I care about people sharing when they use/modify assets, no question there. Maybe my interpretation of -BY and -BY-SA are different from everyone else because I've been reading the legal descriptions in addition to the human-readable descriptions.
Funny enough, there are typos in the -BY-SA legal code (nothing that stops it from being valid). The two licenses are literally the same legal code except -BY-SA has two extra paragraphics that deal with derivative works and that define the original author separate from later authors. -BY-SA doesn't protect anything any more than -BY, it only requires derivative works to maintain original author information along side the modifying authors info. It doesn't force people to release derivatives either, that's still at the modifying author's discression. It doesn't force any other conditions on other content either (meaning -BY-SA assets can be freely mixed with differently licensed assets that don't force the -BY-SA asset to change). GPL tries to force an entire project to be relicensed if you use a GPL library or GPL code but it doesn't apply equally to graphics or sound because they aren't executable logic.
It's entirely up to the authors of the content whether they want to waive the anti-DRM clause. The significant difference between releasing all CC assets and targetting -BY is anything you list -BY-SA isn't useful in systems that use DRM. The attribution part of -BY and -BY-SA still applies whether DRM is applied or not so people are still going to know who made the assets.
I agree with you Julius. OGA doesn't try to bend over backwards to accomodate random non-sense or maximize profile of it's users. I can appreciate the interest of the community to create free game assets as their main goal, not just to make money. I'm saying those who want to push their assets to the widest possible list of platforms should be encouraged and should understand the restrictions currently imposed. I also think everyone on OGA should realize the list of all licenses available contain an anti-DRM clause except CC0. That clause excludes everything listed (non-CC0) from being used on certain high-profile distribution platforms such as iOS, possibly on Steam, and possibly even Android since the last two support DRM but don't enforce it.
I would like to agree with you but I don't see my viewpoint as short sighted or restricting. When you can sustain a large stream of interested and legitimate traffic you also generate more business. The more potential customers you can show an asset (game devs) the more likely you will make a commission for an artist; that's a basic principle of how business works. More potential customers = more sales. If you have no customers you will have no sales. I'm trying to drive home the importance of exposure here, not the importance of strictly enforcing open source ideas. While I heavily advocate open source *everything* I also like to receive a paycheck and take care of my family. I don't do that unless I make money. Some artists would like to produce game assets full-time but don't have enough customers to make a full-time job out of it. If they could support potential customers from the iOS market they might be able to earn a reasonable living at making free and opensource game content (like Kenney).
If you stop people from the iOS market from using free assets you prevent people from sharing in that market. There is no minimum wage usage here; Open Game Art gives away free game assets. I really would like to see how you suggest people using free game assets generates a profit outside of commissions.
When I refer to expanding our market I'm talking about potential clients available for artist and game devs who want to use assets on OGA. That's the market that OGA captures. Commissions are generated when someone sees great assets from OGA and comes looking for the original author because they want more. Game devs come looking for more assets when they see something that gives them ideas (and usually they will be the ones paying for creative services). The more people with money that are interested and who know about OGA, the bigger the userbase. The best part about this is our open community will see more individual success.
This might seem like a strange place to see a reference to John Forbes Nash but the nash equilibrium theory really does have some weight here. If only a few of us allow the anti-DRM clause then it doesn't bring a lot of success. If the majority of major contributors support the idea the whole site's userbase will benefit; if everyone works together we all get success. The same is true if we don't all work together.
