License question

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Nikita_Sadkov
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Re: License question

Post by Nikita_Sadkov »

Pentarctagon wrote:Likewise, the Ogg Vorbis format that Wesnoth distributes music as is, as far as I know, not the format most musicians would be working with when creating the song. As such, the argument is that the music Wesnoth comes with is violating the GPL.
It doesn't, because author has copyright over the work he releases, therefore he can release it under GPL without the source code. On the other hand, person modifying such work is ought to release source. So if you take midi music file, modify it, mix into ogg, then you cant distribute the ogg without midi source.

The real problem with GPLed music actually comes from samples. Most GPLed music uses non-free samples (coming from some commercial synth), and such GPL music is actually illegal, because GPL allows you to extract and reuse samples out of it. There are spectral editors like SpectaLayers, Isolate and Melodyne that can unmix/unsync audio. Freesound.org has a thread explaining that samples are very gray area and you can get sued any time.
Dave
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Re: License question

Post by Dave »

doofus-01 wrote:Sorry to be combative, but there is room for further clarification. Is there ever a good argument against transparency? You already have the income/expenses for Wesnoth, Inc. data, what is the cost to provide it?
I don't think I have anything to add to what has already been said, other than to say that after we resolve the current situation with the app store/revenue stream we will consider becoming more transparent going forward since there seems to be interest in it.
Nikita_Sadkov wrote: Anyway, I hope Dave got artist permission to relicense the artworks under -NC-ND, otherwise he could get sued or his game gets pulled out of stores, or somebody fills a DMCA to github.
I do believe the artists whose art is reused in Argentum Age have been made aware and have no problem with it. However, not clarifying this placeholder art as being GPL licensed was merely an oversight and I have already corrected it in the LICENSE file.

People sue each other over willful copyright violations, not over minor oversights.
“At Gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck.” -- Ian Fleming
Andrettin
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Re: License question

Post by Andrettin »

Dave wrote: I think artists generally prefer ND for art in the style Argentum Age uses, but I am happy to listen to both feedback of artists working on it as well as people who might want to reuse the art for one reason or another.
Regarding NC (rather than ND), there was a worrying ruling regarding it a while back, which made NC equal to "for private use only":
http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5377

Only in Germany, yes, but it's still worrying since courts in other countries could follow a similar line of thought.
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Nikita_Sadkov
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Re: License question

Post by Nikita_Sadkov »

Andrettin wrote:Regarding NC (rather than ND), there was a worrying ruling regarding it a while back, which made NC equal to "for private use only":
http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5377
Only in Germany, yes, but it's still worrying since courts in other countries could follow a similar line of thought.
Of course, germans, as usual, follow the law by letter, but in the end computing is all about letters and people want to minimize the interpretation, so laws regarding information have to be letter perfect.

Theoretically, any public use could be seen as commercial, because you use it to promote your project, which can in future be sold for money or the site hosting your project makes money of that (i.e. youtube). Github should be okay though, because uploader gives github separate license to host his work, but you cant upload -NC or -ND works by other people to github. So Dave licensing the work as -ND could be breaking github's ToS, which requires the right to fork (i.e. making a derivative).
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