To me CC-BY-SA is useless for the exact reason you mention, it's very unclear what the -SA actually means in relation to the "works"

For legal (and project safety) reasons I only use CC0 or CC-BY assets.

All of my submissions are CC-BY, credit/attribution is enough in my opinion.

If you look at the art commissioned by OGA, you'll notice that the vast majority of it is CC-BY.  Originally it was licensed CC-BY-SA, but the additional publicity we got from making it easier for people to use brought in more new art than the share-alike requirement.

Note that I have no plans to eliminate the GPL and CC-BY-SA as possible license choices for art.

Interesting observations.  I have always used CC-BY-SA, I think I ought reconsider.  I also was not aware that the SA might turn some folks off from using in their projects.  Anyways, great post and thanks!

As anyone who's been in the IRC for a long time knows, a good way to get the channel hopping is to start a discussion about what CC-By-SA *really* means (and, of course, what it *should* mean).  If I were running a project I would definitely be uncomfortable with using -By-SA licensed stuff unless I could somehow license everything under it.  CC-By does have one or two issues of its own (the DRM thing), but they appear to be relatively easy to circumvent.  Generally, I avoid even making derivatives of -By-SA art, just since I don't think it's going to be terribly useful.

The first question is: "What does the artist want for their art?" If the answer is "Allow game developers to use my art without having to interpret a copyleft license text or get a lawyer." rather than "Protect my art by copyleft.", then CC-BY or CC0 definitely makes more sense than CC-BY-SA for that artists to pick.

@Clint: What was the reason for you picking ccbysa in the first place?

If a user/developer can't decide what ccbysa means, they should not be using art licensed under it. Just like they should not use sounds under -NC license from Freesound.

It would be great to integrate some eduaction about what the licenses mean (both while/before downloading and uploading) on OGA. Blendswap for example has these: 

float form before downloading

license selection includes short description

With this much discussion, does anyone mind if I ask what the rationale was for running the LPC as CC-BY-SA?  Partnerships?  Keeping it copyleft?  I'd be willing to relicense, for instance, my own work as CC-BY, but because it's all derivative of CC-BY-SA, I'd need to get the original authors' permission, right?

First, I'd like to state that I used to be an avid fan of the GPL. At this point, I hate it. It's far too restrictive and has caused a lot of controversies. Plus, either people will ignore the GPL license and do what they want with the work anyway or they simply won't use anything licensed under the GPL for commercial works. The LGPL is a lot better in the sense that it only covers the specific portion of the software distributed and doesn't force an entire project to be licensed under the GPL -- e.g., makes it a lot easier to use with commercial projects.

That stated -- I'm not sure the GPL applies to artwork at all as it very specifically talks about software, freedom with said software, source code of said software, and the restrictions the license puts on source code and the software that is licensed. Even if it did cover art, I would still either use a CC-BY or CC-BY-SA license for any and all art assets.

Personally I don't really think it matters which of the two licenses you use for art assets... but using the CC-BY-SA assumes that all users are only thinking of using it for non-commercial, open-sourced games. Not everybody does and that could be an issue for the users who really want to use the work but don't want to have to 'share alike' if they make changes to the work. After all, having those changes would give them something unique.

CC-BY, on the other hand, pretty much requires that the original artist is given credit and that the user is free to do what they want with the work, including modifications, without having to share changes they've made to the work. I can see why this one could have less appeal but I suppose it all depends on how you want your work used and how how want changes made to the work to be handled.

leeor_net: CC-By-SA does not only restrict the asset to be used in opensource projects, it also restricts which opensource projects it can be used. An OSS game licensing their assets anything other than CC-By-SA will not be "legally" able to use any CC-By-SA art. Unless someone can clearly states for the -SA requirement, game is considered as a collection rather than derivative work, it will stay this way.

Naa, there is a lot of FUD in here :p

Of course one can use CC-by-SA in other licensed OSS projects, and those also don't necessarily have to be non-commercial. CC-by-SA isn't a particulary strong copyleft, as it only covers direct integration (unlike the GPL).

