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General Discussion

Missing licenses?

turboñame
Saturday, March 10, 2018 - 03:59
turboñame's picture

Hello everyone! I wanna submit the art of my game but when oga offers me licenses to choose there is no CC-BY-NO-SA 4.0 option (which is the license I use). Also I made a quick search in the faq but can't see nothing related. Is this intentionally in some way or can I submit under another compatilbe license?

 

Thank you!

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isaiah658
joined 9 years 3 weeks ago
Saturday, March 10, 2018 - 06:47

I think you mean CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 not CC-BY-NO-SA 4.0 and as far as I know it is intentional. All licenses allow for commercial use on here which is why it was excluded. I don't think many people would be interested in assets that didn't allow for commercial use.

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turboñame
joined 7 years 11 months ago
Saturday, March 10, 2018 - 08:02
turboñame's picture

Yeah, you are right, I mispelled license's name, its NC not NO.

Mhh I supose this isn't the best place to initiate a debate but I find truly a dissaponintement this place is so focused in commecial use. Maybe there are not too many people interested in non comercial art but also we are very few artist using this restrictive cc licenses. I don't think a couple of bytes will cost too much to the service and clealy this is a common place to find stuff, so I want to share here my stuff.

Also its kinda strange the acceptance of GPL-3.0, which while not being explicitly not-commecial, makes really difficult to sell something at the same time you must provide its sources for free (as in freedom).

Anyway, thank you so much for the answer!

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MedicineStorm
joined 12 years 10 months ago
Saturday, March 10, 2018 - 08:17
MedicineStorm's picture

It isn't so much about "we love commercial ventures! Yay capitalism!" The reason CC-BY-NC-* and CC-BY-ND-* licenses are not permitted here is because, despite the intent of the licenses, those provisions make it nearly impossible to legally use art in a game, commercial or not. Yes, that's right; even a non-commercial game would find it very difficult to legally use art licensed -NC. 

Which leads to your next point. GPL does indeed make it difficult to make money since you have to provide the source. There are 3 reasons GPL is a better fit here than -NC though:

  1. being technically able to steal a game and legally able to steal a game are two different things. Can people compile the game themselves without paying for it since they have the source? Probably, but that doesn't make it legal for them to do so. 
  2. It isn't really about being able to make money, or commercial ventrues. It's more about if the license allows people to use art in a game, regardless of commercial status. -NC really dosn't, but GPL does despite the open source provision. It's weird and stupid, but that's how the law works sometimes, unfortunately; the best intentions have unintended technicalities.
  3. GPL isn't a very good license for art in the first place. It isn't intended for art at all. It's intended for code. However, there was game art being shared before Creative Commons licenses even existed. That art needed some license to allow it to be shared, so GPL was the best choice at the time. GPL is allowed here (despite not being an art license) for primarily legacy reasons. I would encourage artists NOT to use GPL for their work, but a lot of older assets were licensed GPL before we came along, and not supporting that license would mean those assets would not be preserved for future generations to enjoy. This reason doesn't exist for the -NC license.

--Medicine Storm

 

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turboñame
joined 7 years 11 months ago
Saturday, March 10, 2018 - 09:06
turboñame's picture

I think I don't fully undestand some of you points.

I first place, why NC makes art "near impossible to use in a game, commercial or not"? Its a thing related to a fuzzy interpretation of what is commercial use where maybe the game is free but there are some mechandaising of it or something similar? As far as I undestand the license, other people can make free(as in free beer) games with the stuff I share and there wll be no poblem. Also we are not thinking in the option of simply learn and not use it.

"Can people compile the game themselves without paying for it since they have the source? Probably, but that doesn't make it legal for them to do so", if the game is GPL licensed they cant compile it completely legally, the only complain is if the art is CC or not. I have seen games on github that claims you can download their code, create some sprites in some empty folders and compile / play along without problem, the art maybe is restricted but not the code. I think there is a confusion between open source and free software, and GPL is in the second group.

