and would be very useful in their own right.)
"Making a mobile version of anything that uses Flash requires embedding a runtime environment and adds about 10MB to the overall download size regardless of what you make (not too keen on this)."
Although bear in mind that Haxe (or anything else) may do the same - the libraries still have to be bundled - so it's worth checking that out before making a choice. (Particularly for C++ on Android, where I believe there's less availability of built-in libraries, most of them are only available via Java.)
Although it's fair game to release work under a modified licence with additional restrictions, I believe this would mean that it can't be hosted on Open Game Art (since it's not one of the available licences allowed; more generally, this licence wouldn't be considered Free/Open Source due to those restrictions, so would not be usable for Free/Open Source games).
Can I clarify - are the additional restrictions something you've added since the original version on this page was, or was the original always wrong? (You say "new" licence, but then, I see if I download the archive here, it does have the additional restrictions in the text file.)
As an aside, I see that this page also lists LGPL 2.1 and LGPL 3.0, I don't know if that's incorrect too...
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.
On CC BY-SA:
"This license requires you to release the source your entire project under the same license or one with similar terms, such as the GNU GPL."
I think this is still incorrect - the licence can only be distributed under the same (or later version of the same) licence, i.e., CC BY-SA.
I think this misconception came about because the "human readable summary" contained the phrase "similar", but this was never in the licence itself. Instead it said you had to use one of the licences listed at https://creativecommons.org/compatiblelicenses ,but it says "Please note that to date, Creative Commons has not approved any licenses for compatibility". They've now updated the human readable summary to just say "same license", together with a link to the compatible licences URL.
Similarly for "This license requires you to release the any modifications to the art under the same license or one with similar terms, such as the GNU GPL." should just say "same license".
"Does using CC-BY-SA art require that an entire project be released as open source?"
I think the question of whether the SA requirement apples to the entire project is a red herring - even if it did apply to the entire game, it would mean that the game has to be released as CC BY-SA. Which is an Open/Free licence, but doesn't require that one must release the source code.
So I'd say that we can definitely say that there's no requirement to release source code - but it's unclear whether they would have to release the game as CC BY-SA.
Random thoughts on dual licencing:
* If OGA went with a tick box, I would hope it's made clear that the recipient can choose whether to accept the waiver? (At first you might say, why would anyone want the more restrictive version? The answer is, if I want to distribute an Open Source game with a straightforward CC BY asset, rather than some modified licence.)
* Whilst I think the proposed OGA BY licence should be relicencable as CC BY, to be sure, perhaps to be explicit, it could be set up that choosing OGA BY also automatically selects CC BY, as a dual licence.
"Removing the anti-DRM clause still forces any derivatives of the asset to be released under the same license"
But if I distributed my derivative of that asset in a DRM game where it wasn't possible to redistribute/edit/get-hold-of that asset, then users have lost the rights they were supposed to have under the original CC BY-SA licence.
It's not a useless licence as such, GPL v2 managed fine for years - but it does give a loophole to those using DRM. I'm not sure why an artist would want to choose a version of CC BY-SA without the DRM clause, but still wanting the strong copyleft clauses?
I agree that CC BY-SA shouldn't apply to a whole game (indeed, therefore I think it ought to be fine if someone puts DRM on the binary, so long as it doesn't restrict the derived asset in question).
I see that anything related to No Additional Terms has been removed - e.g., the bit about not imposing additional terms that restrict the terms, not just the DRM bit. And this is a good thing - this makes it a true "permissive" licence, and makes it a useful and distinct licence to CC-BY. Licence proliferation is indeed a bad thing, but I agree this really does seem to be a gap in the available choice of licences. It's also better than people simply offering waivers to CC-BY, since it's vague which bits of the legal licence have actually been removed. This is why I'd also oppose a tickbox - a legal licence needs to be explicit, and any modifications must be explicit about how it's changed, not just a vague description of waiving terms (and simply waiving the DRM bit doesn't remove the other restrictions).
I agree that an OGA-BY-SA is pointless, as someone can just use DRM to get round the licence. Indeed, I'd argue it's actively bad, as it effectively rewards people for using DRM. There is also the issue that breaking DRM to regain those freedoms is in some countries a criminal offence, whilst legal terms would be a civil issue. I'm not sure why artists would want such a licence, or what it would be useful for(?)
So I'm in entire agreement.
Ideally we'd want any new licence to be acknowledged by the FSF and OSI as a Free licence (and preferably Debian too, though they are always very picky...) One of the issues as an Open Source developer is that even if a licence looks fine for me, it's useful to be something that is accepted as "Free" to ensure distribution on Free channels.
Though as you note, OGA-BY can trivially be relicenced as CC-BY, so perhaps this isn't an issue anyway.
Well, it got long - there're a lot of points already raised in the discussion, and I wanted to do a single post instead of several replies :)
My biggest points are probably:
* It's not just about anti-DRM, see the "No additional restrictions" clause.
* I don't think this is a small technicality, but a core part of CC BY (albeit unfortunately not widely publicised until recently).
* Artists should choose what they like, and there's no need for us or OGA to have any kind of consensus. This is the age-old "GPL vs BSD" debate in a different form I think - it's not something that I think there will ever be a consensus on in the Free/Open community :)
What's most important imo is that people individually choose what their art is licenced under, and as long as it's a Free/Open license, it's okay for OGA. I don't think there should be a need to try to persuade everyone to use more permissive licences, or waive clauses.
However this isn't just about the DRM clause, but also the "no additional restrictions" on "legal terms" too. From the human readable page on CC BY 3.0:
"No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits."
Firstly, waiving the DRM clause isn't enough if IOS also requires additional terms that prevent distribution(?). More generally, I'd argue it doesn't seem consistent to waive the "technological measures", and not the no additional "legal terms" clause (similar to the point people are making about doing so for CC BY SA - you don't want me putting additional legal terms that prevent people from using CC BY, but it's okay to use DRM to do the same thing?)
But given that CC BY has the "No additional restrictions", it's not clear to me that CC BY was ever meant to be a "permissive" licence (in the same sense as say BSD). It's also clear that Creative Commons seem very against DRM ( https://creativecommons.org/tag/drm ) so it's not like this was some mistake (or "fine print technicallity" as Curt says) that slipped in. Also remember that Creative Commons was created for far more than just games, and the issue of DRM exists on many fronts (music, video, books).
As William.Thompsonj notes, the only extra protection of CC BY SA is that it also extends to derivative works. Indeed, could this mean that CC BY _can_ be used on DRM platforms after all, if people create a derivative work of the art, e.g., creatively modifying the art for their game (since that can then be relicenced)? Though the catch I guess is it may be unclear what counts as a derivative work, rather than simply being the original.
So I'd argue that CC BY is actually a copyleft licence (that limits its use for developers, but is intended to use copyright law to preserve freedom for users), albeit "weak copyleft" (since not all derived works inherit the copyleft licence), as opposed to CC BY SA which is the "strong copyleft" version.
I think much of the problem is that, as MoikMellah notes, until recently the human readable summary didn't mention the "No additional restrictions", so people (myself included) thought of it as a very permissive (BSD-style) licence. As I say, this isn't just about the DRM clause - the requirement for no additional legal restrictions also makes it a form of (weak) copyleft.
It's also a problem if there isn't a BSD-style licence for art - one that requires attribution, but otherwise doesn't prevent people from putting additional restrictions (legal or technological). Are there any existing licences out there that would fit this, I wonder?
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I note that William.Thompsonj - I think - seems to be talking about what "OGA" or "we" should do - in my opinion, OGA is a site to host art under Free licences, but otherwise it's up to the authors to choose what licences there are. There is no need to come to a consensus here (which clearly isn't going to happen anyway). I think supporting licences that are Free/Open (as defined by FSF/OSI) is a good thing, but the copyleft-vs-permissive debate should be left to individual artists to choose.
@William.Thompsonj: "If the content isn't usable in a closed-source environment like iOS and Steam it's not available for anyone outside the open-source community."
Not sure if I misunderstand you, but it's available for use for anyone as long as they abide by the terms, and most platforms do not have this requirement where DRM or additional terms are enforced on users. Indeed, as you say yourself later on, there are a long list of platforms where people could use CC BY art in closed source games. (Also consider than an Open Source IOS developer still _couldn't_ use CC BY art.)
The point about "No additional terms" is not to keep the work to Open Source, it's to preserve the freedom for the art.
(Does Steam force DRM upon developers, or is this a choice?)
"The entire idea behind waving the anti-DRM clause in CC and GPL is to sanitize our free assets so major developers can use them."
Well for GPL, there's no point waiving just the DRM clause imo, since that still has copyleft provisions such as "No additional restrictions", and would limit use in other ways (such as requirement to release source code of derivative works). Developers who want their work to see maximum usage would pick LGPL (if its a library) or something like BSD (otherwise). But I guess this is part of the issue - for developers, they have these options, but it's not clear if there are permissive licences for art, other than CC0.
"Wouldn't you be proud if you made something awesome and you saw it show up in the #1 game on facebook?"
Well, different people have different motivation, plus this may vary depending on the work. From my own point of view as a developer, if I write code I want to be useful to other developers, I would go for a BSD-style licence, but for larger projects I go for GPL. If some BSD code/library I wrote was used, I'd be happy whatever platform it was on; but if my GPL code was ported and distributed on Apple's site, they'd get a takedown notice. People should pick the licence they want, there isn't a right licence for every case.
Remember if all you want is to maximise the chances of it being used, and say "I made that" if it's used in something popular, there is CC0 (whilst they don't have to attribute you, this doesn't mean people can falsely claim they made instead - you're still the creator, even if copyright law no longer applies).
But really, this is just the age-old GPL-vs-BSD debate, but for artists. There are points of view for both sides, and you're not going to get a consensus. The difference is that whilst more permissive licences maximise freedom for developers, copyleft licences are meant to preserve freedom for users. The paradox is that you can't have both - which means we cannot resolve this.
So for someone who wants to preserve freedom of the art, saying "But it could be the #1 game on X" doesn't mean much, if on X means that the art is no longer free.
"If we allow a blanket exception to the CC and GPL for Apple apps we aren't just doing it out of pride; we're expanding our market into the biggest and widest possible list of users around the world."
I think if one doesn't believe in the No Additional Restrictions, just waive that for all - it shouln't be a special exception for one company (N.B. IOS isn't the biggest number of users, never has been - Android and Windows are the largest platforms. Although even if it was Android or Windows enforcing the DRM, I don't think that really matters - one could just as well argue that if DRM is being enforced on large amounts of software, that's all the more reason to support the platforms that don't do this.)
@Curt: "I don't know if there is a grudge against Apple in here or what, but a tiny website like OGA isn't going to do anything about how Apple handles their licensing. Infact, the only people that the anti-DRM affects are small indie developers who do games usually for a hobby, usually making little to nothing."
I don't see any evidence of a grudge, that to me implies people dislike Apple for other reasons, and are choosing CC BY just to prevent the use on IOS, which seems unlikely. It's the people who dislike these restrictions who are bringing up IOS. And if someone doesn't like Apple because of their restrictions, then it's entirely consistent to be supporting for the anti-DRM clauses even if it limits the use for IOS.
It's Apple's restrictions which hurts IOS developers. Indeed, the fact that Apple isn't going to change makes me confused - developers who choose to develop for IOS know full well that these restrictions exist, and aren't going to go away, so I don't see why it's a surprise that they the can't use other people's work in a way that they don't want. If you want permissive, go with CC0 - I mean, I could say "I don't want to give attribution to anyone, and your CC BY licence isn't going to ever make me change my mind, so therefore you're hurting me if you don't licence as CC0".
"It is a little parisite that noone wants on their artwork"
I think that's a question for Creative Commons - I can't believe no one wants those clauses. Creative Commons seem to strongly believe in those clauses - if everyone else disagrees, they probably shouldn't be using CC licences.
"If you want your artwork to sit on a website, have no one use it, and absolutely not used for commercial use.. then use CC-BY-NC-SA. CC-BY, on the other-hand had a much different intent."
This is not what anyone is saying. Available for 100% of PC platforms and 80% or so of mobile platforms isn't "have no one use it", rather it's the debate about maximising use for developers, or preserving freedom for users. If all you care about is maximising use to the fullest extent, you don't need CC BY, since there's CC0. I don't know where your "absolutely not used for commercial use" comes from, since copyleft Free licences have always allowed commercial usage. It's just that copyleft is about preserving that freedom.
Consider that with a "permissive" CC licence (e.g., CC BY without the No additional terms), I could create a website hosting such material, but slap a new licence of them saying, e.g., "Not for commercial use" (or, use DRM to limit its use). I assume that Creative Commons knew what the intent of the CC BY licence was, when they wrote the No additional terms clauses :)
That sounds good! There's also this post on user-tagging: http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/user-tagging . I don't know if allowing user tags would make the problem of miscategorsation worse (because of more people doing it inconsistently) or better (since we already have the problem of poor choice of tags, which other people can't fix) though :)
One of the issues I've found is due to the scoring/ordering of search results being poor. Completely irrelevant results can be shown before ones that might be more relevant. In some cases, something is included in the results because someone happens to say the word in the comments - e.g., see how the top result for sword is http://opengameart.org/content/flare-portrait-pack-female-edition because someone says it in the comments. Okay, there is a sword in the picture, but this probably shouldn't be anywhere near the top result if someone is searching for sword :)
The problem with it being hard to find the LPC base assets is that it doesn't get the top hit (or anywhere near it). Extra categorisation wouldn't help here. (Compare say with Google, which has no trouble finding the LPC assets on that search term - Google also does better with the sword example I think.)
If Solr's sorting is better, then I think that would be a big improvement in itself (though the proposals for better categorisation do sound good, and would be very useful in their own right.)
"Making a mobile version of anything that uses Flash requires embedding a runtime environment and adds about 10MB to the overall download size regardless of what you make (not too keen on this)."
Although bear in mind that Haxe (or anything else) may do the same - the libraries still have to be bundled - so it's worth checking that out before making a choice. (Particularly for C++ on Android, where I believe there's less availability of built-in libraries, most of them are only available via Java.)
Although it's fair game to release work under a modified licence with additional restrictions, I believe this would mean that it can't be hosted on Open Game Art (since it's not one of the available licences allowed; more generally, this licence wouldn't be considered Free/Open Source due to those restrictions, so would not be usable for Free/Open Source games).
This would also affect http://opengameart.org/content/wandering-vendor-npc .
Can I clarify - are the additional restrictions something you've added since the original version on this page was, or was the original always wrong? (You say "new" licence, but then, I see if I download the archive here, it does have the additional restrictions in the text file.)
As an aside, I see that this page also lists LGPL 2.1 and LGPL 3.0, I don't know if that's incorrect too...
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.
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