I believe that is the most comfortable path for me as well. My 2 points illustrate opposite extremes to invite discussion. Anyone else have any thoughts?
1. Conservative legalistic self-righteousness path. The artist's intention for the licenses they chose is what matters, but you have no way of knowing what their interpretation of the licenses are. So, when in question about the license, always lean in favor of the artist's most restrictive possibly intention. That way you are "doing what is right" no matter what and sacrificing what benefits you (and possibly them) to that end.
2. Screw it. Use CC-BY-SA and GPL licensed artwork in your closed-source commercial game. If your game makes no money, the artist has nothing to sue out of you and won't bother to take legal action. If your game makes heaps of money, you're rich, so it's no deep skin to rightfully settle with them at that point and give them a chunk of change. They deserve it. This is the "let the legal aftermath figure it out" path. That's exactly what legal aftermath is FOR.
So, open question to everyone. Which ethical philosophy do you ascribe to?
This article gives me second thoughts about the legality of anything that we might do with Creative Commons (particularly SA), even if we're non-commercial and open source:
Thinking through what I read there, it seems like in practice it's unlikely that someone can maneuver in this space without utilizing or combining something in a way that ends up being accidentally illegal. (Even if the project is non-commercial and open source.) It all comes down to hedging our bets about whether someone sensitive is going to blow a whistle about it. People like me who do want to stay completely within the law are going to feel better off staying away from all this and instead save up money to hire artists for commissioned work. (Which is a good thing! But there's a lot of good work out there that artists want to contribute freely to culture and I am more than happy to utilize what they've got.) I'm kind of sad about this, but life and development goes on.
At some point I need to make and stick to a decision about my protocols for artwork selection based on licenses. Can anyone give me a bottom line rule of thumb what course I should take if I'm wanting to stay within clear legal and ethical boundaries for a closed source commercial game? I'm guessing Public Domain is ok. How about CC-BY. How about GPL? What if someone adds "Public Domain" along with some other license? Is it the restrictive license that trumps the loose one? Or does the loose license downgrade the restrictive one? Etc.
The comment I just posted above jumped to a new question before resolving this final GPL question. You said something about "LPC" in regards to GPL. I have no idea what LPC is. I tried some Google searches and still am not sure. Any help with that? :D
Really thankful to you all for helping me understand all this!
Is Public Domain incompatible with CC-BY-SA? Let's say I have a Public Domain icon in my game. Inside of the same game I have a CC-BY-SA icon in some other area of the game interface. Now, both icons exist as game content in the same game content layer, though separate in the interface. Since this one icon is CC-BY-SA, the entire game's content is forced to be licensed under CC-BY-SA, including the Public Domain icon. So doesn't that mean I am forcing the Public Domain icon to no longer be Public Domain and to now fall under CC-BY-SA? So, when I distribute all of my game's assets inside of a zip file under CC-BY-SA, the exact same icon file that was given to me under Public Domain I am redistributing as CC-BY-SA. Since it's impossible to have the authority to do that, it means I am not allowed to use Public Domain works inside of my game. All because I am using a CC-BY-SA icon.
Strictly speaking, it's starting to look again as though CC-BY-SA isn't of practical use to almost anyone.
To tie up the loose end in my reasoning above, I cannot apply GPL to the empty set of non-existent code. If I were allowed to do this, then everybody who applies the empty set of non-existent code inside of their source code would be forced to GPL their code. Since ALL source code both simultaneously includes and excludes the set of non-existent code as per set theory, ALL source code in the universe would be forced to be GPL. Therefore, the GPL necessarily falls right off the empty set of non-existent code, and as it falls of, it orthogonally passes right by the art assets that accompany it because the art assets aren't covered by the GPL.
That was a little complicated, but I think it is clear reasoning. The post made immediately before this may have some assumptions that I cannot see, thus my request for correction if I fail to understand this properly.
I have no idea if the following reasoning is correct, please help me understand. (Please adjust my thinking accordingly.) But as I dig into all this, here is what I'm seeing at the moment for GPL.
Since GPL does not apply to art assets, only code, if an artist on here were to license their art under the GPL, then the result is, only the parts of their artwork that contain code (none of it has code usually) is what applies as I carry it into my game project.
So, under standard GPL, if I have a project with code and art assets in it that I license under GPL, the GPL license on that project only pertains to the source code. Nothing is imposed by the GPL onto the art assets in the project. (Another license is needed in addition to cover art assets.)
Follow my progression of reasoning real quick:
Ok, so what if my project had very very little code along with art assets. Again, just the very very little code is covered by GPL, the art assets still aren't touched by GPL in any way.