So to my understanding (IANAL) a video or screenshots with CC-by-SA works in it has to be covered also, but all the other assets in that game, video, render etc. don't have to be cc-by-sa also, nor does the complete game have to be. You just need to release the assets directly based on the CC-by-SA artwork under the same license... in a sense it is similar to the LGPL.

IMHO there is only one problem, and that is direct mixing with GPL artwork, e.g. use a GPL rig to animate a CC-by-SA mesh, which isn't legal strictly speaking. I circumvent this by always duallicensing my work CC-by-SA and GPL, but that is of course only solving it partially.

A pity is that the CC-by-SA does not have any source requirements either (that's a big plus for the GPL), so one could make big modifications to a mesh, make a render out of it, and would only have to make the render available under the CC-by-SA but not release the modified source files of the mesh.

Of course if the aim of releasing your artwork is to have it used by as many people as possible, then CC0 or CC-by are the "better" licenses, but for me I actually like the idea of having games that are freely modifiable according to good and clear license requirements. I would rather hate some use of my artwork in a freeware or commercial title that does not allow any modding or reuse of the artwork (commercial is fine though, as long as I can use parts of it to make my own mods or games with it). Afterall I granted them the right to use my artwork freely, so the least requirement to them should be to do the same to someone else willing to re-use the modified artworks.

Edit: IMHO, while licensing artwork under the CC0 or CC-by is still better then puting it under a more restrictive freeware license, the end effect is quite similar to what we have with CG-textures for example. Lots of people use those, but there isn't really and additionally content produced by those users that would be fed back into cg-textures for other users to use.

So for me the defining difference between some freeware texture site (that allows modifications) and OpenGameArt, is that modified artworks are given back to the community. And while that is sometimes also the case with CC0 artwork, most of the time people just don't bother, except when the artworks are under a copyleft license.

I personally avoid *-SA in development because of the above mentioned problems too. And for the same reason I release my art as CC-BY.

I hope that if someone gets something for "free" he will someday return something to the comunity. A more restrictive licence wont change anything. If someone wants to just "take" it, he will do it with any other licence too. So I think its the best way to make it easy for all other developers.

Maybe he does not want to release his sourcecode, but releases his other art assets here because he was happy to find something useful.

I agree that you can usually not force someone to release modifications, unless you are willing to invest significant amounts of cash for a court case, but more often then not people just forget or can't be bothered to release their changes just because of lazyness, or because they are lacking webspace or some other insignificant reason.

By putting your artwork under a copyleft license, it gives those a nice but firm reminder that they should treat others the same as they where treated, even if that means some minor inconvenience to them.

Edit: my stance on copyright is actually that stuff should be CC0 by default unless otherwise stated (or preferrably registered), but since that is not the case, and anyone modifying CC-by/CC0 artwork automatically "takes over" the copyright and thus forbids any modifications unless specifically stated otherwise, CC-by-SA or another copyleft license seems like the best compromise.

>> I thought ccbysa basically worked like the GPL -- if you used an SA asset in an art project, the entire project must be SA as well. Only it isn't so clear with games.

(Of course, IANAL and this is in no way legal advice.)

I think it works more like CDDL -- that is, on a file basis. And a game engine / code is hardly a derivative work of the game assets / data -- especially in cases where the latter can be easily replaced without modifying the former.

---- Note: here follows probably useless blabber on the poster's personal preferences regarding license choices. ----

I personally prefer licensing the art under more liberal licenses (in fact, all my original art is CC0'd, the only exception is derived from a CC-BY-SA'd work) -- especially since my graphics don't have so much value that (having others SA their works) overweighs (just not using the SA'd art).

The same follows with small pieces of code -- as long as they are more-or-less easy to rewrite from scratch, they're non-copyleft.

And when it comes to large programs which would take several months or even more to remake, that's where copyleft licenses become more or less useful to the FOSS community.

