Concerning options alongside PS licenses

[lemontea]

[size=18]Updates[/size]

May all people please read the summary at the second page (or click here) before posting, and please stay on topic and be respectful of others, thanks.






Hello to all,
I\'m writing to express my opinion on the licensing of this game. Don\'t get me wrong, I\'m not saying the license is not good, just that I want to say something after reading some posts that someone can\'t use the work of planeshift because of the restriction of the license. Read on.

Firstly, the points given in the license page can be summarized as below:
1)In open source development model, it\'s important to group human resources together so they can concentrate on smaller scope and increase chance of success overall. In other words, avoid \"divide and conquer\" at all cost.

2)It\'s vital to have quality over quantity, and being unique to standout. Avoid \"reinventing the wheel\" and \"mass and messy\", also, protect the project from being copied/cloned.

3)Many artists want their works to be respected and used as they wish only. Hence GPL will drive some of them away.

4)Similar to point 3, if retaining their full right over their work, they may retreat their work/refuse to co-operate, which will spell doom for the project.

Note that in both 3 and 4, threats mentioned in 1 and 2 take effect.

5)Hence the solution: credits belongs to the author, and the PS team will have full right of the work. The public and the author in this case, will have no rights other than fair/personnal use.

See the source of problem? Contradiction appears on what level of rights should the artist and public be given. Too much on artist and it may \"abuse\" his work, too much on public and the public may steal the work;too little on artist may drive them away, too little on public may damage their image of open source project.

I think the license now is leaning on the low side for both the author and the public, can we find the balancing point? Well, after some searching, I found the license below even closer to the ideology:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling/1.0/
The title and original use of it may sound strange, but its idea of \"awarding people that creatively reuse the work\" is brillant:

a)For the public, people that want to steal the work wont success while people that get inspiration from the work can improve and use the work in such a way that didn\'t destory the uniqueness of the original work, win-win situation.
b)For the artist, they know that their credit will be reserved, their work will be improved upon, and their work will not be stolen. In the case of author submitting this work to many project, this will not happen because the project (public) can\'t reuse the work unmodified.


Of course, mass switch of licensing is a big task, and I hereby suggest giving this license or a similar, trailor-made one, as a third option alongside the first 2. Using this license, while protecting point 1 and 2, encourage innovation, which is beneficial for both this project and the public. Just my 2 cents, thanks.

PS: Actually, even with the license we have now, fair-use is not disallowed. In this case, just giving it to your friend should be a fair use as long as the number is not too large and that they don\'t use the music outside of personnal use.

[Tharizdun]

Those are some interesting points. Are you aware that there is no license that applies to the Planeshift project in its entirety? Program source code is covered by the GNU General Public License, or GPL. Details on the GPL are found here:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#GPL

The art ( music, soundeffects, world maps, character models, icons, menu background images, splash screen and related works ) are covered under a very different license to the source code. This is the PlaneShift License v1.0 and is found here:

http://www.planeshift.it/pslicense.html

The proprietry nature of the art license does not really impact greatly on the Freedom of the overall project, in my opinion. If I wanted to, I ( or anyone else ) could start my own competing project using the Planeshift source code, with my own character models, world maps, scenery, music and so on, hosted on my own server. I could then issue a client download that people use to connect to my server, in the same way the current planeshift client connects to the fragnetics server. Any source code additions I have made would be available to the Planeshift team under the GPL, and vice versa - I could incorporate any new code that they have written into my game.

The Planeshift team are the copyright holder of the art files, they could release all art  under the GPL tomorrow if they desired. Similarly, they could choose to relicense all source code under some proprietry license that forbids modification and/or distribution. This would not impact on the Freedom of the most recent GPL licensed planeshift code release though, it would still be available for use and development by everyone under the GPL terms. Hence the Freedom of the project cannot be taken away by anyone. This is a good thing!

What part of this do you think will cause problems? I dont see it being an issue for coders or artists. Any artist that doesnt want to contribute art under the Planeshift License can start their own project and contribute art under whatever license they please. I certainly dont see the GPL as being a problem that \'drives artists away\', it is not relevant to artists as the art is not covered by the GPL.

Re: Fair Use, the courts in the US at least have not accepted this as a valid reason to distribute copyrighted works in recent years, despite that its a fundamental part of copyright law. This issue is a huge problem, but is not really something specific to Planeshift and I dont think discussing it here would really achieve anything.

I dont presume to speak on the behalf of the Planeshift team. I\'d like to hear their opinions too.

