Using HTML 5 is a worthy pursuit, but I have some reservations. Outside of my refusal to support IE 6 (it's horribly outdated and basically needs its own version of the site, and I don't have time to do it), I'm trying my best to make sure most modern browsers are supported, including IE 7 and Safari. I don't like Apple and Microsoft's refusal to play with others on open standards, but the users of those browsers might not even be aware of open source. Rather than making their first experience with FOSS a bad one (by booting them out and saying something to the point of "use a real browser") I would prefer to gently introduce them to the concept and then engage them and get them involved. Then they might switch to a different browser of their own accord. I may dump IE 7 in the switch-over.
Mind you, I don't do anything to deliberately break IE6 on OGA. I just don't know for certain if it actually works, because I stopped testing it. For all I know, IE6 users might be able to view the site just fine. Here's a rough breakdown of our traffic:
Firefox and Mozilla: 57%
Chrome: 18%
IE 8: 7%
Safari: 5%
Opera: 5%
IE 6: 3%
IE 7: 3%
Anything not listed here, including Konqueror, clocks in at half a percent or less.
Note that I split IE 6, 7, and 8 into their own categories. This is because IE versions need to be accounted for in different ways, whereas if something runs on one version of Firefox, it'll often run on all of them.
So right now, if I went with HTML 5, I'd be not accounting for approximately 6% of OGA's user base. If I stuck with open standards, we'd also lose IE 8 and Safari, which would account for an additional 12%. Flash is a slow, buggy, and ugly solution, but it's relatively easy to implement.
That said, I'm pretty tired of my netbook slowing to a crawl whenever I hit the OGA frontpage. I'll look into it. If it's easy enough to handle different browsers differently and doesn't add a whole lot of maintenance overhead, I'll give it a shot.
You make a good point about the GPL not requiring by default that the author be attributed, however, it is an optional requirement as detailed in section 7 (Additional Terms).
To clarify this, I've added a FAQ question that states that you should assume all of the GPLed work on this site requires attribution to the listed author(s) unless they specifically state otherwise.
As for your other point, I think what you're saying is that you'd prefer a system that defaults "open" instead of "closed". Right now, when a work is created, the assumption is that the author reserves all rights unless stated otherwise, and you're advocating that instead the default should be that the author reserves *no* rights, unless stated otherwise. So if someone wanted to post art on the internet the way it works right now, they'd have to specifically say "all rights reserved" or somesuch, to specify that people aren't allowed to use and distribute it without specific permission. Otherwise, it would be assumed that the work goes into the public domain. Is that correct?
I know you're an artist yourself, so it's not my place to tell you what artists want, but I think it's safe to say that there are a wide variety of opinions among artists about how their works should be used (hence the massive proliferation of licenses). I'm an artist myself (sort of, anyway -- I dabble from time to time) and I tend to release my work under a license that's proportional to the amount of time I spent on it. GPL/CC-BY-SA if it's something that took a major effort, CC-BY if the effort was moderate, and CC0 if it's just a little thing.
But let's take the popular CC-BY license, for example. There are a lot of artists out there who are happy to have their work used for free, for any purpose, provided that they are given credit for it. One thing that's nice about the GPL and the CC licenses is that they're easy to apply. You pretty much just say "I'm releasing this work under the terms of CC-BY 3.0," and you're good to go. The fact that this is so easy and so well standardized is a boon to both artists and people who are looking for art to use in their projects. For artists, it's nice because of the simplicity -- there's no fee and no form to fill out. For the rest of us, it's nice because that simplicity encourages people to put their work out there for our use.
My point is, if people had to go through a rigmarole (and pay a fee) to get their art copyrighted just to ensure that their work will be properly credited, a large number of artists (myself included, and perhaps even a vast majority) who currently release CC-BY works wouldn't do so at all, and we'd have a lot less content available.
1. I agree that 20 years is a much better copyright term than the current one, which is horribly excessive. In fact, if copyright is meant to promote the creation of art, 20 years is about the point where it starts accomplishing the exact opposite of that. If people are going to the movie theater in droves to see a re-release of a 20-year-old movie, then that movie is part of our shared culture and ought to be in the public domain now.
2. Requiring source for copyright puts too much of an onus on the creator, who may not want to keep the source around. It sounds nice in theory, but in practice it's too much of a burden on the artist, to say nothing of what constitutes the "source" of a work of art.
3. Forcing all copyrights to be registered takes power out of the hands of individual artists and places it into the hands of the copyright industry, who have the time, money, and inclination to do this.