...and that's essentially the problem. All the IANAL disclaimers and I think, with multiple different interpretations thrown around, combined with FSF and CC more or less refusing to clarify the issue. Neither seems particularily concerned with games.

I'm pretty sure screenshots and videocasts are fair use, but anyway.

I'm not speaking on behalf of Creative Commons (I can't anyway, I no longer work there), but it's totally false that the FSF and CC don't care about games: why else do you think we did Liberated Pixel Cup?  I made a big deal of this in considerations for CC 4.0, and that's why I wrote up http://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0/Games_3d_printing_and_functional_con...

So that's frustrating for me to hear.  It's simply false that the FSF and CC don't care, even though the issues might be complex.  A lot of this conversation is conversation I've had plenty of times before on IRC, so I'm going to avoid jumping into it (I'm trying to wrap up my LPC judging at this very moment anyway).  But it's false that CC and the FSF don't care... I spent a bunch of time pushing forward things because I cared!  (Trying to engage issues like this was one of the not so subtle goals of LPC.)

Of course, I guess I don't work there anymore.  But anyway.

@cwebber I certainly know you pushed it a lot, but I never heard anything official on the matter - I don't think this is out of any malice or anything. It's simply that the FSF's focus is software, and CC's is art. Games, being a union of the two, might deserve it's own organization.

Anyway, I'm sure there was far more going on than I'm aware of, so I'll apologize for the statement that they don't care - however, I still believe that the situation with CC-BY-SA in games isn't very clear, or if it is, then not particularly well advertised.

(A simililar unfortunate situation exists with CC-BY; my guess is that many artists who use it don't know about the DRM clause - it should be in the deed.)

See also: http://labs.creativecommons.org/2012/07/11/liberated-pixel-cup-and-distr...

I link that both as a response to the "CC and FSF don't care about games" and also to the "my artwork isn't being reused".  Part of it may well be licensing, though I think there's also something significant to making clear structure to things so that remixing is actually possible (hence the LPC styleguide).  So there's more to it than just licensing choice, though I agree that's a component that should always be of significant consideration.  One frequent comment about the Blender Foundation films is that they aren't often "remixed" even though under a permissive license directly into a lot of other works... though they have been sometimes in some ways.  I think that's both due to not creating structured style that makes asset reuse between projects actually easy, the level of difficulty to actually dive into those projects, etc.  But of course having them open ends up having a lot of other benefits, such as being an educational resource.  And you do see people use the artwork in ads, or borrowing the lighting setup, or a model might occasionally appear in other things.  But choosing a permissive license won't magically mean you'll start developing a seroius community either... and keep in mind that some of the biggest communities around are under copyleft (wikipedia/wikimedia commons for example).  So it isn't so cut and dry.

By the way, I'm not "pro-copyleft" or "anti-copyleft" in one sense or the other.. I think it's actually that copyleft is more useful in some cases and not in others.  But I've already written my full thoughts on that here: http://dustycloud.org/blog/field-guide-to-copyleft.html

(For the record, re LPC asset licensing: I would be open to more permissive licensing as an artist, but that's entirely Bart's and the other partners' decision.  They paid the bills, so they pick the license.)

I used CC-BY because I want to contribute my art with minimal strings attached. I just want people to know where the art comes from really. Other than that I would love if some developer used my art and actually made a successful game.

I don't really use my submitted art in game projects I'm working on that I want to make a profit on. So if someone finds a way to use what I made to make some money more power to them. I'm sure if they liked my art that much (and wasn't using it for lack of a better piece) then I'm sure I will get contacted about making more art for a paid project, but if not I am not bothered by it. 

I give two attribution options, one that is text based with my name and my website's URL or my IsometricRobot mascot icon with a link back to my homepage at isometricrobot.com I really hope that people opt for the graphic and link, just because I like to think of people including it in their credits (I give the option for the attribution to be placed anywhere in the work with a detail of the attribution definition available at my website.)