Julious, I cannot agree with you more. I intentionally buy non-Apple products and avoid anything involving Apple for the very reasons you mention. Still, the point of open game art... as in the title for this website... is to deliver free art to game developers as easily and as accessibly as possible. If you intentionally restrict one of the bigest and most profitable platforms available you stagnate the userbase and hide our cause. It's true that someone can take art from OGA and turn a quick and easy profit from it on the iOS app store but anyone can do that in any other store too... it's not exclusive to Apple. The only thing we do when we exclude Apple from the playing field is shoot ourselves in the foot. I can take all the LPC assets on OGA and release a closed-source game for facebook, kongregate, newgrounds, all platforms that allow flash games, xbox, nintendo systems (wii, wii u, 3ds), playstation systems (ps3, ps4, vita), windows, linux, and android. All of those systems have closed source restrictions but all of them can use assets from OGA because none of them force DRM on their apps. If we allow a blanket exception to the CC and GPL for Apple apps we aren't just doing it out of pride; we're expanding our market into the biggest and widest possible list of users around the world. I am happy to declare that Apple is evil and I'd love to see all of them die of maleria but they have a platform that cannot be beat in terms of available users and shear market penetration.
It's not a "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" mentality, it's a "we need to be mainstream so all possible indie game developers around the world realize we exist" mentality.
That tells the player a lot of information but it's useful information. If it were me I'd keep that feature. Maybe I'd give the imps 3 distinct animations to represent those 3 states so the player can tell what state they're in without the thought bubble but it's a good idea.
I know this sounds one-sided to present an argument like this but it's crucial. The game devs are the ones using OGA content, not the people producing the content. If the content isn't usable in a closed-source environment like iOS and Steam it's not available for anyone outside the open-source community. The entire idea behind waving the anti-DRM clause in CC and GPL is to sanitize our free assets so major developers can use them. Wouldn't you be proud if you made something awesome and you saw it show up in the #1 game on facebook? I know you'd show it to all your friends. Right now that's not possible because nearly nobody knows OGA exists outside of game devs. If flappy birds were made with graphics from OGA wouldn't that be awesome? I can sure as hell tell you we'd see more traffic and more interest in the open community if a major title like that used assets from OGA. Right now nobody developing for iOS can use stuff from OGA because of the anti-DRM clause.
Help everyone get more exposure and be more visible by allowing more people to use your stuff. Please waive the anti-DRM clause for all CC and GPL licenses so your assets can be used by the widest audience possible.
I agree with you about allowing DRM in assets licensed under CC-BY-SA being like a tivoization but with a caviot; CC licenses (besides CC0) all require attribution. Most assets listed on OGA require a link back to at least the OGA homepage. If someone wanted to use the original content that was listed on OGA in an app that uses DRM they could easily find it in original format on OGA without problem within a few minutes of searching as long as the game (or application) in question gave proper attribution. The only reason I would suggest circumventing the anti-DRM clause is because game devs see a wall of legal non-sense and they become discouraged quickly at seeing many restrictions on how they can use assets that use anything other than CC0 and CC-BY. If we assure devs that they can use our assets, even in situations where a CC license would be restrictive, we allow the creative community to get some free advertising and we allow our devs freedom to publish apps to the widest possible market without questioning legalities. I'm 100% against the idea of DRM but if allowing assets to be used in DRM software means we can make people aware of OGA and help them realize free game assets can be found here we win.
This site is entirely about helping the game community with openly licensed content; the more aventues you allow people to use content the more widely it'll be distributed and recognized. One day I'd love to see the #1 app in any category in the iOS app store use nothing but OGA assets because it would help the open community thrive. If we help devs use free and open assets in environments that normally prohibit those types of assets it'll spread the word that communities like ours exist and help make more open-source software.
Not to argue with you bart, but allowing someone to ignore the DRM clause in CC-BY-SA doesn't circumvent the share alike requirement. CC-BY-SA doesn't infect an entire project the same way GPL does, it only applies to the asset in question. If someone refuses to share CC-BY-SA derivatives under the same license they're not following the license terms. The significant difference between CC-BY and CC-BY-SA is the share alike requirement (and only if they make those changes available), not the DRM clause.
It's my opinion but I'll share it here; anything that makes existing CC-BY-SA assets more accessible helps. CC-BY-SA 3.0 and earlier are pretty aweful licenses. They mean well but weren't implimented well. If we can reduce some of the headache of developers by removing the concern over DRM it could make the difference between something being used or not.
Thanks adrix89.
