It's almost a year that "I'm crawling around" this forum, but first because I was "rookie" and second because I didn't want to appear a flamer I've never touched this argument before. Nexuiz has IMO a serious license problem: the artistic content one. In every page of this forum you can see phase like this

Nexuiz is the only fps game released under GPL license in all its contents

or

If you want to release a model/texture for nexuiz, don't forget to include a gpl license

OK, I said, let's go to http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html and take a read of the license. The entire license describes ONLY CODE copyrighting and licensing, infact if you go to the FAQ herehttp://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLOtherThanSoftware, at the question "Can I use the GPL for something other than software?" the answer is

You can apply the GPL to any kind of work, as long as it is clear what constitutes the “source code” for the work. The GPL defines this as the preferred form of the work for making changes in it.
However, for manuals and textbooks, or more generally any sort of work that is meant to teach a subject, we recommend using the GFDL rather than the GPL.

So this could be read as "do whatever you do but release source code of your work". Admitting that "source CODE"is not so tied to artistic works, what's a source code for a graphic designer? If a create, for istance, a model in blender, source code could be the .blend file, but a blend file is a piece of software code (an output, to be honest) and if you go to (sorry for this long post but I wanted to be clear and impartial)
http://www.blender.org/education-help/faq/gpl-for-artists/for the question:"Can I license .blend files myself?"
the answer is

The output of Blender, in the form or .blend files, is considered program output, and the sole copyright of the user. The .blend file format only stores data definitions.

I think, and I'm not a loyer, that Nexuiz needs a more robust artistic license. I've take for you some links of very good artistic licenses that are the equivalent of GPL but for art
http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en Free Art License 1.3
http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meet-the-licensesCreative Commons license attribute by(the latter bottom). My favourite one
http://www.perlfoundation.org/artistic_license_2_0Perl Foundation artistic license, This license is a free software license, compatible with the GPL thanks to the relicensing option in section 4(c)(ii). I've some doubt about this license

What's wrong with GPL license, though?If I, for example, were a good and talented artist (it's not my case )that releases a new fantastic player model with its 400.000 hyper detailed tris in the original .blend file to the Nexuiz community, and (always thoerically) there were a very unhonest guy that sees that model, take a look a the GPL license and said" this model is mine, I want to sell it and no one can use it for free without paying me first".In a tribunal court this would be a serious problem because GPL doesn't protect artistic contents.

I've also created a poll to know your opinions. I apologize again for this very long post but I wanted to clarify this issue.

The problem is that the code interfaces with the content so that both are seen as ONE SINGLE ITEM - "the game Nexuiz". Nexuiz, actually, is ONE SINGLE WORK (with many authors). Thus, they must be under the same license, to comply with the terms of the GPL which the code is licensed as.

So there actually IS no license choice for content.

What's wrong with GPL license, though?If I, for example, were a good and talented artist (it's not my case )that releases a new fantastic player model with its 400.000 hyper detailed tris in the original .blend file to the Nexuiz community, and (always thoerically) there were a very unhonest guy that sees that model, take a look a the GPL license and said" this model is mine, I want to sell it and no one can use it for free without paying me first".In a tribunal court this would be a serious problem because GPL doesn't protect artistic contents.

Whatever a "tribunal" court is, it is bound by law. That means:

0. Even if you were to release the file under a MIT license (in other words, "do whatever you want, just don't blame me if it explodes because you were misusing it"), you stay the copyright holder and he cannot prevent YOU from using it any way you wish. You are NOT supposed to transfer copyright to Alientrap or the FSF, you JUST have to license it under the GPL! This also does not restrict you from also giving it away under ANOTHER license (dual licensing).

1. If your license is void, you HAVE NO LICENSE and regular copyright applies. So if the court would decide that the license is void, the use of that model would be illegal due to regular copyright.

