Thank you for raising these points. I think that we should require add-ons also use CC-BY-SA 4.0 for art and music, the same as the game.
I also think that at least going forward asking contributors to assign copyright to Wesnoth, Inc would be a good idea. On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 3:29 PM, Ignacio R. Morelle <[email protected]> wrote: > It's great to finally see someone take the initiative in this regard, > since I > was just about to figure out the best way to propose this to the mailing > list. > > As a mainline and add-on art contributor myself, I wouldn't have a problem > with using the CC BY-SA 4.0 license for my existing and future art. > > However, there are a few points that need to be addressed before moving > forward with this: > > > 1. What does this mean for the add-ons server? Which mainline development > branches and add-on instances will be affected? > > Will the add-ons server continue to stick to the current everything-is-GPL > model, or are we going to request user-made content creators to use CC > BY-SA > for art and music and the GNU GPL for code as well? Which add-ons servers > will > be affected by this change, considering that the 1.12 instance was > relatively > recently started and we expect to support Wesnoth 1.12 for two to four > years > from this point on? > > It's also important to note that although it may be feasible to ask > contributors to relicense our *current* mainline assets (for which > branches? > 1.12 and master or master only?), it may be significantly harder for us to > deal with art from e.g. Wesnoth 1.0 that might still be redistributed in > the > add-ons server in some form (unmodified or otherwise). > > Should GNU GPL art and music still be allowed in the add-ons server? What > about mainline? Can we make an exception for cases where we were unable to > contact the copyright holders after a certain amount of time? > > Also, should other CC licenses (say, the non-commercial variants) be > allowed > for content in the add-ons server? I believe the reason we use the GNU GPL > for > add-on content is mostly to ease mainlining add-ons, but whether this is a > valid concern nowadays is debatable (1.9.0 was pretty much the last > version to > promote UMC to mainline, not counting the Khalifate faction). Should other > non-CC licenses be allowed as well? > > Do note as well that we will need to educate add-on creators on the matter > somehow. For many of them, switching licenses is not *supposed* to be as > simple as replacing a label on a file, but they might actually do so and > call > it a day and potentially infringe on someone's copyright by wrongly > relicensing GPL-only content. > > Finally, as the add-ons server admin and only active campaignd maintainer, > what infrastructure and code changes should I be expected to make in > response > to this? Currently, the add-ons server asks people to agree to license > their > whole add-on under the GNU GPL upon upload [1]. What would be the best > wording > to reflect the new policy? What should we do about campaignd > auto-injecting a > single COPYING file [2] to add-ons missing one? > > 1: > https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/blob/master/src/campaign_server/campaign_server.cpp#L553 > 2: > https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/blob/master/src/campaign_server/addon_utils.cpp#L107 > > > 2. What about copyright? > > I tried to get a discussion going on about our messy and impractical > copyright > policy (or lack thereof) back in December, and people generally seemed to > agree that as things stand right now, we are exposing ourselves to DMCA > abuse > on potential future platforms such as Steam. My proposal was simply to > require > contributors (of any kind) to assign copyright on their contributions to > either the Battle for Wesnoth Project, or Wesnoth Inc -- the second may > have > better legal standing in court. (For that matter, does Wesnoth Inc have a > lawyer?) Optionally (and preferably), contributors should retain all > rights to > their work but may not revoke our ability to do so as well. > > Right now, tracking down copyright information for our art (but thankfully > not > music) is pretty much an impossible task for outsiders because authorship > of a > given file is usually only traceable through Git commit history, and even > that > fails from time to time, making the whole endeavor unnecessarily > complicated > and requiring additional research of e.g. forum posts and IRC logs. If we > are > going to switch our licensing model, we might as well go the whole way and > deal with this long-standing issue now, especially if we hope to submit > Wesnoth to Steam Greenlight some day. > > > I hope to have covered all potential concerns in this mail, but if I missed > anything I'd like people to speak up NOW rather than wait several months to > give an opinion. > > -- > Regards > Ignacio R. Morelle <shadowm> > > _______________________________________________ > Wesnoth-dev mailing list > [email protected] > https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev >
_______________________________________________ Wesnoth-dev mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev
