Licenses

[zoot]

Have much care been taken with regards to tracking the copyrights of textures and the like? I mean, it would be sad to see the game industry succeed in shutting down 0 A.D. over some legal technicality, wouldn't it? (I could totally see EA or Activision Blizzard trying something like that.)

In this thread, azayrahmad has used some images from Wikipedia, which I applaud him for, because they look great. But this means, to respect the terms of Wikipedia's license, the author of the image has to be properly credited somewhere in the game. To my knowledge, no such "somewhere" currently exists (there's contributors.txt, but that seems to be for people who have contributed personally on this site).

[fcxSanya]

To my knowledge, no such "somewhere" currently exists (there's contributors.txt, but that seems to be for people who have contributed personally on this site).

art/LICENSE.txt sounds like appropriate place for such things, isn't it?

[zoot]

art/LICENSE.txt sounds like appropriate place for such things, isn't it?

I agree. (Perhaps the first line should be tweaked by adding something like "unless otherwise stated"?)

Have someone kept track of the exact ownership of all textures currently distributed with the game, though? Are they all custom made or from CGTextures up until this point?

Edited August 11, 2012 by zoot

[gudo]

Hmmm... Well, I know we pulled some textures from [http://woxys.deviantart.com/gallery/]Woxys. See changeset 10877

Edited August 11, 2012 by gudo

[zoot]

Hmmm... Well, I know we pulled some textures from Woxy. See changeset 10877

Thanks for the tip! Do you or anyone else know where the source picture(s) is and it came about to be used? I can't seem to find any in his galery that look similar...

[gudo]

Sorry, I forgot an "s." This is the proper Woxys. (edited in the original post)

[zoot]

Sorry, I forgot an "s." This is the proper Woxys. (edited in the original post)

Thanks. I can't identify the exact image used, but judging from his other wolf pictures, they do not seem freely licensed at all:

This photo belongs to me and I can very easily prove, that it was me, who took this shot. So please, respect my copyright if you want to use my work, ask me first to gain my permission, please! Thank you

[Pureon]

Thanks. I can't identify the exact image used, but judging from his other wolf pictures, they do not seem freely licensed at all:

Guys with regards to that image, I personally contacted the photographer through deviantart and received full approval for that texture to be released with 0 A.D. in accordance with our CC-BY-SA license - I supplied screenshots of the units (with helmets) to the photographer and after getting further approval purposefully mentioned them in the commit. So yeah, that's one texture you guys don't need to freak out about

[zoot]

Guys with regards to that image, I personally contacted the photographer through deviantart and received full approval for that texture to be released with 0 A.D. in accordance with our CC-BY-SA license - I supplied screenshots of the units (with helmets) to the photographer and after getting further approval purposefully mentioned them in the commit. So yeah, that's one texture you guys don't need to freak out about

Good to hear. Problem is that you probably aren't the one who will be held liable. What if Wijitmaker (who is listed as owner of wildfiregames.com) or someone else who can be construed as a distributor of 0 A.D. is hauled into court? Will the judge accept a commit message or a forum post from you as evidence? I personally doubt it.

IMO, legal issues is never something that should be treated lightly - especially when you have modmakers and the like who also depend on the content.

[Deiz]

It's a case of being 'good enough', I think. There isn't much more that can reasonably be done, unless you consider getting licensing grants signed and notarized for every third-party piece of art to be reasonable.

The worst-case, I suspect, is needing to pull the affected releases and put in a placeholder. I've seen it happen to a few projects that inadvertently included non-free material, and it wasn't terribly painful.

[gudo]

I think we should just make an additional .txt file with a list of all the 3rd party art, their author, and the source. See:

The following files are used with permission from their respective authors.
======
Files:	textures/skins/props/helmet/rome_wolfskin_a.png
	textures/skins/props/helmet/rome_wolfskin_b.png
	textures/skins/props/helmet/rome_wolfskin_c.png

Author:	Woxys. See http://woxys.deviantart.com

Source:	[URL of the orignial files]
======
Files:	 textures/structures/nifty_new_hele_texture

Author: A wiki contributor

Source: www.wikipedia.org/hele_stuff

Eh, the code thing doesn't look too nice. I'll submit a patch.... Because overkill!