2. If your license is valid, however, then it must be seen how the GPL has to be interpreted for this case. Some things however are blatantly clear in this case and prevent your evil guy from doing this:

This License applies to any program or other work which contains
a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed
under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below,
refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program"
means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law:
that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it,
either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another
language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in
the term "modification".)

So whenever the license says "Program", it DOES apply to your work.

You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program
except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt
otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is
void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License.

So, if the license does not allow it, he may not redistribute or whatever.

You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion
of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and
distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1
above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
...
b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any
part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third
parties under the terms of this License.

So, his derivative work MUST be covered by this license too! And whatever work he makes using the model you published is UNDER THE GPL TOO. This, especially, means, that anyone can LEGALLY copy and distribute the new work the evil guy made. He can have fun selling it then... ONCE

(source must be distributed...)
The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for
making modifications to it.

"Preferred form of the work for making modifications to it" is pretty clear even for a model - it's basically the .blend file, or whatever you used. Your evil guy would then have to distribute the .blend file too.


If you prefer using the Artistic License, go ahead, we'll just use it as GPL then... however, if you had READ the license and not just its title, you'd know it is much more bound to the notion of "program code" than the GPL is. In the GPL, only the terms refer to code, but the only requirement to the data covered by the GPL is that some sort of "source" exists. And this is clearly the case for a model.

Another quote from http://www.blender.org/education-help/f ... r-artists/

Games created in Blender (.blend files) are program output and therefore not covered by the GPL. You can consider them your property, and license or sell them freely.

I think this excerp from Wikipedia defines source code quite usefully for Nexuiz purposes (though this in itself is not "lawyer-proof" source):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_code

A computer program's source code is the collection of files needed to convert from human-readable form to some kind of computer-executable form.

toneddu2000 wrote:What's wrong with GPL license, though?If I, for example, were a good and talented artist (it's not my case )that releases a new fantastic player model with its 400.000 hyper detailed tris in the original .blend file to the Nexuiz community, and (always thoerically) there were a very unhonest guy that sees that model, take a look a the GPL license and said" this model is mine, I want to sell it and no one can use it for free without paying me first".In a tribunal court this would be a serious problem because GPL doesn't protect artistic contents.

I don't think this is in any way possible because:
1. The original author usually puts his/her name somewhere with the work, thus no one else could really claim false ownership.
2. If the license would be ruled void by court, wouldn't the standard copyright apply?
3. The GPL allows the work to be used for commersial purposes, so the artist already allowed to make money with it.
4. Even if someone would be able to make money from it, the original file still would be available for free with nexuiz.

EDIT: While I was writing this, DivVerent already answered it in a more elaborate way

The "Program", below,
refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program"
means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law:

It's too general.It could be everything or nothing, I'm pretty sure that the "evil guy" could remanage a texture and sell it without making a big effort!
Honestly I didn't know that Nexuiz used artistic works and code as a "all in one", but now I know and I'm not here to cause polemics!

(source must be distributed...)
The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for
making modifications to it.

"Preferred form of the work for making modifications to it" is pretty clear even for a model

I'm not so sure that is "pretty clear", but I could even agree with you

If you prefer using the Artistic License, go ahead, we'll just use it as GPL then

This sounds like"all words you've pronounced are stupid things so I turn back and continue along my way".
IMO this is not what a community game should be. First of all, for me, Nexuiz should be a crossroad of thoughs and opinions and not "this is the license, if you like it, good, otherwise there is the door!"
I'll continue to use GPL , but I'll also continue to think that is not the perfect choice.

however, if you had READ the license and not just its title, you'd know it is much more bound to the notion of "program code" than the GPL is.

Nooo, I've not even read the title, yesterday I was at the supermarket and near the watermelon boxes there was a GPL license, I took a glance and I said:"why don't write a" 100 lines long thread?!And even because I've not read the license, I've spent 6 hour of silly life to compare 3 different licenses. Only to obtain this answer.

toneddu2000 wrote:

The "Program", below,
refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program"
means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law:

It's too general.It could be everything or nothing, I'm pretty sure that the "evil guy" could remanage a texture and sell it without making a big effort!

He can SELL it, but everyone he sells it to can freely copy it, making the selling mostly pointless. This abuse BTW does happen, you can buy GIMP and OpenOffice DVDs on eBay for prices that are quite high

Honestly I didn't know that Nexuiz used artistic works and code as a "all in one", but now I know and I'm not here to cause polemics!

It's a single download, a single double click to start it, thus a single work.

If you prefer using the Artistic License, go ahead, we'll just use it as GPL then

This sounds like"all words you've pronounced are stupid things so I turn back and continue along my way".
IMO this is not what a community game should be. First of all, for me, Nexuiz should be a crossroad of thoughs and opinions and not "this is the license, if you like it, good, otherwise there is the door!"
I'll continue to use GPL , but I'll also continue to think that is not the perfect choice.

We CANNOT change the license even if we wanted to. We're bound to the GPL, due to 1. many of the original authors no longer reachable, 2. some code originating from Quake. If it were not for that, I'd be fine with it all being changed to a hypothetic "CC-BY-SA-SRC" (but the ShareAlike is really important, and SRC meaning that original source files must be provided). Actually, GPL and CC-BY-SA-SRC are absolutely equivalent.

There's no problem with Nexuiz including Public Domain content right?

divVerent wrote:The problem is that the code interfaces with the content so that both are seen as ONE SINGLE ITEM - "the game Nexuiz". Nexuiz, actually, is ONE SINGLE WORK (with many authors). Thus, they must be under the same license, to comply with the terms of the GPL which the code is licensed as.

So there actually IS no license choice for content.

That's not entirely true, it is very interpretive of what "program" constitutes, and the GPL is vague about it. There are many legal eagles who have insisted that the GPL can only actually be applied to program code, and there are those that believe it can be used to include artistic data, as well as that a game cannot combine the GPL with other licenses in the same package. The bottom line is, there are many examples of games released with the engine under the GPL, and the game data under another license.

The use of GPL in games is always a hot topic, especially in regards to this issue. Can it be seen as one single work? Sure. But it can also be argued otherwise, that the "program" is the game engine, and the rest of it is simple "data". Because of this, it's highly unlikely that the GPL would hold up in an actual court very well in regards to the issue, but let's face it, in this situation the only "court" we are talking about is the court of public opinion.

divVerent wrote:We CANNOT change the license even if we wanted to. We're bound to the GPL

I think that no one here wants to change GPL license for code, it's perfect! The point here is only if we could extend a more appropriate license for "artistic content", but the code would remain untouched.

divVerent wrote:1.many of the original authors no longer reachable

well, at least, old models would remain with GPL license and new models will become CC, I don't think it's a big deal

divVerent wrote:2. some code originating from Quake

Infact source software code would remain GPL

divVerent wrote:If it were not for that, I'd be fine with it all being changed to a hypothetic "CC-BY-SA-SRC" (but the ShareAlike is really important, and SRC meaning that original source files must be provided)

I completely agree with that. CC license should be compared to GPL for guide-lines and infact source code would be a must-have base concept.

divVerent wrote:Actually, GPL and CC-BY-SA-SRC are absolutely equivalent.

Infact!Is for this that I created this thread!My question was, if GPL and CC are equivalent for rights and permissions, but CC is more appropriate for art, why don't use CC for art and GPL for code?

Flying Steel wrote:There's no problem with Nexuiz including Public Domain content right?

As long as source code is provided, no problem.

Because there IS no CC-BY-SA-SRC, and GPL would not allow mixing with CC-BY-SA-SRC even if it existed (a new version of the GPL would then have to be made that allows it, or CC-BY-SA-SRC would need a clause to allow relicensing to GPL like the Artistic License does).

CC-BY-SA requires no source data to be provided, and thus creates useless uneditable works.

