Having GPLed assets without source just leads to confusion. Is the source missing? Or did the artist mean that this .ogg or whatever is the source itself, even when that seems dubious? If it was licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0 instead, then almost nothing would change, except the confusion would be gone. So clarity is to be gained.
I don't think sourceless stuff is useless. It's widely considered fine to have a GPL'ed game engine and CC-licensed assets. You'd lose a lot of contributors if you'd tell them that you have to upload sources, and that would be a net loss. But I do think it would be better to have the sources than not to have them. And that's regardless of how it is licensed.
I think maybe a short questionaire or a diagram might be useful to help authors decide the correct license for their work. For example:
Is the source for this work available?
- yes: Do you want to ensure that if modifications are made, the source of the modifications is made available?
- yes: use the (L)GPL, and be sure to make the sources available
Do you want modified versions of the work to be released under the same license?
- yes: use CC-BY-SA
Do you want attribution for your work?
- yes: use CC-BY
Otherwise:
- use CC0
I also see little value in having works being dual-licensed under multiple OGA-compatible licenses. For example, if you have something under CC0, you can implicitly also use it under the others. The only time you might want two is if you want (L)GPL and CC-BY-SA 3.0, since you can't just change from CC-BY-SA 3.0 to (L)GPL. But I believe this was "fixed" in CC-BY-SA 4.0?
Debian does take the wishes of the original authors into account. Looking through some old mailing list post, In the case of Wesnoth, the authors have been very explicit about how they apply the GPL, so I guess that has contributed to the decision to include it in Debian's main repository. I just wanted to reiterate that this is not an arbitrary decision by Debian, it's rather that Debian is flexible and adjusts to the situation where appropriate. As for the game written in machine code: this would be accepted in Debian.
However, I would like to point out there is a difference between the two: the assembly code was really the preferred form of modification by the author, while I don't believe for a second that Wesnoth's music was written directly as a .ogg file with a hex editor. It's obvious that the authors had a different form of modification when they created the music. So Debian made an exception by accepting Wesnoth's music under the GPL, whereas the machine code game would be accepted without any controversion.
What I'm a bit worried about, but maybe this is unfounded, is that the flexibility Debian used to allow Wesnoth's music is used to claim that then any music that is GPL'ed but without source would be acceptable. Wesnoth has explicitly stated that they consider the .ogg files the source, but here on OGA I find no explicit statements of that sort accompanied with the GPL'ed music. But I'd rather see the license changed to CC-BY-SA than to the GPL + some statement about the source.
Please don't use Debian's inclusion of Wesnoth as an excuse for ignoring the source requirement for all GPLed music out there. Wesnoth authors have made the decision to require the music to be under the GPL license, and they have explicitly declared that they consider the .ogg format the source. I've looked in the archives, and over the years there have been discussions about this, so it is definitely not something universally accepted within Debian.
Wesnoth is a very old project, and was started in 2003. At that time, Creative Commons had just started, and the early CC licenses were quite bad. In most cases, only version 3.0 or later of the licenses are accepted by Linux distributions. Later, Wesnoth decided that relicensing the game assets under a different license would be too difficult. Now in 2016, there are much better options, and if you have a GPLed .ogg and you claim that is the source, then why not say it's CC-BY-SA 3.0 or 4.0 licensed instead, because that changes nothing except that it removes all the confusion?
And indeed, if you have CC0/PD work without a source and try to slap the GPL on it, that will in most cases not be accepted. It's extremely clear that if you'd take a binary program and try to pass it off as GPL without any sources, noone in their right mind would accept that. Just because determining what consitutes source with art is harder you can't just start ignoring the license altogether.
Hm, I went through the results of that search query, but it appears it is missing some content; I uploaded a GPL-only song myself (http://opengameart.org/content/warm-up), but it doesn't find it. So now I'm doubting the numbers.
That said, of those 351 results, only 74 were in the music category. A few of them were just misplaced sound effects (which I would consider source), but the rest was all sourceless music. Luckily, it appears only a few submitters have submitted those songs, so I guess only a few people would have to be contacted.
I would be willing to spend some time to try to go through those 351 submissions though, and send some automated emails to contributors reminding them that GPL requires sources, and gently ask them to look at their submission and fix the license and/or provide those sources. But only if you are fine with that.
Apart from the GPL issue, I've also noticed that there are quite some submissing in the music category that are not music at all, but rather sound effects. How could I or others report or help clean up these misclassifications?
Debian is definitely NOT ok with missing sources. But mistakes like this slip in from time to time. I already filed a bugreport for SuperTuxKart, and hopefully we'll get this fixed. But if not, the package will be removed from the archives. I'll be sure to check out Wesnoth and FreeCiv as well.
I hope in the case of Wesnoth, if they still claim the music is GPL, and if it is indeed made by themselves, that they can be convinced to relicense it under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 or later (which might not have existed at the time they created the music), or another more suitable license. Or best, that they provide the source :)
I agree with everything you said, except I think that (L)GPL really can be a good fit for artwork. Having sources available (if applicable) would be a benefit to the community.