This is an old thread and I don't wish to be seen as resurrecting it but this is related:

http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/anti-drm-waiver

Regular CC-BY 4.0 contains this line:

"If You Share Adapted Material You produce, the Adapter's License You apply must not prevent recipients of the Adapted Material from complying with this Public License."

And the only practical difference between CC-BY 4.0 and CC-BY-SA 4.0 is:

"The Adapter’s License You apply must be a Creative Commons license with the same License Elements, this version or later, or a BY-SA Compatible License."

Basically this means that if you are assuming a game is considered an Adapted Material, then under both CC-BY and CC-BY-SA the game as a whole must follow their respective restrictions for Adapted Materials (above). If you assume a game is not considered an Adapted Material, then the only requirement which needs to be followed is the Attribution, both for CC-BY and CC-BY-SA.

The CC-BY rule practically means that your derived work must be licensed in such way that licensees must still comply with the CC-BY for the original work ("this Public License" refers to the license on the CC-BY licensed work - the contract with the licensor, not to the CC-BY license text). This allows mixing CC-BY with non-CC.

The CC-BY-SA rule is pretty clear. The derived work will be CC-BY-SA, so any part of the final product (not the source material) will be under CC-BY-SA, requiring that the source material must be relicensable as such. This simply does not allow mixing CC-BY-SA with non-SA (unless of course a game is not considered an Adapted Material).

Had a really long look through the SA 3.0 and SA 4.0 licenses as well...

Under SA 3.0, defining a game as a collection ends up being very borderline. The definition of collection specifically states "unmodified" and "in it's entirety" (this is so modified versions are considered a new Work and fall under the same license again). This practically means that when animating a rigged mesh, the posed mesh becomes a new Work under the SA license. So far that works out fine, you can still put the posed mesh in your game without problems. The issue comes once you start alpha blending and anti-aliasing with other works, where other parts of the rendered image inside the blend would also be considered as part of the new Work, and thus also fall under the SA license (yeah, seriously). This works in most cases, as there's no requirement of source materials being mixed with to be SA, but will fail in reality, as other assets (trademarked logos, etc) may not be relicensable as SA in mixed or rendered form (I can't just license an image containing someone else's trademark under SA), and makes it less practical under 3.0 to add a licensor's exception considering games as a collection.

With SA 4.0 a Collection is no longer defined, and the entire structure of the license is changed to essentially require ShareAlike only for anything defined as an Adapted Material, and the only additional terms for an Adapted Material are the ShareAlike requirements. This makes it pretty easy to simply add "For purposes of this Public License, a video game or computer game will not be considered an Adapted Material." to the license, remove the part about music synced to images from the license, and be done with it. Very easy.

In short: neither define whether a game is a collection or a derived work, but it's easier to add an explicit ShareAlike exception in SA 4.0 than in SA 3.0.

Kaetemi: You can easily allow, in your commercial license for recipients to use CC-By licensed material. Thus, even if your game is considered adapted material, it is not hard to work with it. Sample license to demonstrate:

No copying..... all rights reserved...., except for the following:
Generic male mesh by John Smith [link] 
..... 

With that you have fulfilled the condition.

cemakalyoncu: Yes, I know. I was comparing the exact wording of the CC-BY with the differing portion in CC-BY-SA to find what exact wording would be required in the license to allow providing specific redistribution exceptions for combining CC-BY-SA with non-SA works while still requiring the attribution.

Also, for completeness sake, the difference between a derived work can be compared as follows. Glueing ten cutouts from folders onto a piece of paper is not a derived work (no creativity); glueing ten cutouts from folders onto a piece of paper to create the impression of a landscape does make it a derived work (requires creative thought). A game will in nearly all cases count as a derived work, and as such the CC-BY-SA license must be placed on the entire binary game content (not on the source data) when any CC-BY-SA content is being used in the game.

The only way to combine CC-BY-SA content with non-SA content in a game, while still requiring attribution, is to have an explicit exception from the copyright holder considering video games or computer games not being Adapted Material.

I think we need OGA-By-SA where SA will only be required for modifications on the original art.

Agreed.