And still, it all comes down to legal safety. In case you ARE allowed to mix licenses like e.g. warsow does, then it stays just as legal to use the GPL for everything. In case you are NOT allowed, however, it's better to use GPL for everything. Whether it is allowed to mix licenses in such a way has not been decided in any court yet, so both views may be possible. However, think about this: if it WERE allowed to mix GPL code with non-GPL data, why wouldn't it be allowed to link GPL code against non-GPL libraries (and vice versa)? The library is just as dynamically loaded as the content. Yet still it is the common legal opinion that GPL code can NOT be linked against non-GPL libraries. The engine loads the data just like it loads its libraries (DLLs). Why should these be considered different, legally?

Also, nobody of Alientrap has the millions of dollars (or billions? Some MP3s apparently already count as millions of dollars) to pay damage compensation for copyright violation in case Bethesda (new owner of id software) sues us for GPL violation on the Quake 1 code, in case it is NOT legal to mix a GPL engine with non-GPL data.

So for Nexuiz, the policy is: as long as nobody in the team is actually HAVING that kind of money, and willing to spend it on a legal case against Bethesda (and pay in case we lose), we must stay GPL-everything.

divVerent wrote:Also, nobody of Alientrap has the millions of dollars (or billions? Some MP3s apparently already count as millions of dollars) to pay damage compensation for copyright violation in case Bethesda (new owner of id software) sues us for GPL violation on the Quake 1 code, in case it is NOT legal to mix a GPL engine with non-GPL data.

Why someone should pay a penny to Id or Bethesda or whatever?On the net there's a lot of games that use quake GPL license for CODE and other license (often proprietary)for media.
1 example? (font:wikipedia)
alien arena 2009 GNU GPL (code), Proprietary license (media)
war§ow GNU GPL (code), Proprietary license (media)
World of Padman GNU GPL (code), Proprietary license (media)

I don't think they'are worried that they can be sued by someone for committing no crime!
Code and media are separate things and are released under separate licenses.
But I think there's no problem about Nexuiz. If you're sure that actual GPL license can protect code and media, I'm fine. My question was only about the weak protection that GPL could give to artistic contents, but if we think of Nexuiz as a single program, maybe there's no problem.

I am sure the PROTECTION the GPL gives is quite strong enough, more likely too strong. Worst abuse case is selling GPL software for money, like GIMP sold as "image editing app like photoshop" and OpenOffice as "office suite like MS Office". GPL protects stronger than CC-BY-SA, and less strongly than CC-BY-NC-SA, basically.

As for the games you mentioned: who says Bethesda won't sue AA2009 or Warsow? There has been NO decision about this yet.

Maybe they are not worried about it. But that doesn't mean what they're doing is entirely legal. Fact is, nobody knows whether it is. And we don't want to be the first ones brought in court for it.

As for the GPL using the word "Program" for everything, this is explained at the top of the license. It is used as a word for whatever the license applies to. It is not required to be a "program". It's odd wording, nothing more. Same goes for other terms with a capital letter in the beginning. These are sort of variables and to be set to what you apply the license to.

divVerent wrote:As for the games you mentioned: who says Bethesda won't sue AA2009 or Warsow? There has been NO decision about this yet.

Maybe they are not worried about it. But that doesn't mean what they're doing is entirely legal. Fact is, nobody knows whether it is.

I can tell you that we are not even remotely worried about it. We don't believe it's illegal to begin with, but the very fact that you can see the vagueness of the issue in the GPL means that it would never stand in court anyway.

The difference between libraries and data is simply this: You can swap data, but not libraries. The libraries are "programs" in and of themselves as well, they are created directly by using a programming language. The game engine requires them to compile or run, but the data can be anything the end user wants provided it works with the engine.

In my mind, and most judges minds, the word "program" means "computer program", which means an executable binary created with a languge, not game art.

You can swap libraries just as fine too. Nothing prevents you from making your own library with libcurl's interface, for example.