Thank you for your patient

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MedicineStorm
joined 12 years 10 months ago
Saturday, March 10, 2018 - 10:02
MedicineStorm's picture

Any license considered "Free" or "Open" by the Free Software Foundation and Open Source Initiative respectively must allow commercial redistribution. -NC and -ND licenses are not free nor open. See also:

  • https://opengameart.org/forumtopic/oga-licensing-suggestion#comment-25213
  • http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4559

--Medicine Storm

 

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turboñame
joined 7 years 11 months ago
Saturday, March 10, 2018 - 10:14
turboñame's picture

Okey, thats fair, FSF consider NC makes a license non-free and this is a free stuff site. So I end my complains. However, I feel this was the only valid reason, and the last two I mentioned were completely missed :/

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MedicineStorm
joined 12 years 10 months ago
Saturday, March 10, 2018 - 11:00
MedicineStorm's picture

I guess I'm not clear what your last two points are.

Was it that GPL code can't legally be compiled? That's not true. You can't legally compile it without making the source available, but outlawing the compilation of code would render any code you apply the license to effectively pointless.

Was your point that code and art can be licensed separately? I agree. Art can even be licensed GPL with the code licensed CC-BY. That doesn't really change the situation. Art licensed GPL is still accepted here because of legacy GPL art, but licensing art as GPL is typically not the best license choice. I also agree that GPL is in the free software category, which reenforces my point about GPL being a sub-par license choice for artwork. Is artwork software? If not, why apply a "free software" license to it? 

P.S. Please do not feel like this is an attack on your license choices. We feel artists can and should license their work under whatever conditions they choose. CC-BY-NC-SA is a completely valid license choice and you should not be made to feel bad for using it. We just can't use it here on OGA. Welcome to the community and I hope you're able to find some useful stuff here. :)

--Medicine Storm

 

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turboñame
joined 7 years 11 months ago
Saturday, March 10, 2018 - 11:37
turboñame's picture

Before anything, I want to say I'm not feeling attacked in any way, actually all of this is making me deeply rethink about the purpose of this licenses in a good way. Also maybe my words are not the best chosen or my arguments bad constructed but english is not my mother tongue, so I apologize if I sound too rude.

My questions are:

1. Why NC, while its clealy not suitable for a commercial game, also is supossed to can't be used for a non commecial one. 

2. What de you mean with "being technically able to steal a game and legally able to steal a game are two different things. Can people compile the game themselves without paying for it since they have the source? Probably, but that doesn't make it legal for them to do so." I though you were saying that you can't compile GPL code, and it makes no sense in my head. Now i believe you probably were saying exactly the opposite, that in a NC code you cannot always compile. Is it right?

 

 

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MedicineStorm
joined 12 years 10 months ago
Saturday, March 10, 2018 - 15:37
MedicineStorm's picture

Understood. Your questions didn't seem rude to me. I just didn't understand what you were asking. You have clarified them, and I understand them now.

  1. Because the terms in the -NC license are poorly defined or ambiguous, it is almost impossible to tell what would constitute "commercial use". For example: Let's say someone used art under the -NC license in their game, then posted that game here on OGA. (we don't really host games, but for the sake of this example, lets say OGA does.) Then, OGA decides to have advertisements to pay for hosting costs. Is that game breaking the law? OGA is technically making money by having that game hosted on the website. OGA takes donations currently. Is that breaking the law then? Since money is being made based on the content of the website, and that content is licensed Non-Commercial, is that going against the license? This is a rather extreme example, but not an unreasonable one because the -NC provisions don't really have a lot of limits outlined.
  2. Ah, I see. No no no. I was not saying GPL code could not be compiled legally. I was saying it is possible to have a commercial game licensed GPL. It would be easy to steal the game, but it would still be stealing and illegal to do so. The fact that GPL does allow for commercial use is why the FSF and OSI consider GPL to be open and free, but do not consider -NC licenses to be open or free.

--Medicine Storm

 

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turboñame
joined 7 years 11 months ago
Monday, March 12, 2018 - 01:42
turboñame's picture

All clear now, thank you so much for your time.

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