I found out yesterday that SuperTuxKart also has a GPL'ed song in .ogg format that they don't have the source for. And in this case it is even more clear cut that the source is missing, because there is a .mod version of that song on modarchive.com.
The standard is not arbitrary, it is flexible. That's necessary because the GPL is not a law book that has answers for every situation. No license is, for that matter.
@MoikMellah:
The GPL is far from unenforcable. In fact, there have been various court cases about GPL infringement, all of them either were won by the opponents claiming the infringement, or settled out of court, usually resulting in the defendent providing the sources anyway and paying the opponents some amount of money. Of course, if you think it is too complicated or have other issues with it, noone is preventing anyone from choosing another license for their own works.
The main problem here is that there are GPL-licensed resources on OGA for which it can be reasonable claimed that the sources are missing. Even if you can succesfully claim OGA falls under some safe harbor law, then the problem still exists for those users who download those assets from OGA and want to use them in their games, because they in turn will have to redistribute those assets.
Lastly, people who license their stuff under the GPL and provide sources are not out there to annoy you, they just want to ensure the sources stay available, even if other people download them and change them. This has had a profound impact on the software world, and a lot of things you take for granted today would not have been possible without the GPL.
People who upload assets without source and put them under the GPL are also not out there to annoy you, they have either forgotten to upload the sources, don't realize that you need to provide the sources with the GPL, or they have just chosen the wrong license. I'm just asking for OGA to rectify the situation in this last case.
I haven't asked anyone for the source of heroism yet.
As for Debian: I couldn't find anything explicit about source for music in the Debian Policy Manual or DFSG about it. However, we do have the debian-legal mailing list where such things have been discussed. AFAICT, the common opinion is that it depends on how the music was made, but that in general it should be the source files the author used. So if you recorded a bunch of instrumenets and mixed them together, then the source is the individual tracks plus the configuration of the mixer. If it's a MIDI file and some soft-synths, then that MIDI file and the configuration of the synths. If it's a one-track recording of a band playing, then this is a bit less clear; although it is not very modifiable anymore, it can be argued that it's the only source available, there is nothing that is more preferrable.
In Debian, the so-called "ftp-masters" are the gatekeepers that decide whether to allow a new package into Debian or not. They do a thorough review of the package, and pay a lot of attention to the copyright details. If it is unclear or dubious that the license is properly followed, they will reject the package.
Thanks for the suggested alternative, I'll also bring it to the attention of the author of the game.
@caeles:
Having GPLed assets without source just leads to confusion. Is the source missing? Or did the artist mean that this .ogg or whatever is the source itself, even when that seems dubious? If it was licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0 instead, then almost nothing would change, except the confusion would be gone. So clarity is to be gained.
I don't think sourceless stuff is useless. It's widely considered fine to have a GPL'ed game engine and CC-licensed assets. You'd lose a lot of contributors if you'd tell them that you have to upload sources, and that would be a net loss. But I do think it would be better to have the sources than not to have them. And that's regardless of how it is licensed.
I think maybe a short questionaire or a diagram might be useful to help authors decide the correct license for their work. For example:
Is the source for this work available?
- yes: Do you want to ensure that if modifications are made, the source of the modifications is made available?
- yes: use the (L)GPL, and be sure to make the sources available
Do you want modified versions of the work to be released under the same license?
- yes: use CC-BY-SA
Do you want attribution for your work?
- yes: use CC-BY
Otherwise:
- use CC0
I also see little value in having works being dual-licensed under multiple OGA-compatible licenses. For example, if you have something under CC0, you can implicitly also use it under the others. The only time you might want two is if you want (L)GPL and CC-BY-SA 3.0, since you can't just change from CC-BY-SA 3.0 to (L)GPL. But I believe this was "fixed" in CC-BY-SA 4.0?
Debian does take the wishes of the original authors into account. Looking through some old mailing list post, In the case of Wesnoth, the authors have been very explicit about how they apply the GPL, so I guess that has contributed to the decision to include it in Debian's main repository. I just wanted to reiterate that this is not an arbitrary decision by Debian, it's rather that Debian is flexible and adjusts to the situation where appropriate. As for the game written in machine code: this would be accepted in Debian.
However, I would like to point out there is a difference between the two: the assembly code was really the preferred form of modification by the author, while I don't believe for a second that Wesnoth's music was written directly as a .ogg file with a hex editor. It's obvious that the authors had a different form of modification when they created the music. So Debian made an exception by accepting Wesnoth's music under the GPL, whereas the machine code game would be accepted without any controversion.
What I'm a bit worried about, but maybe this is unfounded, is that the flexibility Debian used to allow Wesnoth's music is used to claim that then any music that is GPL'ed but without source would be acceptable. Wesnoth has explicitly stated that they consider the .ogg files the source, but here on OGA I find no explicit statements of that sort accompanied with the GPL'ed music. But I'd rather see the license changed to CC-BY-SA than to the GPL + some statement about the source.
Please don't use Debian's inclusion of Wesnoth as an excuse for ignoring the source requirement for all GPLed music out there. Wesnoth authors have made the decision to require the music to be under the GPL license, and they have explicitly declared that they consider the .ogg format the source. I've looked in the archives, and over the years there have been discussions about this, so it is definitely not something universally accepted within Debian.
Wesnoth is a very old project, and was started in 2003. At that time, Creative Commons had just started, and the early CC licenses were quite bad. In most cases, only version 3.0 or later of the licenses are accepted by Linux distributions. Later, Wesnoth decided that relicensing the game assets under a different license would be too difficult. Now in 2016, there are much better options, and if you have a GPLed .ogg and you claim that is the source, then why not say it's CC-BY-SA 3.0 or 4.0 licensed instead, because that changes nothing except that it removes all the confusion?
And indeed, if you have CC0/PD work without a source and try to slap the GPL on it, that will in most cases not be accepted. It's extremely clear that if you'd take a binary program and try to pass it off as GPL without any sources, noone in their right mind would accept that. Just because determining what consitutes source with art is harder you can't just start ignoring the license altogether.
Hm, I went through the results of that search query, but it appears it is missing some content; I uploaded a GPL-only song myself (http://opengameart.org/content/warm-up), but it doesn't find it. So now I'm doubting the numbers.
That said, of those 351 results, only 74 were in the music category. A few of them were just misplaced sound effects (which I would consider source), but the rest was all sourceless music. Luckily, it appears only a few submitters have submitted those songs, so I guess only a few people would have to be contacted.
I would be willing to spend some time to try to go through those 351 submissions though, and send some automated emails to contributors reminding them that GPL requires sources, and gently ask them to look at their submission and fix the license and/or provide those sources. But only if you are fine with that.
Apart from the GPL issue, I've also noticed that there are quite some submissing in the music category that are not music at all, but rather sound effects. How could I or others report or help clean up these misclassifications?
Debian is definitely NOT ok with missing sources. But mistakes like this slip in from time to time. I already filed a bugreport for SuperTuxKart, and hopefully we'll get this fixed. But if not, the package will be removed from the archives. I'll be sure to check out Wesnoth and FreeCiv as well.
I hope in the case of Wesnoth, if they still claim the music is GPL, and if it is indeed made by themselves, that they can be convinced to relicense it under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 or later (which might not have existed at the time they created the music), or another more suitable license. Or best, that they provide the source :)
@capbros:
I agree with everything you said, except I think that (L)GPL really can be a good fit for artwork. Having sources available (if applicable) would be a benefit to the community.
@mdwh:
I checked, Egoboo does not have the source. Also, Egoboo was in Debian a long time ago, but it was removed from the archive. https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=egoboo
I found out yesterday that SuperTuxKart also has a GPL'ed song in .ogg format that they don't have the source for. And in this case it is even more clear cut that the source is missing, because there is a .mod version of that song on modarchive.com.
@capbros:
The standard is not arbitrary, it is flexible. That's necessary because the GPL is not a law book that has answers for every situation. No license is, for that matter.
@MoikMellah:
The GPL is far from unenforcable. In fact, there have been various court cases about GPL infringement, all of them either were won by the opponents claiming the infringement, or settled out of court, usually resulting in the defendent providing the sources anyway and paying the opponents some amount of money. Of course, if you think it is too complicated or have other issues with it, noone is preventing anyone from choosing another license for their own works.
The main problem here is that there are GPL-licensed resources on OGA for which it can be reasonable claimed that the sources are missing. Even if you can succesfully claim OGA falls under some safe harbor law, then the problem still exists for those users who download those assets from OGA and want to use them in their games, because they in turn will have to redistribute those assets.
Lastly, people who license their stuff under the GPL and provide sources are not out there to annoy you, they just want to ensure the sources stay available, even if other people download them and change them. This has had a profound impact on the software world, and a lot of things you take for granted today would not have been possible without the GPL.
People who upload assets without source and put them under the GPL are also not out there to annoy you, they have either forgotten to upload the sources, don't realize that you need to provide the sources with the GPL, or they have just chosen the wrong license. I'm just asking for OGA to rectify the situation in this last case.
I haven't asked anyone for the source of heroism yet.
As for Debian: I couldn't find anything explicit about source for music in the Debian Policy Manual or DFSG about it. However, we do have the debian-legal mailing list where such things have been discussed. AFAICT, the common opinion is that it depends on how the music was made, but that in general it should be the source files the author used. So if you recorded a bunch of instrumenets and mixed them together, then the source is the individual tracks plus the configuration of the mixer. If it's a MIDI file and some soft-synths, then that MIDI file and the configuration of the synths. If it's a one-track recording of a band playing, then this is a bit less clear; although it is not very modifiable anymore, it can be argued that it's the only source available, there is nothing that is more preferrable.
In Debian, the so-called "ftp-masters" are the gatekeepers that decide whether to allow a new package into Debian or not. They do a thorough review of the package, and pay a lot of attention to the copyright details. If it is unclear or dubious that the license is properly followed, they will reject the package.
Thanks for the suggested alternative, I'll also bring it to the attention of the author of the game.
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