[EDIT] How do you attach files now? I can't seem to find it

Edited August 12, 2012 by gudo

[fcxSanya]

I think we should just make an additional .txt file with a list of all the 3rd party art, their author, and the source. See:

Sounds good to me.

[EDIT] How do you attach files now? I can't seem to find it

Click "More Reply Options" to see the "Attach Files" dialog.

[zoot]

It's a case of being 'good enough', I think. There isn't much more that can reasonably be done, unless you consider getting licensing grants signed and notarized for every third-party piece of art to be reasonable.

The worst-case, I suspect, is needing to pull the affected releases and put in a placeholder. I've seen it happen to a few projects that inadvertently included non-free material, and it wasn't terribly painful.

"Good enough to pass off" won't impress a judge when push comes to shove. It's quite like developing software - you are expected to do everything you can to make sure everything works alright or you'll be put down as acting in bad faith.

IMO, the best approach would be to contact an organization like Software Freedom Law Center and ask if they can offer any advice. Since 0 A.D. is fairly high-profile as far as free software games go, there's a good chance they will help.

[majapahit]

Btw, what exactly legal regulations are being used to cope with this matter?

Cos rules in one part of the world can't just be applied to other parts of the world.

[myconid]

Have much care been taken with regards to tracking the copyrights of textures and the like? I mean, it would be sad to see the game industry succeed in shutting down 0 A.D. over some legal technicality, wouldn't it? (I could totally see EA or Activision Blizzard trying something like that.)

Those companies are law firms with game dev departments. If they want to shut us down, they don't need a legal technicality, they can just sue with a completely random accusation, take us offline and wait until the project is dead and drowning in legal fees. It's what today's law was designed to do, unfortunately, and there's little we can do to prepare for that possibility.

However, properly crediting people for their work is a completely different topic. The texture licensing terms in particular are rather vague. IANAL, but these are my thoughts (I think most of this is obvious/common sense):

1. Even CC-BY/-SA needs attribution (hence the BY). If textures were obtained from other FOSS projects or from DeviantArt, we need to attribute them.
   
2. Textures that are used with permission should be marked as such. The project should keep a copy of any emails exchanged, in case the team member retires and they get lost.
   
3. Related to #2, there needs to be a clear distinction between textures that are under an open license and those under the CGTextures license, in case there are other projects that want to reuse 0ad's textures.
   
4. Generally-speaking, photographs/literal copies of public domain works that are not transformative do not get a new copyright. This may depend on regional laws.
   
5. We might want to pick a country and stick to that country's law. Lots of people here aren't from the US (including me), but US law has fair use, and the EFF is based in the US. AFAIK, US law is also more friendly than European law regarding point #4. Then again, a ridiculous number of trolls are active in the US...
   

[zoot]

Those companies are law firms with game dev departments. If they want to shut us down, they don't need a legal technicality, they can just sue with a completely random accusation, take us offline and wait until the project is dead and drowning in legal fees. It's what today's law was designed to do, unfortunately, and there's little we can do to prepare for that possibility.

I honestly think the project would stand a chance if it allied itself with SFLC, EFF and the like. Those orgs get a kick out of trouncing the corporate bully

[Jeru]

We might want to pick a country and stick to that country's law. Lots of people here aren't from the US (including me), but US law has fair use, and the EFF is based in the US. AFAIK, US law is also more friendly than European law regarding point #4. Then again, a ridiculous number of trolls are active in the US...

I remember some members of the Wikimedia community were talking about moving the Wikimedia servers out of the U.S. in the wake of the SOPA/PIPA bills to a "more free" country, but they reasoned that the legal situation in the U.S. is actually quite convinient for free culture.

In the worst case, if someone says "you used a large deal of my textures" then development can continue as we replace some textures. I remind you that the codebase, the models, the music etc. are all original works.