Ok, what if the very very little code shrinks until my project contains no code whatsoever. That means the GPL does not apply to any code, but it still does not apply to the art assets. The GPL doesn't suddenly apply to the art assets if the code in the project shrinks to zero. So adding GPL to artwork is like adding a GPL license to an empty set of non-existent code characters.
I don't think you can apply GPL to an empty set of code that has never been written. So you shouldn't be able to even apply GPL to artwork; the license would be instantly void.
So then, if you have artwork that you license under GPL, the GPL simply does not apply. Then when I bring the art into my project, the GPL simply falls right off (or wasn't even applied in the first place). Putting only GPL on your artwork causes it to have no license, making it undeclared, which is the same as public domain. (Unless you have additional licenses attached of course.)
Selecting GPL for artwork with no source code is equal to not selecting GPL for it at all. GPL may still be valuable to have on OGA because artists might release source code as part of their artwork, albeit rarely. Assuming GPL isn't removed as an option from OGA, at the very lease IMHO artists need to be strongly warned that GPL will not apply to their artwork in most cases unless it is made up of source code that basically renders that artwork. IMHO artists need to be informed of this at the time they are selecting GPL as their license. If they uploaded a PNG or something, GPL shouldn't even be provided as an option to them because it becomes a mismatch in its domain of applicability and leads to confusion.
@William.Thompsonj - You put into a short paragraph what I spent pages and pages to explain in my follow-up posts. Gah, when will I ever learn?! :D
@MoikMellah: There may not be an annual discussion about this next year. It looks like Creative Commons did exactly that; it clarified this once and for all so that we don't need to endlessly speculate about it. bart posted the link right before your response: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0/Games_3d_printing_and_functional_content . The page was last modified January of last year, before your previous annual discussion. But who has time to keep up with all this discussion and documentation, right?
@Botanic - Yes, it's really ambiguous. Earlier, bart made a really good point: "Ambiguities in a license aren't always the end of the world, so long as the license clearly allows at least some things and clearly disallows others." Which is true even of CC-BY-SA to be useful for something. However, is it true enough of CC-BY-SA to be useful in games?
Can we enumerate a list of things that CC-BY-SA IS clear enough about to be useful in games?
Can I distribute my project on the Apple App Store, or other distribution platforms that impose mandatory technical measures (DRM) to prevent redistribution?
What if your Apple app is nothing more than a webkit wrapper around a web game? The graphics then aren't a part of the app at all, the app becomes just a specialized web browser that points to your game.
I believe that is the most comfortable path for me as well. My 2 points illustrate opposite extremes to invite discussion. Anyone else have any thoughts?
Two paths of ethical philosophy to consider:
1. Conservative legalistic self-righteousness path. The artist's intention for the licenses they chose is what matters, but you have no way of knowing what their interpretation of the licenses are. So, when in question about the license, always lean in favor of the artist's most restrictive possibly intention. That way you are "doing what is right" no matter what and sacrificing what benefits you (and possibly them) to that end.
2. Screw it. Use CC-BY-SA and GPL licensed artwork in your closed-source commercial game. If your game makes no money, the artist has nothing to sue out of you and won't bother to take legal action. If your game makes heaps of money, you're rich, so it's no deep skin to rightfully settle with them at that point and give them a chunk of change. They deserve it. This is the "let the legal aftermath figure it out" path. That's exactly what legal aftermath is FOR.
So, open question to everyone. Which ethical philosophy do you ascribe to?
This article gives me second thoughts about the legality of anything that we might do with Creative Commons (particularly SA), even if we're non-commercial and open source:
http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/347
Thinking through what I read there, it seems like in practice it's unlikely that someone can maneuver in this space without utilizing or combining something in a way that ends up being accidentally illegal. (Even if the project is non-commercial and open source.) It all comes down to hedging our bets about whether someone sensitive is going to blow a whistle about it. People like me who do want to stay completely within the law are going to feel better off staying away from all this and instead save up money to hire artists for commissioned work. (Which is a good thing! But there's a lot of good work out there that artists want to contribute freely to culture and I am more than happy to utilize what they've got.) I'm kind of sad about this, but life and development goes on.
At some point I need to make and stick to a decision about my protocols for artwork selection based on licenses. Can anyone give me a bottom line rule of thumb what course I should take if I'm wanting to stay within clear legal and ethical boundaries for a closed source commercial game? I'm guessing Public Domain is ok. How about CC-BY. How about GPL? What if someone adds "Public Domain" along with some other license? Is it the restrictive license that trumps the loose one? Or does the loose license downgrade the restrictive one? Etc.
The comment I just posted above jumped to a new question before resolving this final GPL question. You said something about "LPC" in regards to GPL. I have no idea what LPC is. I tried some Google searches and still am not sure. Any help with that? :D
Really thankful to you all for helping me understand all this!