And if you say the GPL would not stand in court anyway, this means regular copyright would apply, i.e. nobody would have ANY license to copy the stuff. That is the absolutely worst that can happen.

But in any case, it's too late. We cannot provide this content under this license, that content under that license. Even if the code and content license CAN be separate - which I don't think we should rely on - having every content under its own license would be a huge mess and basically mean nobody would want to distribute the game as it's too dangerous (who knows which file may have an evil license...).

New content however could easily come as GPL + CC-BY-SA dual licensed. No problem with that. In case the GPL is void then, CC-BY-SA still applies. And the GPL will be used in case loading the content does count as linking, otherwise the more permissive CC-BY-SA. But for this, of course, source files must be provided.

As for the word "program": a judge would rather follow the definition given in the very same license text:

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains
a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed
under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below,
refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program"
means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law:
that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it,
either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another
language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in
the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you".

Also, note the "or other work", and the subtle difference between "program" and "Program".

I think Nexuiz should continue to use only free content, regardless of what is allowed. Because it is a FREE game, everything about it should be totally free to use.

And seriously, what good free projects are out there whose credits you'd actually want to have your name in, but that are such asshats that they wouldn't credit you for using your work, simply because they weren't legally obligated to? Any serious successful project is going to want to give credit where credit is do.

"This License applies to any program or other work which contains
a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed
under the terms of this General Public License. "

I think this answers the question. id only owned the copyright of the source code that was used in Warsow, Alien Arena, WOP, not the game data. When the license discusses the "whole work", it really depends on how it is interpreted, whether or not a game engine as a "whole" also includes the game media. Since id only released the engine sources, and not the game media, this is really a moot point. They cannot sue for copyright infringement over something they do not hold the copyright of.

By definition, a game is a collection of "works". The engine, each model, each texture, is a work upon itself. Since the "Work" that was released by id was only the engine, the definition of "work" in this case would only apply to the engine, and not include the game data.

At this stage though, since Nexuiz defined the "work" as the entire game, including media, it is now impossible to change the license, without completely redoing all game media from scratch. So in all, again, a moot point here as well.

A unique combination of works in technically a work of its own, which permits lists & compilations to be valid for copyright.

A license that affects derivatives, therefore affects the license of the work as a whole.

Irritant wrote:Since id only released the engine sources, and not the game media, this is really a moot point. They cannot sue for copyright infringement over something they do not hold the copyright of.

Exactly that is wrong.

If you use a 20 lines function from a GPLed project, and put it in a big non-GPL program, you're still committing a copyright infringement. In this case, Bethesda would sue us for using the Quake code not according to the license it came with - and NOT over violations about the content.

TVR wrote:A unique combination of works in technically a work of its own

Exactly.

divVerent wrote:

Irritant wrote:Exactly that is wrong.

If you use a 20 lines function from a GPLed project, and put it in a big non-GPL program, you're still committing a copyright infringement. In this case, Bethesda would sue us for using the Quake code not according to the license it came with - and NOT over violations about the content.

Well of course, but that's not what we are talking about here. Warsow content is not part of the Quake code, and therefore not covered by the GPL, nor is it considered part of the "work" released under the GPL by id Software.

TVR wrote:A unique combination of works in technically a work of its own, which permits lists & compilations to be valid for copyright.

A license that affects derivatives, therefore affects the license of the work as a whole.

Again, factually correct, but game content is not derivative of the source code released by id Software. Again the "work" that was released under the GPL was the engine source code, not game content, and in the scope of the license, all that is covered.

It would be another issue entirely if id Software released the entire game under the GPL, but they did not. I hope that explains it a bit.

It is the complete game which is a derivative of both the engine and supporting data.

As the GNU GPL licenses cannot be redistributed in concert with non-compatible licenses, non-compatible data cannot be redistributed with the GNU GPL engine as one work.

TVR wrote:It is the complete game which is a derivative of both the engine and supporting data.