[lemontea]

Originally posted by Tharizdun
Those are some interesting points. Are you aware that there is no license that applies to the Planeshift project in its entirety? ......(cut)
http://www.planeshift.it/pslicense.html

Yes, I know about the dual licenses nature of this project, just that the source code part is not my major concern- the license of the source code is ok.

Originally posted by Tharizdun
The proprietry nature of the art license does not really impact greatly on the Freedom of the overall project, in my opinion. If I wanted to......(cut)
I could incorporate any new code that they have written into my game.

While source code can be reused in some degrees in another similar project, it\'s impossible to copy the whole source code and clone this project, anyway, I can\'t see any relavent point here, although this point is quite interesting.

Originally posted by Tharizdun
The Planeshift team are the copyright holder of the art files, they could release all art  under the GPL tomorrow if they desired. ......(cut)
...cannot be taken away by anyone. This is a good thing!

The key problem is that if the PS core team broke up, or they decided to terminate this project, then no one, I say no one, except the PS team, will be able to continue the project unless people redo all the artwork, websites, etc. Which is highly troublesome. Also, if someone in public find a minor problem with the artwork, for example, a missing vertexin 3d model, they will have to report it to the PS team. See it? Every action related to the artwork must first go through the approval of the PS team.

Originally posted by Tharizdun
What part of this do you think will cause problems?......(cut)
...... I certainly dont see the GPL as being a problem that \'drives artists away\', it is not relevant to artists as the art is not covered by the GPL.

If, suppose GPL is used for the artist, that means the public has freedom on using/improving it, but some artist do not want to see their artwork used everywhere, you know?

Originally posted by Tharizdun
Re: Fair Use, the courts in the US at least have not accepted this as a valid reason to distribute copyrighted works in recent years, despite that its a fundamental part of copyright law. This issue is a huge problem, but is not really something specific to Planeshift and I dont think discussing it here would really achieve anything.

I dont presume to speak on the behalf of the Planeshift team. I\'d like to hear their opinions too.

Oh, I see. I would be glad to be able to hear from the PS team too.

Note: I actually try to focus this thread on the art license only , sorry.

May be I should have stated my point more percisely:
The proprietry nature of the license, while protecting the project itself, is in some sense, overprotective, such that the freedom of the public on the artwork is lowered. The spirit of open source is that the public has the freedom to improve it. Concentrating on the word improve, applying to artwork, there are a few types of improvment possible:

Technical:Fix a missing vertex in 3d model, spelling mistakes in website, etc.
Content: Change some lighting in the 3d model, add detail to the texture, etc.

Currently, any improvement suggested must go through the approval of the PS team, surely they can accept most technical improvement, but there may be some arguement on the content one. If the PS team deny a particular content improvement, then there\'s nothing people can do.

Using the sampling license, that award innovation, although minor content improvement are still not covered, but at least, major content improvement are allowed without the need of permission from PS team.

As a conclusion, my major worry is that the license on artwork currently give all rights to the PS team, and over-concentration of power is not good.

Note: Afterall, I think that at least the redistribute restriction should be lessened, as long as credit is retained, and the work is distributed as a whole.
Also, I think the process of reporting possible improvment of the artwork, website, etc, should be made easier for the public. For example, set up a page that public can give feedback on the website, a page that public can pinpiont where a vertex is missing, etc.

[Moogie]

Currently, any improvement suggested must go through the approval of the PS team, surely they can accept most technical improvement, but there may be some arguement on the content one. If the PS team deny a particular content improvement, then there\'s nothing people can do.

And they should be able to? This is our hobby, not everyone else\'s. Personally I\'m grateful that PS is protected the way it is.

[lemontea]

Originally posted by Moogie

Currently, any improvement suggested must go through the approval of the PS team, surely they can accept most technical improvement, but there may be some arguement on the content one. If the PS team deny a particular content improvement, then there\'s nothing people can do.

And they should be able to? This is our hobby, not everyone else\'s. Personally I\'m grateful that PS is protected the way it is.

Able to what? Why do you think the current protect level of the license is good? I would like to have your points clarified more clearly.

[Moogie]

\"If the PS team deny a particular content improvement, then there\'s nothing people can do.\"

And I said, \"Should they be able to?\"

If the content improvement being suggested by people is so obviously needed, we arn\'t going to just ignore it for some odd unaccountable reason and let people suffer. If it\'s denied, it\'s denied for a reason- most likely that it doesn\'t fit in Talad\'s grand schemes for PS.