[zoot]

In the worst case, if someone says "you used a large deal of my textures" then development can continue as we replace some textures.

That isn't the worst case at all. The worst case is that the game goes gold, becomes a huge success and is downloaded in 10 million copies - and then one or more copyright holders sue for the lost income which they happen to value at tens of millions of dollars. That's how lawyers work, sadly.

[fabio]

It looks textures from CGTextures are not compatible with 0 A.D.. See their licence and FAQ, some relevants copied here:

May I use your textures to make a (commercial) computer game?

Yes--with the exception of Open-Source projects. See below.

I have used some of the textures to create a map for a computer game. May I distribute this map?

Yes, provided the textures are used in the map. In that case, you are allowed to bundle them and distribute them as a package. Please add the following text to the documentation of the map:

"One or more textures on this map have been created with images from CGTextures.com. These images may not be redistributed by default. Please visit www.cgtextures.com for more information."

Do these textures fall under an Open-Source license?

No. These textures fall under the CGTextures License.

May I use these textures in my Open Source (Creative Commons, GPL, etc) project?

No. These textures may not be used in Open-Source projects. The licenses are not compatible. Almost all Open-Source licenses allow redistribution of the materials, and redistribution is not allowed for these textures.

[zoot]

It looks textures from CGTextures are not compatible with 0 A.D.. See their licence and FAQ, some relevants copied here:

There is some form of arrangement with CGTextures, according to the file fcxSanya linked to:

Some of the files in the "textures/" directory are derived from materials provided by CGTextures (http://www.cgtextures.com/). The original materials are the property of CGTextures or its contributors. Special permission has been granted by CGTextures to distribute these derived textures as CC-BY-SA. (This has no effect on the standard licensing of CGTextures materials, or on any other work derived from them.)

All CGTextures materials have been altered from their original form. To access original super-high resolution CGTextures materials, please visit http://www.cgtextures.com/ .

[Jeru]

What zoot said.

[azayrahmad]

Hello guys.

I've been reading this thread, but I'm sorry I don't understand most of it . However, I do know that there is such issue as copyright law. I have all the sources of every image I use documented. I have some question, though, regarding Attribution

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/

Some of the image I use have this kind of license with it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Model_temple_of_Aphaia_Glyptothek_Munich.jpg

Should I contact the author personally?

[myconid]

Should I contact the author personally?

You don't need to. From the first link you posted.

You are free:

to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work

to Remix — to adapt the work

to make commercial use of the work

Under the following conditions:

Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

In other words, you can use it any way you like, BUT you need to credit the author in the LICENSE.TXT file.

You only need to contact the author if the image is under "all rights reserved" copyright. Not when it's in the public domain or CC licensed.

The second image is CC-BY-SA. The "sharealike" part means you need to release any modifications under the same license, which I believe is the case with 0ad's art assets.

[azayrahmad]

Attribution – You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

It's just that I didn't find the author explaining the 'manner' of attribution anywhere...

[zoot]

Hello guys.

I've been reading this thread, but I'm sorry I don't understand most of it . However, I do know that there is such issue as copyright law. I have all the sources of every image I use documented. I have some question, though, regarding Attribution

http://creativecommo...icenses/by/2.5/

We use CC-BY-SA 3.0. I am not sure whether it is compatible with CC-BY-SA 2.5. Worth investigating, since there's probably plenty of good content under the latter.

Some of the image I use have this kind of license with it

http://www.flickr.co...cho/2754552780/

This one seems to use CC-BY-SA 2.0. Same as the above - we need to find out whether it is compatible.

http://en.wikipedia....thek_Munich.jpg

This uses CC-BY-SA 3.0, so this should be fine as long as we attribute the author properly somewhere in the game.

Should I contact the author personally?

This may be necessary if the licenses are incompatible. For now, the best thing you can do is to 1) make sure you keep track of the source for all materials you use, 2) make sure you post that info somewhere 'safe' on this site, so it isn't lost if you retire from the project one day.

In the end, the team needs to come up with a process and guidance on how to deal with this.