I care about people sharing when they use/modify assets, no question there. Maybe my interpretation of -BY and -BY-SA are different from everyone else because I've been reading the legal descriptions in addition to the human-readable descriptions.
Funny enough, there are typos in the -BY-SA legal code (nothing that stops it from being valid). The two licenses are literally the same legal code except -BY-SA has two extra paragraphics that deal with derivative works and that define the original author separate from later authors. -BY-SA doesn't protect anything any more than -BY, it only requires derivative works to maintain original author information along side the modifying authors info. It doesn't force people to release derivatives either, that's still at the modifying author's discression. It doesn't force any other conditions on other content either (meaning -BY-SA assets can be freely mixed with differently licensed assets that don't force the -BY-SA asset to change). GPL tries to force an entire project to be relicensed if you use a GPL library or GPL code but it doesn't apply equally to graphics or sound because they aren't executable logic.
It's entirely up to the authors of the content whether they want to waive the anti-DRM clause. The significant difference between releasing all CC assets and targetting -BY is anything you list -BY-SA isn't useful in systems that use DRM. The attribution part of -BY and -BY-SA still applies whether DRM is applied or not so people are still going to know who made the assets.
I agree with you Julius. OGA doesn't try to bend over backwards to accomodate random non-sense or maximize profile of it's users. I can appreciate the interest of the community to create free game assets as their main goal, not just to make money. I'm saying those who want to push their assets to the widest possible list of platforms should be encouraged and should understand the restrictions currently imposed. I also think everyone on OGA should realize the list of all licenses available contain an anti-DRM clause except CC0. That clause excludes everything listed (non-CC0) from being used on certain high-profile distribution platforms such as iOS, possibly on Steam, and possibly even Android since the last two support DRM but don't enforce it.
@Julius
I would like to agree with you but I don't see my viewpoint as short sighted or restricting. When you can sustain a large stream of interested and legitimate traffic you also generate more business. The more potential customers you can show an asset (game devs) the more likely you will make a commission for an artist; that's a basic principle of how business works. More potential customers = more sales. If you have no customers you will have no sales. I'm trying to drive home the importance of exposure here, not the importance of strictly enforcing open source ideas. While I heavily advocate open source *everything* I also like to receive a paycheck and take care of my family. I don't do that unless I make money. Some artists would like to produce game assets full-time but don't have enough customers to make a full-time job out of it. If they could support potential customers from the iOS market they might be able to earn a reasonable living at making free and opensource game content (like Kenney).
If you stop people from the iOS market from using free assets you prevent people from sharing in that market. There is no minimum wage usage here; Open Game Art gives away free game assets. I really would like to see how you suggest people using free game assets generates a profit outside of commissions.
When I refer to expanding our market I'm talking about potential clients available for artist and game devs who want to use assets on OGA. That's the market that OGA captures. Commissions are generated when someone sees great assets from OGA and comes looking for the original author because they want more. Game devs come looking for more assets when they see something that gives them ideas (and usually they will be the ones paying for creative services). The more people with money that are interested and who know about OGA, the bigger the userbase. The best part about this is our open community will see more individual success.
This might seem like a strange place to see a reference to John Forbes Nash but the nash equilibrium theory really does have some weight here. If only a few of us allow the anti-DRM clause then it doesn't bring a lot of success. If the majority of major contributors support the idea the whole site's userbase will benefit; if everyone works together we all get success. The same is true if we don't all work together.