But since this is Talad\'s baby, and our hobby, it\'s not up to anyone else what we do or don\'t put in the game. It\'s simple as that, really.

[WizardsRule]

Moogie, the online gaming preacher

[lemontea]

Originally posted by Moogie
\"If the PS team deny a particular content improvement, then there\'s nothing people can do.\"

And I said, \"Should they be able to?\"

If the content improvement being suggested by people is so obviously needed, we arn\'t going to just ignore it for some odd unaccountable reason and let people suffer. If it\'s denied, it\'s denied for a reason- most likely that it doesn\'t fit in Talad\'s grand schemes for PS.

But since this is Talad\'s baby, and our hobby, it\'s not up to anyone else what we do or don\'t put in the game. It\'s simple as that, really.

To sum up the previous points:
-Using a restrictive license, the core team has final right on content improvement.
-Because the project started as personnal interest, there will be one absolute grand plan of the content that no one(except the author himself, of course) can change.

@Moogie: If what you said is true, then unfortunately I have to tell you that this project shows characteristic of a \"closed development model\". In open development model, the project is open to idea from any people, hence the name of \"open source\" ; as a contrast, in closed development model, the project resists ideas from outside.
If you\'re picky, you may see that there\'s no absolute \"open\" or \"closed\" development, rather, in most case it\'s a mixture of two, but in this case, it is somewhat more closed development.

Please note that I do not mean to say closed development model is bad: in fact, in the case of a game, it\'s sometimes better to have closed development model for better consistancy. (http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/games.html)

What I demand now, is that if the project is not 100% open source, then you STATE it clearly on the website, directly on the about page, without the user having to bother to look at the license page to actually find out what part of the project is open source, what is not.

But in the end, this hasn\'t been the main point of the discussion. What I want to discuss, is that while the license now protect the project itself, it is somewhat unfair to the public: sacrificing the right of the public to protect itself, it is a classical example of being selfish. I\'m discussing the possibility of while protecting the project, we also give some rights to the public, namely, if the public get inspiration from the art and created some derivated work, they\'re allowed to use it. In this way creativity, especially among the open source gaming community, is encouraged. What opinion do the core team have on this? I\'m looking forward to recieve a reply.

[Kiva]

Let me see if I get this right.

You think that Open-Source Game automatically means that all the people on the dev team will automatically insert every useless patch any worthless idiot sends in? Well, I\'m sorry. But you\'re wrong.

You can look at the code as much as you want - it\'s Open-Source.
You can take the code (3D model, levels, SQL data, informations, quests, dialogues, (etc.) isn\'t code. It\'s art, in some way or another.), modify it, send in patches - it\'s Open-Source.
You can\'t whine if your patch is made with illegally bad C++ skills, and doesn\'t fit in with the rest of the code - what gets put into the game is not your decision.

So ultimately, your only two decisions are a) accept that there are people creating the game, and that you nowhere on the website will find a place that says you can submit anything you want, AND expect it to be patched in, simply because your definition of Open-Source is way wrong or b) get out.

Those are the two options we always give people here, because we\'re nice and we\'re tired of acting like dictionaries for others. The license is there to protect the game from being raped and abused by mindless twits with greasy hands, who would most likely - if they could - steal the game and sell it as their own project. That\'s why there is a license. So those people just have to go find some other place to lurk for potential scams.

Now, if you want a game where anything that anyone submits get used, you\'re looking for an Open Development game, aka Bazaar style development game. Not an Open-Source. Open-Source simply means you can download the game code, get inspired, learn or maybe use parts of it for your own game, but you can\'t simply add to the game because you want to. There are just too many idiots in the world for anything like that to work.

As for this:

if the public get inspiration from the art and created some derivated work, they\'re allowed to use it. In this way creativity, especially among the open source gaming community, is encouraged. What opinion do the core team have on this? I\'m looking forward to recieve a reply.

I would like to quote this from the License:

(Quote 1) --
2. You may not copy, modify, publish, transmit, sell, participate in the transfer or sale or reproduce, create Derivative Works from, distribute, perform, display or in any way exploit any of the Material released under this License unless expressly permitted by the PlaneShift Team.