That is a *real* stretch, and no judge would ever rule in favor of something that interpretive.

TVR wrote:As the GNU GPL licenses cannot be redistributed in concert with non-compatible licenses, non-compatible data cannot be redistributed with the GNU GPL engine as one work.

Again, it all comes down to what the packager describes as the "work". Warsow, Alien Arena, WOP, and many others have distinctly separated their games into two separate "works". Like I already stated, they can do this because the original "work" that id Software released was just the game engine, and not game data. I cannot make this any more clear, and if you don't believe me, I think that you need to consult an actual lawyer(as I did back in 2004).

Now you named it: to be able to give it separate licenses, you must distinctly separate them. This is not done on Nexuiz. However it is not done on Warsow either, as you download one package and click one icon. This may not be 100% safe.

If it is two separate files to download, it is perfectly safe. In any other case, one must make it REALLY clear which part is under which license, so that even a non-technical user can find it easily. Having some artwork under one and some artwork under another license would be anything but clear. The very least requirement would be using separate svn trees and pk3 files for free and nonfree data. And no such thing should happen to Nexuiz.

The GPL works very well when applied to content, as it clearly describes what happens when applied to an 'other work'. That is no problem. The only real problem is that it requires source data (if applicable to the work in question), and its 'infectious' nature (so even compound works that are more than 'mere aggregation' must be covered by the same license). You say Warsow is such a compound work that it is mere aggregation - but this implies you can take the engine binary as is and build another game around it, and that the engine is not specifically developed for Warsow. I bet however that the engine does contain Warsow specific code, just like DP contains Nexuiz specific code.

Basically, it all boils down what risk you want to take. I will not take the - albeit low - risk of getting sued by Bethesda for copyright violation on the Q1 code. Someone else might want to though

Another thing is - Nexuiz should stay entirely free as in free software, so e.g. Linux distributions can distribute it freely (even on DVDs). Most distros do not take the risk of distributing software with unclear distribution terms on DVDs they sell... But we want exactly that option to be open for Nexuiz.

In yet other words: once Debian accepts CC-BY-SA as free, we might use it for content (first dual licensed with GPL, then once all content has the new license, it can be separated from the GPLed code and configs).

It perfectly valid to keep the media propietary. It's been stated many times by all kind of open source organizations, and open source programs of relevance as Firefox do keep their media under a propetary license. In fact, GPL was not designed to cover media, as it clearly shows in its mention of the word "source". Media rarely has such thing as a source, and Media doesn't hide any knowledge behind a barrier of a binary compilation.

@ jal

I think div0 pretty much laid down the law here. EVERYTHING in Nexuiz has to be GPL

jal wrote:It perfectly valid to keep the media propietary. It's been stated many times by all kind of open source organizations, and open source programs of relevance as Firefox do keep their media under a propetary license. In fact, GPL was not designed to cover media, as it clearly shows in its mention of the word "source". Media rarely has such thing as a source, and Media doesn't hide any knowledge behind a barrier of a binary compilation.

Firefox is not under GPL. Your argument is invalid[TM].

"Media doesn't hide any knowledge behind a barrier of a binary compilation" - as long as that is true, the GPL allows you to consider the same file both source and binary. Works the same way as applying the GPL to a perl script:

"The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it."

In case of the perl script, this is the script itself.

But, fact is, many media formats DO hide knowledge. E.g. rendered wav files for music hide the musical score and instrument recordings. Which however IS available to the original author in form of some data. Depending on how the wav file was created, it can be a printed musical score for "real recordings" (then the acceptable source code could e.g. be the project file for the music score if it was made on a computer, or scanned handwritten score if it was made on paper), and whatever project file your app uses for "synthetic recordings".

Whether zym files hide knowledge may be disputed, as they can be converted back to skeletal form. So IMHO they do not, and I could imagine a zym model editor (although pointless).

A typical media file type that often does NOT hide any knowledge are textures (in MANY, not ALL cases) and sound effects. But sometimes they do, and in that case source has to be provided.