So far, I have this blurb:

For purposes of this Public License, a video game or computer game, where the Licensed Material, in whole or in part, is included in unmodified form, and where the Licensed Material may be presented in arranged, transformed, or combined form, will not be considered an Adapted Material.

The "included in modified form" part is required to avoid the loophole where you include a modified non-SA version in the game, so a modified version will be included under this SA licence in unmodified form.

The "presented in ... form" is required to allow run-time modifications necessary for presenting the material to the user.

This could probably hold up generally without the "video game or computer game" part, but need to double check that.

I found this FAQ, that may provide a very interesting reading:

https://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#If_I_derive_or_adapt_material_offer...

jump to "Adapter's license chart"

and think on a situation where you get a work released as CC-BY, modify and release it as CC-BY, and later on, someone gets your work, modify and release it as CC-BY-NC or CC-BY-ND, you are prevented to use that improvement on your commercial project! or prevented on improving again upon it!! and gets utterly frustrated!! and... :(

so I would like to upvote CC-BY-SA!

Im using CC-BY-SA arts in my game...Especially from qubodup

I was going to publish my game for free, but now im a bit scary to publish it at all.

I do give credits at the end of the game and theres also a credit button avaiable to read the credits.

But how should i do about the images i edited and mixed with others to create effects?

I think i lost 2 years of my life. What now?

qubodup how can i contact you via skype?

You can release your game as free/libre software <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw>.

Keep around a file that contains the artist names and the files they made.

There are games with LPC graphics, and they are not even open source. Key here is to respect the author's requirements. If you have completed the game, make it open source, publish all art with credits and licenses. These licensing requirements are not clear and their intention is not to stop creativity. 

Also, do not fear, I do not think anyone will come after you. Even if they do, they should first send a letter for you to stop infringement. Afterwards, they will claim damages. Since you have not earned anything and they haven't lost anything, they cannot ask for anything. If you go with their request, probably there won't be any court expenses either.

Also, if you really really want to make sure, you can make your binary CC-By-SA, there is nothing stopping you from doing that.

For everyone else, just to make other's life easier, if you use CC-By-SA and it's ok for your art to be used in commercial projects, add the following exception:

All CC-By-SA licensing requirements are lifted as long as the following conditions are met:
1) If the original art is modified or extended, all the changes should be published with the same license and these exceptions
2) If the art is used in a different medium such as videos, games, 2D or 3D prints, it should contain the author's name and/or additional information requested in a visible location.

This could be improved but will at least show the true intention of the artist.

Also, for completeness sake, the difference between a derived work can be compared as follows. Glueing ten cutouts from folders onto a piece of paper is not a derived work (no creativity); glueing ten cutouts from folders onto a piece of paper to create the impression of a landscape does make it a derived work (requires creative thought). A game will in nearly all cases count as a derived work, and as such the CC-BY-SA license must be placed on the entire binary game content (not on the source data) when any CC-BY-SA content is being used in the game.

The only way to combine CC-BY-SA content with non-SA content in a game, while still requiring attribution, is to have an explicit exception from the copyright holder considering video games or computer games not being Adapted Material.

I wouldn't consider game a derivative. Let me borrow your example.

Let's say I print some of your CC-BY-SA cutouts (separate pieces) and package them in nice boxes and share them with others. I'm only packaging them together while the user of my cutout package attaches the cutouts together.  But clearly my box isn't derivative work of the cutouts. I don't think I'm required to share the designs of my nice box.

Software example: Let's say I'm doing simple paint app that allows user to easily attach pictures together. And let's say I'm packaging some CC-BY-SA artwork with the paint app and add them somewhere in the menu, toolbar or something like that. It is the user of my paint app who then combines them and creates the derivative work if they want to.

Game too can be considered something that packages some (art)work with code. My code isn't in anyway derived from 3D-model, texture, music etc. It's not adaptation either. If I add certain 3D-model to my game, my source code doesn't change much. I might need to adapt the 3D-model so that it works with engine in which case I'll share my adapted 3D-model. In the end it is the player who presses certain buttons so that music is "combined" with gun sounds etc.