(Quote 2) --
? The \"Material\", below, refers to any such material or work, and a \"work based on the Material\" means either the Material or any Derivative Work under copyright law.
? \"Derivative Work\" shall mean a work containing the Material or a portion of it, such as a revision, modification, enhancement, adaptation, translation (including compilation or recompilation by computer), abridgement, condensation, expansion, or any other form in which such preexisting works may be recast, transformed, or adapted, and that, if prepared without authorization of the owner of the copyright in such preexisting work, would constitute a copyright infringement.

By downloading any PlaneShift related material from the website (client, source, etc.), you automatically agree to this, as well as the rest of the license.

I hope that answered your question about if it\'s wise to have a license

[Androgos]

Originally posted by lemontea

Originally posted by Tharizdun
The proprietry nature of the art license does not really impact greatly on the Freedom of the overall project, in my opinion. If I wanted to......(cut)
I could incorporate any new code that they have written into my game.

While source code can be reused in some degrees in another similar project, it\'s impossible to copy the whole source code and clone this project, anyway, I can\'t see any relavent point here, although this point is quite interesting.

Degrees? The engine code is made flexiable just because want other projects to be able to use the code to other kind of games. I guess that 80-90% is useable in perhaps FPS with additional features?

Also, if you don\'t believe me search on LessShift

[AryHann]

I would like to give my two cents for this interesting conversation.

I really don\'t think that being aggressive is a way for discussing, also because I didn\'t see any malicious intentions in the purpose of this thread.

I am grateful that PS code is released under GPL license, since I am using it for my own project (university related). Modifying the code it is possible, but it is not an instantaneous process, and, due to its status, it is necessary to modify the code (and it is not enough to just modify the settings in some .xml file). But it is really a little compare to have to start to do something similar from the scratch.

If the database (I really don\'t consider a database art ;-) ) can be \"protected\" in certain aspects (quest solutions, private data), I have found often cryptic some table, and the absence of an exhaustive documentation forced me to hunt the poor members of PS team that have the patience to tolerate me.

Focusing on the art: well, I agree partially with the actual license.
I personally think that is correct to avoid to see billions of clone of PS and that the originality of the work should be protected, but it is also true that if one day the project will end the art will be lost, and more, if you don\'t want to partecipate anymore in the project then you are basically giving it away (and not always everybody leaves a team \"happily\"). It is true that when you agree to become a member of the team you know what you can do and what you cannot, if you don\'t want, then you don\'t become a member of the team.

Personally, I would never agree with such terms, but it is a personal choice and if there is people that like to do like this, well, better for Planeshift ;-).

It is true that you have to go through PS team for the art (and also for the code), and this kills the \"open source\" atmosphere, but the project is huge and pretty peculiar and probably a different approach (of giving more possibilities to the public) would make some harm.
If I would do a project like PS, I would give the rights to the authors of the art, and partially to the team.

PS as a game is not open source. The game engine is.

Ary

[acraig]

The basic idea is that PlaneShift is a \'data driven\' game.  So things like the models, the database rules, the items etc are all data that is loaded by the engine.   When you think about it like this the licenesing makes more sense.  Everybody can have their own \'data sets\'.  In our case we choose to protect our data set to make sure we remain a unique data set ( and therefore  a unique game ).  The engine just loads different data sets and anybody can use the engine.  I will help as much as I can for anybody that is using the engine to load different data sets. ( Nudge AryHann ).  

PlaneShift is a project of the Atomic Blue organization and as such even if everybody left the project Atomic Blue still has the ownership and copyrights.  So if ( god forbid ) all of us decided to stop working on PS ( mass insanity? ) then we could just simply assign a new set of directors for Atomic Blue and work can continue.

[Harkin]

the \"open source\" part of the game is the source and code, so anyone can modify and use the core for anything... the images, music, etc. are not open source and are owned by Atomic Blue, now.. just cause its an open source project doesnt mean everything is open for the public to take and use, modifying a model or skin already made is against the PS liscense... so basically your gripe about the artwork, doesnt fall under the open sourceness of the game...

EDIT: spelling/grammitical

[lemontea]

Sorry for my late response, I response for a good reason(see the new point at the bottom of the page)

@Gronomist/(name changed to Kiva?) : Unfortunately, you didn\'t get a single point at all.
Your counter-arguement:
1)I misunderstood completely the definition of open-source.
2) (a)Open source does NOT mean anyone can modify it if the modification is badly made.
   (b)Open source means that you learn from the code.
   (c)Bazaar style development means any modification by anyone will be accepted.
3)The license are here to prevent someone from stealing it and claiming credit.
4)The current license forbids derivative work, so what I said is wrong.

