I am very much for the idea of OGA being politically neutral, even on things concerning the gaming community like GamerGate et al.
I have been trying to be gentle with political submissions, but I don't know if it's as gentle/harsh as I should be. I have had success with requesting that the submitter "tone down" the political aspects of the comments, title, and description. I've tried to avoid asking for the removal of political aspects of the artwork itself, though. I don't know if that's best or not.
I don't know if on "dorothea the cat lady" I was being too sensitive to the political stuff, but it seemed like it was very much in the same vein as these:
@bart: I'm a fan of how you and other admins seem to really go the extra mile to avoid banning someone. After all, I'm ashamed to admit, I've committed a reasonably-bannable offense, but you guys let me stay. :) Even with some of the more unreasonable and argumentative people I've only had to lock or unpublish a work without banning the submitter. (Other than obvious spammers, I've only ever banned MikeeUSA, and I still feel bad about it even though everyone else on the internet has already banned him.)
As for how to accomplish the best balance of free speech and political agnosticism, I can't comment. I'm still looking for guidance on how I should be handling those situations, so I'm on board with whatever is decided and will adjust my administrative style to match.
That makes a lot of sense. I'm ready to assist in whatever way I can. If I need to manually de-corrupt a thousand nodes, I'm willing.
I've noticed the site has trouble handling some extended ANSI characters sometimes. Is it possible the trouble-nodes contain special characters that are freaking out the cron job? I've used some Japanese kanji in several of my submissions, so I might actually be (one of) the culprits. :(
Ah. Yes. As the author of such artwork, you are free to release the artwork under any number of licenses you want. GPL over there, CC0 over here.
CC0 would be sufficient to cover all future bases. People coming here can use your CC0 art in a GPL project, a CC-BY-SA project, or a closed source commercial project. :)
CC0 would be sufficient... wait. The artwork being submitted is from a GPL project? If the artwork is already GPL and you don't have authority to change the license (you're not the artist) then it should stay GPL.
"...I actually haven't seen very much discussion on this."
...Really? I think there's been a lot of discussion on this. Nothing was ever truly concluded on the topic, though. Here are some stuff on GPL as it relates to art:
"...the Free Software Foundation has clarified that the game code and game media are separate entities and do not need to be released under the same license, provided those licenses allow you to copy and redistribute the work for both commercial and non-commercial purposes..."
Data that has an aesthetic purpose, rather than a functional one, may be included in a free system distribution as long as its license gives you permission to copy and redistribute, both for commercial and non-commercial purposes. For example, there are some game engines that have been released under the GNU GPL, and have accompanying game information "world map, game graphics, and so on" released under such a verbatim distribution license. This kind of data can be part of a free system distribution."
"...The reason the GPL is a license option at all is because there were several major projects that, at the time of OGA's creation, required their art to be licensed under the GPL (Wesnoth comes to mind, although I believe there were others), and because of the existence of legacy works from back when the GPL was the only game in town as far as licenses with a "share-alike" requirement..."
There is a bunch of threads in the forum talking about GPL as it relates to art, but they are usually more like blurbs mixed into a larger (and less related) licensing discussion, so it's a bit hard to wade through it all. Capbros has written a lot on the topic and he definitely understands GPL better than I do. Maybe he'll see this and give his assessment.
TL;DR: My overly simplified summary of the issue is:
GPL is not the recommended license for art, but there are legacy reasons for maintaining it as an art license.
GPL'd art doesn't neccessarily mean the code must be GPL as well. Art and code in a single project may be licensed separately as independent "collections". However, each project is subject to unique circumstances. Consult your lawyer if swelling persists longer than 4 hours.
If you're submitting GPL artwork, it is preferable (and polite) that a highly-editable format of the art be included along with a more finialized form. E.g. include a photoshop PSD file (or gimp XCF file) along with a PNG or JPG image of artwork, so other users may modify the image easily. Whether or not this is required in order to be compliant with the GPL is unlikely/debatable, but still a good idea.
Yay!
Thanks. This is good to know. :)
I am very much for the idea of OGA being politically neutral, even on things concerning the gaming community like GamerGate et al.
I have been trying to be gentle with political submissions, but I don't know if it's as gentle/harsh as I should be. I have had success with requesting that the submitter "tone down" the political aspects of the comments, title, and description. I've tried to avoid asking for the removal of political aspects of the artwork itself, though. I don't know if that's best or not.
Some examples:
http://opengameart.org/content/keyboard-jam-session-keyboardjamsession20... (I know, MikeeUSA has been banned, but it was for subsequent egregious offenses, not this one)
http://opengameart.org/content/hand-drawn-sprite-dorothea-the-cat-lady#c... (currently still marked as having licensing issues, but more because of the source of the image on the T-Shirt than because of any latent political content)
I don't know if on "dorothea the cat lady" I was being too sensitive to the political stuff, but it seemed like it was very much in the same vein as these:
@bart: I'm a fan of how you and other admins seem to really go the extra mile to avoid banning someone. After all, I'm ashamed to admit, I've committed a reasonably-bannable offense, but you guys let me stay. :) Even with some of the more unreasonable and argumentative people I've only had to lock or unpublish a work without banning the submitter. (Other than obvious spammers, I've only ever banned MikeeUSA, and I still feel bad about it even though everyone else on the internet has already banned him.)
As for how to accomplish the best balance of free speech and political agnosticism, I can't comment. I'm still looking for guidance on how I should be handling those situations, so I'm on board with whatever is decided and will adjust my administrative style to match.
I'll try to find any new submissions with the tags "Challenge" and "Reborn" but linking to your challenge entry here on this thread is recommended.
That makes a lot of sense. I'm ready to assist in whatever way I can. If I need to manually de-corrupt a thousand nodes, I'm willing.
I've noticed the site has trouble handling some extended ANSI characters sometimes. Is it possible the trouble-nodes contain special characters that are freaking out the cron job? I've used some Japanese kanji in several of my submissions, so I might actually be (one of) the culprits. :(
Ah. Yes. As the author of such artwork, you are free to release the artwork under any number of licenses you want. GPL over there, CC0 over here.
CC0 would be sufficient to cover all future bases. People coming here can use your CC0 art in a GPL project, a CC-BY-SA project, or a closed source commercial project. :)
CC0 would be sufficient... wait. The artwork being submitted is from a GPL project? If the artwork is already GPL and you don't have authority to change the license (you're not the artist) then it should stay GPL.
oh... that is a remarkably simple and straightforward method for determining a winner. Thanks, farrer.
Dannorder has heard our plea: http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/weekly-challenge-reborn-due-jan-15th
...Really? I think there's been a lot of discussion on this. Nothing was ever truly concluded on the topic, though. Here are some stuff on GPL as it relates to art:
http://opengameart.org/content/faq#q-ccgplcompat
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html
http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/source-required-for-art-licensed-under...
There is a bunch of threads in the forum talking about GPL as it relates to art, but they are usually more like blurbs mixed into a larger (and less related) licensing discussion, so it's a bit hard to wade through it all. Capbros has written a lot on the topic and he definitely understands GPL better than I do. Maybe he'll see this and give his assessment.
TL;DR: My overly simplified summary of the issue is:
Hope that helps some :)
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