Re: [tsc-devel] Signing-off commits on legal questions

Quintus | Mon, 02 Feb 2015 22:53:34 UTC

Chris Jacobsen <…9@y…> writes:
> I would have assumed Bugsbane's graphics fall under the old, default
> SMC license, but I may have been making the mistake of applying the
> forum rules for secretmaryo.org when these were submitted through
> github.

You shouldn’t do that -- forget about the old SMC contribution license
alltogether. Apart from its confusing wording, it is not referenced from
any of our pages as the current license in any way.

The problem with GitHub contributions that are not covered by the GPL is
as follows. While the GPL only allows you to publish modifications if
you license them as GPL, the graphics we have are — at least in my
interpretation — not part of a combined work under GPL license. That is,
they constitute works of their own. If Bugsbane or anyone else now forks
the repository, the code is forcibly GPL, and any modifications he makes
to the code would be GPL. However, the graphics are unaffected by
that. Even more, if he _creates_ a graphic from scratch, he gains the
sole and exclusive rights on that new graphic. On our forums, you have
to actively click “I accept the forum rules” when you register, and the
forum rules include a clause that says you license anything you post as
CC-BY 4.0. Thus we are safe if somebody submits through the forum. On
GitHub, there’s no such clause. GitHub has its own Terms Of Service, but
they explicitely say that GitHub does not make any claims or even
assumptions on the licensing of the contents you post on GitHub. This
means that for any content that is not based on our GPL’ed codebase we
receive through GitHub, we have to ask for whether we are allowed to use
it. Best if authors state it’s CC-BY 4.0.

Luiji has correctly spotted that we do not have such a statement from
Bugsbane. Strictly speaking, he’s correct with that, and thus including
or even worse modifying Bugsbane’s graphics constitutes a copyright
infringement. What I can argue against this is that the graphics
Bugsbane created are obviously meant for inclusion into the game,
because 1) the entire repository is a fork of it, 2) he contributed a
great number of graphics already and 3) he already properly contributed
the PNGs, and exlcuding the SVGs would be a contradictory statement as
it wouldn’t benefit the very same project he wanted to benefit by
supplying the PNGs. Therefore, I draw from the circumstances that we
have a right to use the graphics in the game, while, as Luiji correctly
states, probably nobody else has (→ this is a “special” license tag in
our terms). However, I claim that we also have the right to create
adaptions from the graphics he contributed. The reasons are basically
the same as above, with the additional one that giving the graphics as
an unmodifyable entity to the game contradicts the development process
Bugsbane was very well aware of as he was even part of the team for some
time.

Of course, apart from a statement from Bugsbane himself there can’t be
absolute safety in this regard.

> Quintus - do you think maybe these graphics need to be moved
> to an exclusive license (and by extension the derivative stone
> graphics)?

I think so, yes. And that’s very bad. I want to avoid this nasty
“special” license tag as much as possible, because it gives great
headache to distributors. Ideally, we have a uniformly licensed
collection of graphics (and other assets). My goal is to have the code
GPLv3 (is already) and all the assets under CC-BY 4.0. However, that’s
some way to go. There’s Johan’s song already tagged as “special”, but as
that is the _title_ theme, I was willing to make an exception to that
rule so that other games are not allowed to use that one. For basically
all other assets, there’s no justification to have them licensed in such
an awkward way.

> It does serve as a challenge to us. We should not push
> graphics changes to github if they do not have SVG's. We need to ask
> the author for the SVG's immediately.

That’s a good rule for the future. No inclusion without the SVGs under a
usable license. That was how it was with the old SMC anyway, so it can’t
be too hard to get this enforced.

Valete,
Quintus

-- 
Blog: http://www.quintilianus.eu

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