Main rule of thumb is that artwork is just data for program.

It's different though if for example I try to synchronize some sounds with music by playing them at specific time so that result is predetermined. Then I need to share the parts that do the synchronization under CC-BY-SA. But if I can shoot in my game with sound effect, the combination of gun sound + music is not derivative work.

hey @Kaetemi,

"CC-BY-SA license must be placed on the entire binary game content" this cant be right... my compiled source code is binary, the assets I create are binary.

You are saying I am forced to release EVERYTHING as CC-BY-SA if I use anything that is CC-BY-SA? In that case I would NOT be able to sell my product as someone else could get it and redistribute it freely... I would NOT put a single hour on it if I want to survive as an indie developer then, by not having any freaking boss.. I would giveup on all CC content. I am almost sure what you are saying is at least confusing... 

hey @Kaetemi,

I understand tho that I must release everything that is CC-BY-SA at least in a separate package free of any charges, upload it somewhere and link to it from my site, and keep it there too. But all remaining content, is my product, is my income source, is my way of surviving in this evil commercial world (I would rather not depend on money to survive, but we havent evolved enough yet...)

hi @andrelopes1993,

The CC-BY-SA edited images are to be released as a modification with the same CC-BY-SA license.

But you also said "mixed with others to create effects", now the point is, the other works were CC-BY-SA too? I think the derived work documentation should just say it is a mix made with the originals from this and that authors.

Now, if the works used in the mix are from different licenses, unless they are incompatible, I think the most restrictive must apply. What were the works licenses you used?

@Kaetemi arent you confusing GPL with CC? GPL infects everything (least the output generated by it) (I am not saying it is bad, just how it works)

PS.: (Offtopic) sry @Dnyarri, I read your post and did not see it was a reply to another, his name does not show there making it clear your post was a reply?

@Teken Am not. I read the different versions of the CC-BY-SA license and compared them with different versions of the CC-BY licenses. Spent more than enough time on that.

Also, where you quote me.. Binary game content, means exactly that, the CONTENT that is mixed with the SA; not executables. If you're going to interpret licenses, then DON'T SKIP ANY WORD. Pretty literal stuff.

Copyright law is always (except fair use etc) on the side of the copyright holder, so if you don't understand the license, then you don't have any rights. You simply cannot make assumptions.

 @Kaetemi,

I am beggining on all this hassle, sry being harsh, that way you said startled me; thanks for making it more clear (to me at least).

And 1st of all, if I win lottery or alike I will make my project opensource, til then I need it to not have a boss :)

About "the CONTENT that is mixed with the SA", so basically, how you see we indie devs should licence the commercial (non freely distributable) project we create, this way?

1) Binary executables: copyrighted closed source.

Requires a payment.

2) CC-0, CC-BY, CC-BY-SA art work media/assets (and all the ones I modified/adapted too, derived work): all these works will be packaged together in a single package file, made available publicly (downloadable) without any costs, and released under CC-BY-SA.

Free.

3) assets I create (or hire ppl to create) from photographs, recordings and so on..: packaged with a key; cannot be extracted and freely distributed (or modified and distributed), without prior written permission; is what makes my application unique, so I understand I must protect it.

Requires payment (distributed together with (1) tho).

PS.: Those executables (1) depend on package (3) and could not depend on package (2). I could create default fallbacks, so, without package (2), the game would look like in development mode. So after the user buy the product, he/she would still be required to download the CC-BY-SA asset pack (2) for free (as could be done even without buying the product). 

But, that independency may not be required to I still be able to sell my product keeping (1) and (3) not freely distributable, any ideia about it?

Also, that independency may not be actually/practically viable, may not be actually possible to fully acoomplish...

Also, in this case, I am not sure if I can distribute that package (2) toguether with (1) and (3), like on a DVD...

Okay, there does actually seem to be a way to interpret SA in such way that you can work with both SA and non-SA content (as long as you keep to the SA license for the SA content and adaptations etc).

