@remaxim: I agree with your suggestions and assessment. As for guides for beginners, I've already linked to it above where I mentioned "FAQ: How should I credit the artist".
P.S. Adding the OGA-BY license is very generous of you. That does simplify a lot of things for highlighty and others; credit required, but no DRM problems :)
I am also not a lawyer, but I'll throw in my 2 cents:
@highlighty: Yes, you cannot leave out which license the assets are under. Listing the author is a start, but you should be linking to the asset itself as well as indicating the license. See FAQ: "How should I credit the artist?"
CC-BY-SA almost always only applies to the assets, not the game executable. But as remaxim has pointed out, the assets have been embedded within the executable and/or data pack. Since users cannot access the assets in their native format, either the executable itself must also be licensed CC-BY-SA, or the assets must be separated to avoid violating the DRM clause. Or, if you've elected to use GPL for these assets instead, embedded resources definitely require the executable to be released under the GPL license.
@remaxim: I don't believe GPL requires attribution unless the author explicitly requests it. I recommend adding some text to the "copyright/attribution notice" section to make that an explicit request. Something like "Please credit remaxim by putting the following text on your credits screen/file: [attribution instructions here]"
GPL is likely the most difficult to use in a closed-source project. However, it is still possible to do so. It depends on how the GPL-licensed components are used. There are ways of incorporating content that would trigger the GPL linking requirement, meaning anything alongside the GPL assets would necessarily also be GPL. This is a topic of huge contention, so I will say it is unlikely you will find a sollid answer on this. I am not equipped to give much more advice than my statement above on GPL. I personally think it is the worst license we accept here on OGA just for how difficult it is to work with, even in non-commercial open-source projects.
CC-BY-SA is also surrounded by contention on the topic of it's viral effect, though to a far lesser degree. That is, does it infect the rest of the project (including code) with the CC-BY-SA license? I can fairly confidently answer "no, it does not make the project's code also CC-BY-SA".
Any derivatives of CC-BY-SA artwork must also be CC-BY-SA. It is one thing to take music, sound effects, 3D models, or 2D graphics and modify them into some new form of that same medium. That makes sense, but morphing such assets intoprogramming code? That would be truly bizzarre. Game code may reference such assets, it may utilize such assets, but I have never seen game code made from such assets. Therefore, the game code would not be required to be licensed CC-BY-SA just by using CC-BY-SA licensed assets.
I say I am confident in this opinion, but if you're looking for absolute surity, noting short of hiring a lawyer will do, I'm afraid. People will be disagreeing about this interpretation of CC-BY-SA forever, as demonstrated by the unending discussions about this topic already scattered across OGA:
Since this is code, submitting it as a document would not really be appropriate.
Yes, the forum is a great place for sharing tools like this. Either here in Show Off Your Project or in the Feedback forum since it pertains to the site itself.
Similar functionality of saving and organizing licensing and attribution information can also be achieved with the "download credits file" link at the bottom of any custom "collections" users make on OGA. :)
@remaxim: I agree with your suggestions and assessment. As for guides for beginners, I've already linked to it above where I mentioned "FAQ: How should I credit the artist".
P.S. Adding the OGA-BY license is very generous of you. That does simplify a lot of things for highlighty and others; credit required, but no DRM problems :)
I am also not a lawyer, but I'll throw in my 2 cents:
@highlighty: Yes, you cannot leave out which license the assets are under. Listing the author is a start, but you should be linking to the asset itself as well as indicating the license. See FAQ: "How should I credit the artist?"
CC-BY-SA almost always only applies to the assets, not the game executable. But as remaxim has pointed out, the assets have been embedded within the executable and/or data pack. Since users cannot access the assets in their native format, either the executable itself must also be licensed CC-BY-SA, or the assets must be separated to avoid violating the DRM clause. Or, if you've elected to use GPL for these assets instead, embedded resources definitely require the executable to be released under the GPL license.
@remaxim: I don't believe GPL requires attribution unless the author explicitly requests it. I recommend adding some text to the "copyright/attribution notice" section to make that an explicit request. Something like "Please credit remaxim by putting the following text on your credits screen/file: [attribution instructions here]"
Not quite.
GPL is likely the most difficult to use in a closed-source project. However, it is still possible to do so. It depends on how the GPL-licensed components are used. There are ways of incorporating content that would trigger the GPL linking requirement, meaning anything alongside the GPL assets would necessarily also be GPL. This is a topic of huge contention, so I will say it is unlikely you will find a sollid answer on this. I am not equipped to give much more advice than my statement above on GPL. I personally think it is the worst license we accept here on OGA just for how difficult it is to work with, even in non-commercial open-source projects.
CC-BY-SA is also surrounded by contention on the topic of it's viral effect, though to a far lesser degree. That is, does it infect the rest of the project (including code) with the CC-BY-SA license? I can fairly confidently answer "no, it does not make the project's code also CC-BY-SA".
Any derivatives of CC-BY-SA artwork must also be CC-BY-SA. It is one thing to take music, sound effects, 3D models, or 2D graphics and modify them into some new form of that same medium. That makes sense, but morphing such assets into programming code? That would be truly bizzarre. Game code may reference such assets, it may utilize such assets, but I have never seen game code made from such assets. Therefore, the game code would not be required to be licensed CC-BY-SA just by using CC-BY-SA licensed assets.
I say I am confident in this opinion, but if you're looking for absolute surity, noting short of hiring a lawyer will do, I'm afraid. People will be disagreeing about this interpretation of CC-BY-SA forever, as demonstrated by the unending discussions about this topic already scattered across OGA:
Try the link now.
Since this is code, submitting it as a document would not really be appropriate.
Yes, the forum is a great place for sharing tools like this. Either here in Show Off Your Project or in the Feedback forum since it pertains to the site itself.
Similar functionality of saving and organizing licensing and attribution information can also be achieved with the "download credits file" link at the bottom of any custom "collections" users make on OGA. :)
GPL makes it hard to work with anything other than GPL. That includes game engine license, sometimes.
Hmm... Does anyone recognize any of the other work there as stuff that's on OGA?
Or this one. Sinestesia has quite a few great impact effects.
There are some blood splatters and puddles in the Dungeon Crawl stuff. The tiles are the same size, but the style is not a complete match. Yes/No?
See also some derivatives intended to go with that set:
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