But in our case, the situation is different: many media files in Nexuiz are under the GPL and their authors are no longer reachable. So they cannot be relicensed to the probably viable CC-BY-SA. And we really do not want to mix different licenses among media, as the confusion that would create would lead people to have reasonable grounds to assume everything is under GPL or under CC-BY-SA, and if that happens, a lawyer would also think everything is a "single item" and thus under one single license. So if we ever want to do a license transition to CC-BY-SA on the media - given that it is legal to do so - we should start requiring dual-licensed "GPL or CC-BY-SA" content for now, and do a CC-BY-SA switchover once all content is appropriately dual licensed (would probably take one, two years to replace all the stuff whose author cannot be reached any more or refuses to go CC-BY-SA).

Note: we cannot use a -NC license of the CC, because we DO want Nexuiz to be packaged (and sold) together with Linux distributions.

Note: CC-BY-SA is less restrictive than the GPL regarding commercial use because of the missing source code requirement, making it easier to rip off CC-BY-SA works.

So artists may have good reasons to accept GPL but not CC-BY-SA, but they also have good reasons to accept CC-BY-SA but not GPL (namely, because they want to hide their knowledge so others cannot learn from them).

And here comes the conclusion: as an OPEN SOURCE PROJECT, we should not encourage or even condone "hiding your knowledge from others". So, no license without source requirement. I'd be fine if there was a CC-BY-SA-SRC that would also require availability of the "source files" - whatever they are (e.g. music studio project files, musical score, whatever has been used) - to everyone who gets the "binary". But when you come think of it, CC-BY-SA-SRC would be exactly what the GPL is, just with different wording.

One thing is Nexuiz's particularities, and another any other game. Nexuiz has decided to use GPL licensed media (I mean, not releasing your media under GPL, but using media which already was GPL), and this makes it harder to sort out.

Still, it's a shame freegamedev forum lost their database, because they had a couple of nice threads on this topic. They even consulted lawers asociated to the GPL organization. The conclusion was pretty much that media of all kind of licenses could be mixed up as long as licensing and distribution is properly sorted out. The details for properly sorting out is something I don't remember, tho, and the threads aren't there anymore

In any case, my conscience is clear regarding Warsow licensing. We've always been very strict in what media do we allow ourselves to use and on its license. The mixing of source and media in the same distribution package is on the edge of the license, and not even the GPL organization can make their minds up about that point. They actually have encouraged this practice in several opinion articles dedicated to games, while at the same time condemn it at others. If anyone wants to try sueing us I'm not worried about the outcome.

divVerent wrote:And here comes the conclusion: as an OPEN SOURCE PROJECT, we should not encourage or even condone "hiding your knowledge from others". So, no license without source requirement.

Strongly agree with this. If another artist is going to build off of your work at some point, it is very helpful for said artist to have the source files.

Basically, I do think for the artistic media in Nexuiz, GPL is the right choice and should stay - HOWEVER: the wording of the GPL is not really good for artistic data.

I suggest that someone should write a "short version" of the GPL specifically for artwork that has a conversion clause (or obviously implied convertibility) to the "regular" GPL. I'd like to call that license CC-BY-SA-SRC It would basically consist of the following terms:

• You may redistribute this work verbatim or modifed, as long as the following conditions hold:
• Copyright notices may not be removed
• Changes to this work must be made clear in some way, e.g. in a text file where you describe what you changed
• You have to offer or provide the exact data you used to create and edit it (e.g. project files of music app) to anyone who received another version (e.g. ogg) of it by you. (cut offer details from the GPL)
• Everyone who receives the work, or a work derived from this work, or a combined work including this work, from you must receive it under this or an equivalent license. This means that if any legal reasons (e.g. trademark right) would prevent him from being allowed to redistribute it under one of these licenses, you are not allowed to either.
• The General Public License, version 2, is equivalent to this license.

[/url]