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General Discussion

Libre Art License: Useful??

PeterX
Saturday, June 18, 2022 - 11:37

I just stumbled over this license:

https://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en/

 

My personal opinion is: We don't need this license because there are already great Creative Commons licenses.

 

So what do you think?

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Ragnar Random
joined 4 years 3 months ago
Sunday, June 19, 2022 - 06:02
Ragnar Random's picture

i agree with you 100%

creative commons licenses work. there are some issues with older versions of -by that have been brought up, and some take issue with the anti-drm complications associated with by and by-sa.

personally, i don't consider cc-by-nc or -nd to be libre at all.

i have taken on the opinion that cc0 is the best, i have been only using cc0 so that i can freely distribute derivatives under the same license. i like the idea of public domain dedication. it is what i consider truly putting something into the "commons" so that it belongs to everyone without restrictions.

having a bunch of different licenses like this one just makes things more complicated for the end user. most people just want to make stuff, they are not license nerds. an artist is of course free to license their work however they choose, but my opinion is that we should just be advocating for the creative commons licenses. it is already the "standard."

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MedicineStorm
joined 12 years 11 months ago
Monday, June 20, 2022 - 09:32
MedicineStorm's picture

I haven't fully read through the legal text yet, but my impressions from doing a "deep skim" are as follows:

  • the organizers of the FAL license compare it to the GPL-but-for-artwork. However, it seems functionally closer to CC-BY-SA.
  • Like CC-BY-SA (and unlike GPL) the FAL license appears to apply to sets of assets independent of other sets in the same project. In other words, FAL assets and derivatives of FAL assets, must be shared under the same license, but other assets used along side them in the same project are not necessarily subject to FAL terms.
  • The reciprocity clause of the FAL implies that FAL licensed works can be adapted to CC-BY-SA licensed works, and vice versa. However, that last part is contingent on how FSF feels about FAL. I'm curious to know what the CC group thinks about FAL.
  • CAUTION: Unlike CC licenses, it appears FAL is revokable. "Only" under specifc circumstances, but they are things like "object[ion] to any distortion, mutilation or other modification" such that these uses are deemed to be "prejudicial to [the author's] honor or reputation". This is fairly reasonable, but who's interpretation is determining that? When I license my content as CC*, I forfeit complaining about people using my content in things I consider disreputable, like smut. However, what if I morally object to any form of ecological destruction, and someone uses my assets to portray forests burning down or nuclear war? Am I able to surprise-revoke a developer's usage of my assets based on their game's modern RTS theme?
  • CAUTION: the FAL license becomes instantly void and revoked if the user fails to adhere to the terms like listing author, asset title, url, etc. That also seems reasonable, but it suffers from the same vulnerability to copyright trolls that some versions of CC-BY* (especially 2.0 and earlier) had. see https://opengameart.org/forumtopic/turns-out-there-are-copyleft-trolls-now. Again, the stuff on OGA is scanned for this kind of nonsense, but that doesn't help others out there who might not know to be quite so careful about attribution.
  • FAL is structured as a contract more than a copyright license. I don't know how contract law works in France, but in general a contract requires an offer, acceptance, consideration, and mutual intent to be bound. Most of those are met, but acceptance and mutual intent to be bound are ... questionable. How does one agree to be bound with a second party when the second party is no one in particular, or potentially everyone, or anyone that decides to use the asset but remains unknown to the first party?

Conclusion: IMHO, FAL seems like a decent copyleft license. However, it has a few disadvantages (only minor, really) over CC-BY* licenses and also no real benefits over CC-BY* licenses that I could see. I don't see any harm in using FAL assets, even alongside CC and GPL licensed assets, but I also don't see any reason to seek out FAL assets or projects specifically.

--Medicine Storm

 

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