PS License discussion

[enderandrew]

Mod's Note:  Thread split from here: http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=34553.msg401731#msg401731

Which brings me to another point.  It occurs to me that as I often browsed Morrowind and Oblivion forums and sites that I saw countless resources created by the community, offered up freely as resources for others to use.  Many of these include bump and glow maps.  They were offered up specifically as resources for modders to use in those games, but a game like Planeshift no doubt requires a good deal of art resources.  Perhaps someone could ask authors of various resources for Oblivion or Morrowind if they'd be willing to also let their models and textures to be used here.  You'd find textures for caves, roads, foilage, houses, weapons, armor, sundry items, etc. etc.

Planeshift will certainly look more unique if it features 100% original art, but if someone made a model and texture for a lantern so that others can use it in an Oblivion mod, would it be some great sin to reuse that model with permission to ease the load on the Planeshift art team?  I imagine this would be most useful for sundry items like barrels, crates, plates, lanterns, etc.  Importing existing resources for clothing would be nice to add a huge variety of clothes that people could wear in game.

(I do understand that the Gamebryo engine uses NIFs, but there are tools to import NIFs and export them to other formats).

[Caarrie]

as has been posted before PlaneShift has their own license for art and content, that means that you  cant just pick up art for _anywhere_ and put ingame, the artist MUST agree to the ps license and sign it before we can use their art. Also the art has to be in the correct format that the engine can use it correctly.

[zanzibar]

as has been posted before PlaneShift has their own license for art and content, that means that you  cant just pick up art for _anywhere_ and put ingame, the artist MUST agree to the ps license and sign it before we can use their art.

It might be useful to enderandrew to explain to him why that's the case.  It will probably be his next question.

[enderandrew]

I'm aware the game assets aren't open source, and I imagine that is to protect someone from cloning the entire game.  It doesn't help to have 15 servers with fractured development each with a dozen players.

That being said, if you ask an artist who already gave up their resources to be used freely with no restrictions, they might agree for the art to be used in PS with the specific art restrictions.  It doesn't hurt to ask, and there are plenty of model and texture resources out there in the Oblivion and Morrowind community.  However, only some of the Morrowind textures are bump and glow mapped, and the Oblivion ones are probably more recently posted, which means you'd have a higher chance of contacting the author.

[zanzibar]

I'm aware the game assets aren't open source, and I imagine that is to protect someone from cloning the entire game.  It doesn't help to have 15 servers with fractured development each with a dozen players.

That being said, if you ask an artist who already gave up their resources to be used freely with no restrictions, they might agree for the art to be used in PS with the specific art restrictions.  It doesn't hurt to ask, and there are plenty of model and texture resources out there in the Oblivion and Morrowind community.  However, only some of the Morrowind textures are bump and glow mapped, and the Oblivion ones are probably more recently posted, which means you'd have a higher chance of contacting the author.

More than that, the way it was explained to me was that the dev team doesn't want people to change their minds after submitting art or code to the game.  It would be very disruptive to have to remove content or reverse fixes.

[enderandrew]

I've seen some childish moves like that.  I'm not questioning the need to keep art assets closed up.  But thanks for trying to clear that up.

[Caarrie]

Also keep in mind that the ps team being 100% volunteer lacks the time to track down assets to use, they would rather the artist come to them and volunteer their work to the team. Also by signing over your art to Atomic Blue it can NOT be used by anyone else, so taking assets from other games is not an option.

[Bamko]

ahem.

I understand, and have read about the PS licenses probably about as much as any non-dev, as well as looked into many other licensing schema....

I politely disagree with the philosophy though.  I believe PS has such a great community and commitment to settings and RP that they do not need to limit the artwork to the degree that they have.  I could understand a desire to, perhaps, have the character models and the quests and settings under the license, and maybe even some of the Mobs, but everything?  Talk about re-inventing the wheel, literally.

I have faith that PS could maintain a unique look, feel and experience without such punitive licensing agreements.  No reason some art could not be as open as the source code, IMO.  Would it destroy the game experinece if some of the houses looked a lot like the houses in other projects?  and since this is a philosophic discusion on something that won't be changed, consider that question as rhetorical, please. 

[Vengeance]

One day I would like to see someone who thinks the PS content license is hurting us to show us an open source, open content game with more and better content than we have.  If our proprietary art scares artists off, what are all those artists contributing to?

I'm happy to be proven wrong on this but I've never seen a free project with better art than this which is open art.  Who has a link?

[hulla]

Hello
 I think you dont understand the "game" is the game but the "art part" is another thing  !
Think about tomorow if you can found a dwarf from planeshift on the cereal box ( Corn flakes ) you use every morning ?
Thiink about the people who have working hard and who NEVER take money from this work if somebody use it  !
i know you can have manny license whit a lot of "free thing " you can do whit the work of other but
(like this one http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/fr/deed.en_US )
 i understand why so mutch of the "art part" what no "free"

[enderandrew]

One day I would like to see someone who thinks the PS content license is hurting us to show us an open source, open content game with more and better content than we have.  If our proprietary art scares artists off, what are all those artists contributing to?

I'm happy to be proven wrong on this but I've never seen a free project with better art than this which is open art.  Who has a link?