You can distribute things together. The main point is when mixing and adapting things.

Basically your application isn't mixed with the content, it's the thing that's mixing the content into a frame. And that rendered frame IS most definitely adapted content.

There is only one case in the license that is actually viral, "For purposes of this Public License, where the Licensed Material is a musical work, performance, or sound recording, Adapted Material is always produced where the Licensed Material is synched in timed relation with a moving image.", which basically means that you definitely should not be using any SA audio in your game.

Here comes the important part! -> Now back to that frame. The key here, is that you're not redistributing that rendered frame, nor are you producing that frame. It's being produced (and even producing is covered by SA) by the end user using an application you provided. (Making the assumption here that you writing an application which mixes SPECIFIC content together does not legally make you the person who is mixing the content.) Technically the end user would be violating the SA here, but in reality this falls under personal use of copyrighted content, and the user has the rights to do this, so this is legal.

Screenshots taken for commenting purposes also fall under fair use; screenshots taken for advertisement purposes by you, on the other hand, are not for personal use, do not fall under fair use, and are definitely adapted material, and the advertisement screenshots themselves would fall under SA (user screenshots are still fair use). Same goes for live video streams by users, fair use.

So. Yes, you can combine non-SA with SA in a game, if you are VERY careful with advertisement screenshots (make sure NOT to include any imagery in any advertisement screenshots that you are unable to release under SA in this modified form, as the advertisement screenshot is SA adapted content) and promotional videos (also be very careful with audio licenses here, the audio track of the video is also part of the SA adapted content) (same goes for pre-rendered video content).

That is, making that assumption of who, legally speaking, is mixing the content.

There is another way of clearing this, using the exception for "Media and formats; technical modifications allowed."

"The Licensor waives and/or agrees not to assert any right or authority to forbid You from making technical modifications necessary to exercise the Licensed Rights"

If you make the assumption that the game rendering code falls under "technical modifications" (which means changing the file format, and converting it in-memory to a displayable format, including but not limited to the rescaling of images), then it's perfectly safe to use both SA and non-SA.

(Also, don't use the words 'mixing', 'combining', etc when you do this.)

Basically, if you can validate these assumptions, then your safe.

Dnyarri: Putting cutouts in a box doesn't require creativity, and thus does not make the box with cutouts an adapted work. That creating the box requires creativity has nothing to do with you putting the cutouts in it. Your interpretation seems correct.

@Kaetemi, very interesting, the moment you were explaining, more questions came by, and as I kept reading they were all answered :), thanks!

And, as you quoted about https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode#s2a4, I just understand that, the user, running the application on his/her machine, is not distributing that dinamically "random" generated media. And so, whatever is "just seen" (but not recorded) on the application, vanishes in void, and cannot fall under any license as there is nothing left after the application closes (only user limited and, to the date, still unrecordable memories). But that is just my reasoning, and may provide a good question at http://programmers.stackexchange.com/

So basically, I have to add something like this on the starting screen and the readme:

"If you are using the CC-BY-SA package (2). If you take screenshots, create any video or even just audio, or any possible other media, out of this running application; if that media is vanilla or even modified/adapted; if that media is distributed; that media distribution must be under CC-BY-SA license, publicly available without any restriction and without any required payment."

*of course, in a case that it may be possible to not depend on package (2). For ex. (2) could, one day, be fully substituted by closed media (not that I want to, I just want to be able to sell my product and live out of it, and promote all ppl that made their work available for free and helped on my quickstart; it is just that I am thinking on how things work).

I think also that a payment can be asked (but not required) to the creation of that media (not distribution); for ex. if someone pays someone else to create a demo video (otherwise that person would not do it for free) with detailed explanations and so on; as soon that video is distributed, it must be freely available under CC-BY-SA, and who paid may require some of their propaganda to show there too. (I am still just thinking also).