4. Setting a standard for "sufficient complexity" is murky at best.
5. That's good, because equating intellectual property to physical goods is silly. :)
That reminds me... one very important feature that's intended to go into OGA 2.0 but I forgot to list is the ability to create "collections" of art -- that is, any user can come in and create a group of existing art pieces, and other people will be able to view (and possibly download) that group. I'm with you about having an ability to find consistent art. Maybe if this is something we focus on a bit, artists will be encouraged to do art in exising styles so as to be included in art sets?
Well, the master plan, as it were, is to create a website where coders and artists can work together to create games. Right now we have a lot of opportunities for artists to participate, which is good, but coders and writers and idea people who want to contribute are kind of left out (except for the forums). By the same token, there are a lot of coders out there who need art, but there are also a lot of artists out there who need code, and we'd like to serve them as well.
Here are some specific things we're probably going to be doing:
The art archive will remain the most prominent portion of the site.
The art submission forms will be made more intuitive, but without taking away any options.
The site design will be streamlined somewhat. Right now our design is a bit "busy" and we have some ideas to make more efficient use of space.
Game projects will be able to set up their own subpages where they can disucss art, code, and ideas. For instance, if pfunked wanted to set up an OSARE page on OGA, he could have osare.opengameart.org.
Each project page would have a places where people could submit, comment on, and update design ideas.
Project pages would have an archive of art that pertains to that specific project. Much like the design ideas, people could comment on and update art. Each art page will allow you to see a complete history of updates to that particular piece of art.
Project art would of course appear in the main archive as well, and it will list each project that's making use of it.
Ideally, it would be nice to be able to "fork" a piece of art. If you modify some art and then submit it as a "fork" of the piece that you modified, then those two pieces of art will be linked. It will be possible from this information to view all of the art that was derived from a single work.
Game project pages will not archive code, since there are plenty of sites out there (such as sourceforge and github) that do that very well already. We will, however, provide a way to link to and discuss code.
We'll have a special area for game ideas, so that artists and designers who would like to see things coded can make suggestions and get feedback, and possibly find willing developers.
Game projects and game ideas will be able to receive "Favorite" votes, the way art can right now. The most popular among them will be displayed on the main page.
New medals will be added to accomodate these new features.
If pfunked is okay with it (since the weekly challenges are his thing), I'd like to set up a section of the website specifically for weekly challenges that will make them more convenient.
The tutorials section will be expanded, and people will be able to submit their own tutorials for approval.
If possible, I'd like to include a section for opengl shaders, which are particularly cool since they combine art and code.
We'll be adding a Bounty Board so that people can post bounties for art and code.
I'm sure there are some other things I'm forgetting to mention. :)
Anyway, that's a quick overview of what we're planning. We're going to get moving on this once Drupal 7 comes out and all of the necessary Drupal modules are production ready. For starters, we're going to duplicate the functionality of OGA 1.0 (what you're looking at now) with the new theme and better art submission forms. Once that's safely in production, we'll start working on adding the other features I just mentioned.
And of course, we're always looking for comments, suggestions, and ideas from the community at large. :)
Arthur:
Using HTML 5 is a worthy pursuit, but I have some reservations. Outside of my refusal to support IE 6 (it's horribly outdated and basically needs its own version of the site, and I don't have time to do it), I'm trying my best to make sure most modern browsers are supported, including IE 7 and Safari. I don't like Apple and Microsoft's refusal to play with others on open standards, but the users of those browsers might not even be aware of open source. Rather than making their first experience with FOSS a bad one (by booting them out and saying something to the point of "use a real browser") I would prefer to gently introduce them to the concept and then engage them and get them involved. Then they might switch to a different browser of their own accord. I may dump IE 7 in the switch-over.
Mind you, I don't do anything to deliberately break IE6 on OGA. I just don't know for certain if it actually works, because I stopped testing it. For all I know, IE6 users might be able to view the site just fine. Here's a rough breakdown of our traffic:
Note that I split IE 6, 7, and 8 into their own categories. This is because IE versions need to be accounted for in different ways, whereas if something runs on one version of Firefox, it'll often run on all of them.
So right now, if I went with HTML 5, I'd be not accounting for approximately 6% of OGA's user base. If I stuck with open standards, we'd also lose IE 8 and Safari, which would account for an additional 12%. Flash is a slow, buggy, and ugly solution, but it's relatively easy to implement.
That said, I'm pretty tired of my netbook slowing to a crawl whenever I hit the OGA frontpage. I'll look into it. If it's easy enough to handle different browsers differently and doesn't add a whole lot of maintenance overhead, I'll give it a shot.
Bart
You make a good point about the GPL not requiring by default that the author be attributed, however, it is an optional requirement as detailed in section 7 (Additional Terms).
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
To clarify this, I've added a FAQ question that states that you should assume all of the GPLed work on this site requires attribution to the listed author(s) unless they specifically state otherwise.
As for your other point, I think what you're saying is that you'd prefer a system that defaults "open" instead of "closed". Right now, when a work is created, the assumption is that the author reserves all rights unless stated otherwise, and you're advocating that instead the default should be that the author reserves *no* rights, unless stated otherwise. So if someone wanted to post art on the internet the way it works right now, they'd have to specifically say "all rights reserved" or somesuch, to specify that people aren't allowed to use and distribute it without specific permission. Otherwise, it would be assumed that the work goes into the public domain. Is that correct?
I know you're an artist yourself, so it's not my place to tell you what artists want, but I think it's safe to say that there are a wide variety of opinions among artists about how their works should be used (hence the massive proliferation of licenses). I'm an artist myself (sort of, anyway -- I dabble from time to time) and I tend to release my work under a license that's proportional to the amount of time I spent on it. GPL/CC-BY-SA if it's something that took a major effort, CC-BY if the effort was moderate, and CC0 if it's just a little thing.
But let's take the popular CC-BY license, for example. There are a lot of artists out there who are happy to have their work used for free, for any purpose, provided that they are given credit for it. One thing that's nice about the GPL and the CC licenses is that they're easy to apply. You pretty much just say "I'm releasing this work under the terms of CC-BY 3.0," and you're good to go. The fact that this is so easy and so well standardized is a boon to both artists and people who are looking for art to use in their projects. For artists, it's nice because of the simplicity -- there's no fee and no form to fill out. For the rest of us, it's nice because that simplicity encourages people to put their work out there for our use.
My point is, if people had to go through a rigmarole (and pay a fee) to get their art copyrighted just to ensure that their work will be properly credited, a large number of artists (myself included, and perhaps even a vast majority) who currently release CC-BY works wouldn't do so at all, and we'd have a lot less content available.
I'll address your thoughts one by one:
1. I agree that 20 years is a much better copyright term than the current one, which is horribly excessive. In fact, if copyright is meant to promote the creation of art, 20 years is about the point where it starts accomplishing the exact opposite of that. If people are going to the movie theater in droves to see a re-release of a 20-year-old movie, then that movie is part of our shared culture and ought to be in the public domain now.
2. Requiring source for copyright puts too much of an onus on the creator, who may not want to keep the source around. It sounds nice in theory, but in practice it's too much of a burden on the artist, to say nothing of what constitutes the "source" of a work of art.
3. Forcing all copyrights to be registered takes power out of the hands of individual artists and places it into the hands of the copyright industry, who have the time, money, and inclination to do this.
4. Setting a standard for "sufficient complexity" is murky at best.
5. That's good, because equating intellectual property to physical goods is silly. :)
That reminds me... one very important feature that's intended to go into OGA 2.0 but I forgot to list is the ability to create "collections" of art -- that is, any user can come in and create a group of existing art pieces, and other people will be able to view (and possibly download) that group. I'm with you about having an ability to find consistent art. Maybe if this is something we focus on a bit, artists will be encouraged to do art in exising styles so as to be included in art sets?
Very nice work! :)
Ah yes, OGA 2.0. :)
Well, the master plan, as it were, is to create a website where coders and artists can work together to create games. Right now we have a lot of opportunities for artists to participate, which is good, but coders and writers and idea people who want to contribute are kind of left out (except for the forums). By the same token, there are a lot of coders out there who need art, but there are also a lot of artists out there who need code, and we'd like to serve them as well.
Here are some specific things we're probably going to be doing:
Anyway, that's a quick overview of what we're planning. We're going to get moving on this once Drupal 7 comes out and all of the necessary Drupal modules are production ready. For starters, we're going to duplicate the functionality of OGA 1.0 (what you're looking at now) with the new theme and better art submission forms. Once that's safely in production, we'll start working on adding the other features I just mentioned.
And of course, we're always looking for comments, suggestions, and ideas from the community at large. :)
Peace,
Bart
Here's enough for the very beginnings of an isometric tower defense game. :)
http://opengameart.org/content/towers-of-defense
Edit: Changed preview image to something cooler looking.
I want to note that this is an important request. I haven't addressed it yet because it's non-trivial (and may be best implemented in OGA 2).
Solved?
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