Alien Arena
World of Padman
Warsow
Nexuiz
Open Arena
Tremulous
UFO: Alien Invasion
Battlestar Galactica: Beyond the Red Line
Spring
Glest
Warzone 2100
TORCS
Urban Terror
ManiaDrive
Secret Maryo Chronicles
Battle For Wesnoth
Flightgear
Wing Commander Privateer: Gemini Gold (Some of the graphics intentionally look old-fashion in the vein of the remake, but the ship models are rather nice)
Scorched 3D
Neverball
Sauerbraten
Cube
Assault Cube
VegaStrike
Excalibur
Bos Wars
Danger from the Deep
Vdrift
NetPanzer
Oolite
FooBilliard

Eternal Lands - This is a MMORPG that is completely GPLv2.  The GPL didn't hurt them.  The game never forked.
The only OSS MMORPG to ever fork was Crossfire forking into Daimonin, and in that case the fork made a whole new setting, new graphics, new sounds, etc.  Heck that fork happened 8 years ago.  Crossfire has been around a long, long time, and it only once did someone else use Crossfire code for an OSS MMO project, despite for the longest time, Crossfire being the only OSS MMO project.  Project Diaspora is also an OSS MMORPG, and no one stole their art assets.  Regnum Online is GPLv2, and no one stole their art assets.

I believe that all material should be GPL, however I am fine with assigning copyright to a parent organization who can oversee the need for future license changes as necessary.  And while many are concerned that a contributor might walk and want to take their contributions with them, once they are initially offered under the GPL, those versions under the GPL stay under the GPL.  The copyright owner can change the license for futher revisions, but the existing contributions remain open.  However, again, I'm not totally opposed to signing over copyright to avoid those scenarios, even though the project still doesn't lose anything with the GPL.

A MMORPG is only as strong as the community that fosters it.  Players will want to play where there is an active server, and the best content is available.  If one developer decides to leave and attempt to fork PS, they won't be able to keep up as an individual, or small team with what the larger team continues to produce.  Furthermore, they have to start with a new server and no existing players.  Players don't want to play on an empty server.

So I don't believe we lose anything by a pure GPL license for all content.  I do believe however that we lose with restrictive licenses, because it makes it harder to get developers who will be turned off, or open resources that aren't compatible with the license.  For instance, There are hundreds of models and faces we could be using that authors have offered up freely as resource in the Morrowind and Oblivion community.  Because we demand all original, proprietary content, we can't use those.  Instead we offer a game to our players where most races don't have a single model.

While I would prefer a pure GPL license across the board, what I'd like to see is at least a small compromise.  Lift the restrictions on art, so that we can reuse other open art resources, so long as the author offers them to use freely.  Why should it matter if that art is also used in an Oblivion mod?  So long as the overall art direction is original and consistent, and we only use resources that fit within that consistent style, I don't think it will take away to use some armor, clothing, or face textures that are offered freely.

The GPL allows a fork, but protects the code at the same time.  If another team forks the entire project, they must also keep the GPL for their derivative project, and we'd have access to all of their changes.  Even as a fork, they are still working to improve the overall project.

Perhaps as a compromise, the setting itself could be proprietary, while opening up art restrictions.

[Xillix Queen of Fools]

No.

We've made the progress we have made with the system we have in place and are quite content with the pace of development as it is. I have no desire to see homogenized art and I don't think many of the above links are superior, I've played several of them. This argument has been hashed over so much it's silly.

Sure some people don't want to commit under our license, and that is fine. We don't need the help of anyone who thinks donating their work to, or integrating personally with the PlaneShift dream in any way diminishes their own artistic/moral/ethical/philosophical vision. While we're not trying to change these people's minds, we'd like our idea of how to make a game to be respected reciprocally.

[zanzibar]

I'm not sure people think donating their art to PlaneShift diminishes their work... it also doesn't seem like a "respect" issue to me.  It seems more like people want to donate their work to PlaneShift, but also have it available for other projects which are in need of art.

I agree that there isn't a necessity to change the license.  Crates and torches seem like easy models to create.  From talking with artists on the dev team, the challenge is producing maps and character models, and those are models PlaneShift absolutely does not want to borrow from other games.

I'm curious about who's actually complaining about the license.  Are these usually artists who feel disenfranchised?  Or are they more often players who want to see a faster rate of development?

[Tuxide]

I didn't really want to get into this thread hijacking conversation, but oh well.  If you want to make a fork, better do it to this thread.

Eternal Lands - This is a MMORPG that is completely GPLv2.  The GPL didn't hurt them.  The game never forked.

Eternal Lands is not completely GPL, only the source of the client is (not the server), and either way I can't get it to compile.  Plus it's considered one of the worst MMOs ever made.

The only OSS MMORPG to ever fork was Crossfire forking into Daimonin, and in that case the fork made a whole new setting, new graphics, new sounds, etc.  Heck that fork happened 8 years ago.  Crossfire has been around a long, long time, and it only once did someone else use Crossfire code for an OSS MMO project, despite for the longest time, Crossfire being the only OSS MMO project.

Crossfire is not an MMORPG, it's a 2D Gauntlet/Rogue game clone with online capabilities and multiple shards.  I tried it out a couple weeks ago with some friends and a customized Java client, and the most active server only had eight or so people, and that is counting the three or so I was with.  I actually liked it, but I wouldn't say it's massively multiplayer.

Regnum Online is GPLv2, and no one stole their art assets.

I don't get where you say that Regnum is GPL.

I am not saying I disagree with your ideals; I respect that you have an opinion but I am just disputing some of your facts.  It is true that there is not a whole lot of high-quality open content available; without counting futuristic games like Nexuiz because we are only interested in fantasy games, none of the ones you listed seem to have open high-quality 3D assets.  Most of the Battle for Wesnoth's art team is made up of people who are still in high school.

Also I don't think the PlaneShift codebase is mature or feature-rich enough to the point where people will want to seriously maintain player-ran shards like they do with Ultima Online or even Crossfire.  Thus I don't see how opening PlaneShift's content will do a whole lot of good for me as a player.  I don't have 3dsmax and .max is a proprietary format that nobody has publicly documented.

[enderandrew]

http://www.linuxlinks.com/article/20080525143441370/Regnum.html

That site says the game is licensed GPLv2.