Is Public Domain incompatible with CC-BY-SA? Let's say I have a Public Domain icon in my game. Inside of the same game I have a CC-BY-SA icon in some other area of the game interface. Now, both icons exist as game content in the same game content layer, though separate in the interface. Since this one icon is CC-BY-SA, the entire game's content is forced to be licensed under CC-BY-SA, including the Public Domain icon. So doesn't that mean I am forcing the Public Domain icon to no longer be Public Domain and to now fall under CC-BY-SA? So, when I distribute all of my game's assets inside of a zip file under CC-BY-SA, the exact same icon file that was given to me under Public Domain I am redistributing as CC-BY-SA. Since it's impossible to have the authority to do that, it means I am not allowed to use Public Domain works inside of my game. All because I am using a CC-BY-SA icon.
Strictly speaking, it's starting to look again as though CC-BY-SA isn't of practical use to almost anyone.
To tie up the loose end in my reasoning above, I cannot apply GPL to the empty set of non-existent code. If I were allowed to do this, then everybody who applies the empty set of non-existent code inside of their source code would be forced to GPL their code. Since ALL source code both simultaneously includes and excludes the set of non-existent code as per set theory, ALL source code in the universe would be forced to be GPL. Therefore, the GPL necessarily falls right off the empty set of non-existent code, and as it falls of, it orthogonally passes right by the art assets that accompany it because the art assets aren't covered by the GPL.
That was a little complicated, but I think it is clear reasoning. The post made immediately before this may have some assumptions that I cannot see, thus my request for correction if I fail to understand this properly.
New question, now about GPL!
I have no idea if the following reasoning is correct, please help me understand. (Please adjust my thinking accordingly.) But as I dig into all this, here is what I'm seeing at the moment for GPL.
Since GPL does not apply to art assets, only code, if an artist on here were to license their art under the GPL, then the result is, only the parts of their artwork that contain code (none of it has code usually) is what applies as I carry it into my game project.
So, under standard GPL, if I have a project with code and art assets in it that I license under GPL, the GPL license on that project only pertains to the source code. Nothing is imposed by the GPL onto the art assets in the project. (Another license is needed in addition to cover art assets.)
Follow my progression of reasoning real quick:
Ok, so what if my project had very very little code along with art assets. Again, just the very very little code is covered by GPL, the art assets still aren't touched by GPL in any way.
Ok, what if the very very little code shrinks until my project contains no code whatsoever. That means the GPL does not apply to any code, but it still does not apply to the art assets. The GPL doesn't suddenly apply to the art assets if the code in the project shrinks to zero. So adding GPL to artwork is like adding a GPL license to an empty set of non-existent code characters.
I don't think you can apply GPL to an empty set of code that has never been written. So you shouldn't be able to even apply GPL to artwork; the license would be instantly void.
So then, if you have artwork that you license under GPL, the GPL simply does not apply. Then when I bring the art into my project, the GPL simply falls right off (or wasn't even applied in the first place). Putting only GPL on your artwork causes it to have no license, making it undeclared, which is the same as public domain. (Unless you have additional licenses attached of course.)
Selecting GPL for artwork with no source code is equal to not selecting GPL for it at all. GPL may still be valuable to have on OGA because artists might release source code as part of their artwork, albeit rarely. Assuming GPL isn't removed as an option from OGA, at the very lease IMHO artists need to be strongly warned that GPL will not apply to their artwork in most cases unless it is made up of source code that basically renders that artwork. IMHO artists need to be informed of this at the time they are selecting GPL as their license. If they uploaded a PNG or something, GPL shouldn't even be provided as an option to them because it becomes a mismatch in its domain of applicability and leads to confusion.
@William.Thompsonj - You put into a short paragraph what I spent pages and pages to explain in my follow-up posts. Gah, when will I ever learn?! :D
@MoikMellah: There may not be an annual discussion about this next year. It looks like Creative Commons did exactly that; it clarified this once and for all so that we don't need to endlessly speculate about it. bart posted the link right before your response: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0/Games_3d_printing_and_functional_content . The page was last modified January of last year, before your previous annual discussion. But who has time to keep up with all this discussion and documentation, right?
@Botanic - Yes, it's really ambiguous. Earlier, bart made a really good point: "Ambiguities in a license aren't always the end of the world, so long as the license clearly allows at least some things and clearly disallows others." Which is true even of CC-BY-SA to be useful for something. However, is it true enough of CC-BY-SA to be useful in games?
Can we enumerate a list of things that CC-BY-SA IS clear enough about to be useful in games?
Can I distribute my project on the Apple App Store, or other distribution platforms that impose mandatory technical measures (DRM) to prevent redistribution?
What if your Apple app is nothing more than a webkit wrapper around a web game? The graphics then aren't a part of the app at all, the app becomes just a specialized web browser that points to your game.
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