Re: [tsc-devel] On how to license Johan's title (and credits) music...

Chris Jacobsen | Fri, 20 Feb 2015 05:06:19 UTC

First, I have split the theme song discussion at http://forum.secretchronicles.de/topics/122 in order to separate Ashburry's post from Johan's post and prevent confusion.

Second, we need to contact Johan about the sublicensing on his songs; it could take a little time to bring this to resolution, and we don't want it to become a new blocker task for the release.  In the worst case, if we don't get an adequate license, we will need time to seek out replacements.
 
Here's a possible draft:
"Johan,
You had submitted a theme song and credits song at http://forum.secretchronicles.de/topics/122 (under the user id jobromedia) and had given us permission to use them in our game, "The Secret Chronicles of Dr. M".  It turns out we need separate permission in order to technically allow the game to be posted in distributions (ie Linux distributions) with these songs and to allow the songs to be used in forks of the game if necessary.
Of course, it may not always make sense to allow other games to use the songs -- if everyone started using these for a title theme or credits theme, the songs would cease to be Secret Chronicles themes.  The only way to deal with the complex set of scenarios that arise is to have the ability to sublicense these songs to other people.  This would allow us to analyze a new situation if it arises and grant permission if it is warranted.
If you are fine with this, simply state, "I grant the ability to sublicense the title and credits themes at http://forum.secretchronicles.de/topics/122 that I posted as jobromedia to the Secret Chronicles team.""

I'm sure some more improvements can be made to this draft.  Once we figure them out, we can contact him.
I've had a fairly good email relationship with him, so I'd be glad to send it.  Otherwise we could have the project lead, Quintus, send it.
-datahead
   

     On Friday, February 6, 2015 3:54 PM, Quintus <…s@q…> wrote:
   

 Chris Jacobsen <…9@y…> writes:
> Why not just request a custom license that give us permission to use
> it, all TSC distributors permission to use it, and people who directly
> fork our game into derivative games permission to use it (this helps
> us meet the open source definition)?

You don’t want to request a custom license for that. You want to request
the right to sublicense. This would allow us to give out the asset under
license 1 to one person, under license 2 to another person, put it onto
the repository under license 3, and so on. It would allow to compete
with potential future problems as we could just change the license. Your
suggestion would require to send some giant license treaty to Johan that
defines all those use cases -- and then we have a problem as in the
future maybe new usecases appear that aren’t covered by the license.

I mean, if you request some detailed custom license from Johan now he
will probably just have a WTF? effect. Imagine yourself as an artist, and
now comes someone and hands you some 3-page license treaty that lists
all the details needed for all persons possibly involved. I’d rather
want to avoid that. Keep it short and simple; i.e. ask him for the right
to sublicense, and give simple licenses to the people involved.

Granting us a sublicensing right does not hit his main copyright. He is
free to still do whatever he wants with the song.

Vale,
Quintus

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

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