Re: Fw: [tsc-devel] Signing-off commits on legal questions
Quintus |
Thu, 05 Feb 2015 18:01:50 UTC
Chris Jacobsen <…9@y…> writes:
> For my understanding, if an artist learns git and uploads his files to
> github, without specifyng a license, does it default to the exclusive
> "special" license?
Urgh. Gotcha. You are right on this. If the circumstances wouldn’t be so
evidently clear it would even be the default “all rights reserved”, but
it would be nonsense to assume someone uploaded to the repository
without wanting it to be used. And as far as I am concerned I do think
this also allowed adaptions as I explained earlier.
We should probably ask people who want Git access to confirm any assets
they upload are under CC-BY 4.0. Well, next time we will do
better.
> In this case, even the PNG's by Bugsbane are
> "special". Otherwise we're just dealing with an issue for the fruit
> SVG's he didn't upload.
See above. You are correct with this.
> I just checked settings files for these items:* The title screen logo does not have a license specified
> * The question block replacements do not have a license specified* The spin block replacements do not have a license specified
> * The ground_3 image has no license specified* The coin hud image has no license specified* The jewel graphics do not have a license specified
> * The power up replacements (fruit) do not have a license specified
Which even more proves we need a practical solution to the problem until
he shows up again.
> * By extension, my stone fruit graphics would inherit any such
> problems (from the SVG license)
This is a bit different as I tried to explain. Licenses are not
“inherited” unless an author makes this a condition of giving you the
permission to create an adaption. At least to my understanding. Don’t
nail me on it, I have to look it up, but given the GPL and similar
“copyleft” licenses are viewed as very rare and special constructs by
most people dealing with copyright law this seems reasonable. Once you
have the permission to create the adaption, you are free to license your
adaption the way you want it. Still, I have to look that one up. I can
do that next week, but not earlier as I need access to my university’s
juridicial library for that and I won’t get there before next week.
>> Our “special” license tag does not allow for adaptions, so the distributor can’t distribute
> any assets licensed as “special”.
> If a distributor becomes aware of this, they could actually refuse to
> distribute our game, which is a very big problem.
Yes. That is the problem.
> Obviously, if we
> don't mark the licenses as special, we'll probably never hear about
> it, but this is a very confusing (and arguably dishonest) legal
> situation. Even Johan's songs may be a problem here.
I’ve mentioned this already in message
<87bnla6l2w.fsf@hades.cable.internal.immobilien-concepte.eu> [1].
>> I have emailed Bugsbane (again) and asked him to clarify on the
> licensing of the SVGs he created.
> I don't doubt that we needed to email him, but I think it's best to
> discuss it before sending an email to him, especially if you are using
> the gmail account from the git log.
I’m sorry if this was surprising to you. I just thought that the topic
is going in a direction where we really need clarification from him. I
didn’t know you have some more questions to ask. Sorry.
Yes, I used his Gmail address, but what’s special about that? It’s in
the Git log, which as everybody knows is public.
> If he wants payment, let's just do it. These legal situations are
> more severe than having paid someone money for Secret Chronicles
> assets. We could even pay him unofficially, from 2 or 3 of us,
The problem we get is that once we start with such a thing it is obvious
other artists will feel as second-class people. Why does he get money
and they don’t? This is unjust. It may result in artists leaving the
project over that topic, which will then leave us with him alone. That’s
not how I imagine an open-source project.
> This means reintroducing
> a lot of Mario based assets. These are derivative works of Nintendo
> assets,
> and we have already seen *historical evidence* of a Linux
> distribution refusing to package SMC because of this sort of thing.
I don’t want them back. But we have a dilemma in this regard. Either way
we go, the decision is wrong. I think the smaller issue is risking an
infringement of Bugsbane’s copyright; I just can’t imagine he didn’t
want us to use the graphics to the project’s benefit.
> I would go far as to say that having a replacement for the mushroom
> graphics is a "Blocker" task and that we cannot ship release 2.0 with
> Mario mushroom graphics present. I think we would be much better off
> using Bugsbane's graphics in the release, even without a "good"
> license.
Yes. With distributors being in trouble, but I think we cannot change
this for now. We can provide packages for major distributions ourself (I
looked into Debian packaging recently, doesn’t seem too difficult), and
the big distributions don’t include new software into their running
releases anyway. Thus we can postpone the problem until new releases of
Ubuntu (LTS), Debian, or similar are planned.
We could also split the project up (again). The code is clearly GPL,
there can be no doubt about this. Distributors will happily ship that
one. We can then have the assets in a separate package which
distributors can choose to include or not to include depending on
whether they think it’s legally safe (we can guarantee them that from
our side as the TSC team there will be no claims). If they choose to not
include it, the game could offer the user to download the graphics
separately from us directly. This is awkward, but we circumvent any
possible problems and could even keep the “special” licensing tags.
Valete,
Quintus
[1]: http://lists.secretchronicles.de/tsc-devel/2015/02/0000017.html
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