My actual point:
2) (a)I do NOT said that any idea will be accepted, just that people will at least hear the idea and determine if it is good enough. Also note that I do mentioned the relative nature of open and close development.
      (i)Even open source does use minimum closed development model to organize the project, without that, it\'s project without leader, without organisation.
      (ii)A good open source project should balance between organisation and causalness.
   (b)Yes, learning from the community is one of the key feature of open source community.
   (c)No, you\'re wrong on this one. Even with Bazaar style development, as I\'ve stated many times perviously, there ARE some organisation to accepting contribution. I suggest you to read \"The Cathedral and the Bazaar\"
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/
3)Of course I know the purpose of license, just that I suggest slight change of it to lessen unneeded restriction.
4)Do you noticed you only partially quoted my words? If you bother to read more carefully, you should have noticed the line before it:
\"I\'m discussing the possibility of while protecting the project, we also give some rights to the public, ...(your quoting)\"
This is an imaginary conditional sentence structure in disguise, do you know? That is, what I said is IF blah blah blah...

@Androgos: When I say clone I mean exact copy with maybe the credit claimed over(in other words, work theif)
Off topic: actually this point is out of topic, but anyway, what I wanted to say is that the power of GPL, namely, the ease of cloning it and start a fork, is only possible when it is FULLY open source. With part of it closed source, you have to redo all artwork, which is costy.
Don\'t mind, afterall, this point is irrelavent, and the code being flexible is a good thing in itself.

@acraig: The atomic blue thing is relatively new(appear after my earlier posts, some those posts don\'t cover them), and I would like to state my viewpoint here:
Even in this case the project can continue, it would be a great strip down of the power, and worse is when you failed to find any new successor willing to take up the job, which again spell doom and the end to the project.

@Harkin: I knew that already, in fact, I stated that I want to focus on the art license(a.k.a. PS license), since I know the source code is already in GPL, the problem is just the current license for game content is too restrictive.

After some misunderstanding of the discussion topic I think now is the right time to do a summary before I state my new point.

Summary:
My intention is to focus on the game content license only , which I think is too restrictive on that it protect creativity , but prohibit other\'s inspiration from it , I suggested awarding people who creativly transform the content by allowing them to use it.
Objections, as I see so far, only one is valid : This starts as a personnal project and the major developers distrust the public , therefore they will never give out more freedom to the public.

After this short summary, I would like to add two point here:
a) In response to the valid objection, I could only say that if you distrust your customer, please, close source the whole project and make it private. If one assumed bad faith to the people they\'re serving, they shouldn\'t continue at all, which can only create more tension.
b) I\'ve recently discovered the lessshift, and this actually add as a point against using the restictive game content license as it is now. At the very first post, the goal number 1 is to avoid \"divide and conquer\" ( of human resource) at all cost, in which under this spirit the game content license is set up. However, this license in turns caused the lessshift fork from the planeshift, which is a division of manpower, which is just exactly going against goal number 1. See it? The license is actually doing harm now, however, if we face this issue seriously, we may still be able to avoid too much damages.

[Caym]

I\'m quite new to this License fuss and Open Source stuff but I really want to understand this so excuse me if what I say seems utterly retarded - or just totally wrong. It\'s \"PS License for dummies\" .

So lemontea, what you\'re saying is roughly that the ability of creating, modifying - and improving PS Art being restricted to the PS Team is not a good thing, and that just anyone should be able to participate in order to have as much improvements as possible ?
But just anyone can open Photoshop, take, say, a splash screen or concept art for PS, scribble some ugly stuff, save it and say \"look, I made a great drawing\" - this is much more easy than modifying code, that implies some knowledge, a knowledge more difficult to obtain than just learning to open Paint.
Consequently, this \"openness\" should be somehow restricted to improvement alone, whether of Planeshift or of another project.
Concerning Planeshift, is it not what the License already does ? Protecting art from being reused and claimed by just anyone, and making sure it stays where it was intended to be ?
And are artists ready to \"give up\" their art, such a personnal thing as their very own creations, to something they won\'t be able to control (like another project) ?
I find this relationship between art and openness very confusing, and that\'s not something you often hear of. Artists\' habit is usually to try to protect their art from reuse as much as possible. As an artist, my first reaction when fken said to me \"you could make your art opensource\" was like \"HELL NO !\".
How can you make sure that something freely available and as easy to manipulate as drawings or music will be protected so that it can only be used in a \"good way\" ?