Julious, I cannot agree with you more. I intentionally buy non-Apple products and avoid anything involving Apple for the very reasons you mention. Still, the point of open game art... as in the title for this website... is to deliver free art to game developers as easily and as accessibly as possible. If you intentionally restrict one of the bigest and most profitable platforms available you stagnate the userbase and hide our cause. It's true that someone can take art from OGA and turn a quick and easy profit from it on the iOS app store but anyone can do that in any other store too... it's not exclusive to Apple. The only thing we do when we exclude Apple from the playing field is shoot ourselves in the foot. I can take all the LPC assets on OGA and release a closed-source game for facebook, kongregate, newgrounds, all platforms that allow flash games, xbox, nintendo systems (wii, wii u, 3ds), playstation systems (ps3, ps4, vita), windows, linux, and android. All of those systems have closed source restrictions but all of them can use assets from OGA because none of them force DRM on their apps. If we allow a blanket exception to the CC and GPL for Apple apps we aren't just doing it out of pride; we're expanding our market into the biggest and widest possible list of users around the world. I am happy to declare that Apple is evil and I'd love to see all of them die of maleria but they have a platform that cannot be beat in terms of available users and shear market penetration.
It's not a "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" mentality, it's a "we need to be mainstream so all possible indie game developers around the world realize we exist" mentality.
That tells the player a lot of information but it's useful information. If it were me I'd keep that feature. Maybe I'd give the imps 3 distinct animations to represent those 3 states so the player can tell what state they're in without the thought bubble but it's a good idea.
I know this sounds one-sided to present an argument like this but it's crucial. The game devs are the ones using OGA content, not the people producing the content. If the content isn't usable in a closed-source environment like iOS and Steam it's not available for anyone outside the open-source community. The entire idea behind waving the anti-DRM clause in CC and GPL is to sanitize our free assets so major developers can use them. Wouldn't you be proud if you made something awesome and you saw it show up in the #1 game on facebook? I know you'd show it to all your friends. Right now that's not possible because nearly nobody knows OGA exists outside of game devs. If flappy birds were made with graphics from OGA wouldn't that be awesome? I can sure as hell tell you we'd see more traffic and more interest in the open community if a major title like that used assets from OGA. Right now nobody developing for iOS can use stuff from OGA because of the anti-DRM clause.
Help everyone get more exposure and be more visible by allowing more people to use your stuff. Please waive the anti-DRM clause for all CC and GPL licenses so your assets can be used by the widest audience possible.
@Julius
I agree with you about allowing DRM in assets licensed under CC-BY-SA being like a tivoization but with a caviot; CC licenses (besides CC0) all require attribution. Most assets listed on OGA require a link back to at least the OGA homepage. If someone wanted to use the original content that was listed on OGA in an app that uses DRM they could easily find it in original format on OGA without problem within a few minutes of searching as long as the game (or application) in question gave proper attribution. The only reason I would suggest circumventing the anti-DRM clause is because game devs see a wall of legal non-sense and they become discouraged quickly at seeing many restrictions on how they can use assets that use anything other than CC0 and CC-BY. If we assure devs that they can use our assets, even in situations where a CC license would be restrictive, we allow the creative community to get some free advertising and we allow our devs freedom to publish apps to the widest possible market without questioning legalities. I'm 100% against the idea of DRM but if allowing assets to be used in DRM software means we can make people aware of OGA and help them realize free game assets can be found here we win.
This site is entirely about helping the game community with openly licensed content; the more aventues you allow people to use content the more widely it'll be distributed and recognized. One day I'd love to see the #1 app in any category in the iOS app store use nothing but OGA assets because it would help the open community thrive. If we help devs use free and open assets in environments that normally prohibit those types of assets it'll spread the word that communities like ours exist and help make more open-source software.
Not to argue with you bart, but allowing someone to ignore the DRM clause in CC-BY-SA doesn't circumvent the share alike requirement. CC-BY-SA doesn't infect an entire project the same way GPL does, it only applies to the asset in question. If someone refuses to share CC-BY-SA derivatives under the same license they're not following the license terms. The significant difference between CC-BY and CC-BY-SA is the share alike requirement (and only if they make those changes available), not the DRM clause.
It's my opinion but I'll share it here; anything that makes existing CC-BY-SA assets more accessible helps. CC-BY-SA 3.0 and earlier are pretty aweful licenses. They mean well but weren't implimented well. If we can reduce some of the headache of developers by removing the concern over DRM it could make the difference between something being used or not.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
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