You can add a notice like that, yes. You also have to make sure that any non SA content you use; can be redistributed as SA under the mixed form of screenshots and video footage. Some third party content licenses (even free content like cgtextures) explicitly forbid being mixed into a CC licensed work.

And yeah, you can ask for payment, as long as the content isn't NC.

Good I run away from CGTextures based on this http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?227060-NO-more-CGTextures. But I ran away too from http://www.goodtextures.com/, as they simply do not have a licence, and their damands doesnt make me sure how I could use their textures, combined with other works (the packaging part was confuse to me).

And thanks for taking time to understand it all. I always have a hard time trying to read the licence legal code.

Some places provide a simplified version of the licence. But almost NO place (may be there is some?) simply says how we can and how we cannot use works licenced under their license, with exemplified situations like the one I described. I think most of these talks about licences are to ammend that missing and so important information, that is actually what matters in the end.

Goodtextures is fine, as long as you don't redistribute the textures themselves as-is as a product, and don't relicense the textures themselves. And provide credits. Their only intention is that you don't use their textures to create a competing website or other product to their website.

For example, you can't package their textures and upload them to a website like OGA; you're also not allowed to redistribute their textures in material packs; but you can package them together with a 3D model that uses the texture, and upload that as a bundle to a website that allows mixed license content.

So basically, I could put the royalty free vanilla and modified textures from GoodTextures on a 4th package on my list like this?

4) royalty free textures from GoodTextures.com. A) One or more textures on these maps or 3D-models have been created with images from Goodtextures.com. These images may not be redistributed by default. Please visit www.goodtextures.com for more information.

Despite what they ask us to say (A) is related to a bundle 3D model or Map. In my case, their textures would be available to the whole application use it on models, maps or anything else. So it cannot be considered as a map or 3d model...

And finally I would simply pack it toguether with (1) application binaries and (3) closed artwork, but in this case, (4) would be directly acessible by users with no restrictions by the software, but they would not be allowed to use them without previously visiting and downloading the original from GoodTextures right?

Also, I understand no GoodTextures texture can be mixed (by creating a derivative work) with any CC texture/image. It can only be mixed with textures from GoodTextures to remain under the same "license". I can modify them with tools like gimp tho, following these rules right?

And finally, any video or screenshots that contain views of any GoodTextures textures, must still be, if distributed, under CC-BY-SA, because of the CC textures present on the scene, and also add their statement (A), like in:

"This video/screenshot is licensed under CC-BY-SA. One or more textures on these maps or 3D-models have been created with images from Goodtextures.com. These images may not be redistributed by default. Please visit www.goodtextures.com for more information."

That is the complication I am talking about...

I would have to do all that right?

If you're distributing it as part of your application to use on any model, then no, goodtextures does not allow that. That falls under a materials package, and you're basically acting as a texture database then, which does in a way compete against their website.

When you sample their textures to create a new texture, you CAN release them under a CC license, as long as you add the credit line goodtextures requires as an addendum to the license. But you still cannot distribute them as a textures database.

Carefully read the line "One or more textures on this map have been created with images from Goodtextures.com. These images may not be redistributed by default.", they specifically use the word 'textures' in this part referring to what you created, and the word 'images' to refer to their images.

So, I  guess, basically, even if I crop and scale their images, into a new texture, the only way to use them on my project would be to upload them somewhere (like here) under CC-BY-SA (with (A) credit) and force the user to download directly from that place, one by one, even if it was allowed in someway to be a batch download (tho I dont believe it would be allowed without login and so on)... seems unpratical and puts the project under a weak situation where urls may change, site is down and so on...

I felt something was wrong as they restricted the use to model and map bundles. And I sensed, my project would actually feel like a material package. Good this "sense" works where my intellect fails lol.. Good I ran away from it.. and thanks again for clearing that out where I couldnt by myself ! :)

No. You are not allowed to redistribute them as images or textures by themselves nor as a texture or material package. You definitely cannot upload their textures here, and especially not under a different license.

(Also, cropping and scaling does not sufficiently modify the work to create a newly copyrightable work, and thus would still fall under the original license.)