I am trying to determine what license is “JME3-testdata.jar”?
Where is it documented?
The jar itself has it not…
for ex.: I saw that the asset pack “normen_WorldForge” is GPL, and so, incompatible with a commercial project, or am I wrong?
Is there some place (I dont mean just the license that I usually find hard to read) that explains how we can use all these assets, asset packs and code? I am looking for the friendly license version, which says it simple like: what you can and what you cannot, like we see here http://www.blendswap.com/page/licenses To what extent we can copy the code/coding techniques we find at the JME SDK Tests? can it be copy/paste? or only if we improve on it? or I cannot at all if my project is closed source?
I am going on blendswap and only getting CC-0 blends. I am thinking on CC-BY and CC-BY-SA too.
How everything we get from the JME SDK fits on all these licenses?
Any of them are more restrictive than CC-BY-SA?
Any of them would not fit on a commercial project?
I would appreciate also if someone pin point some examples that I should skip on considering in my project (if there is any).
Dang… if I win lottery my project gets free… otherwise, I dont live in a rich country and I am not rich either… I need it to not have a boss
EDIT: PS.: if I am not wrong, to be allowed to use anything GPL, the whole project must be GPL too.
At first, I thought missing license means public domain equivalent to CC-0, but that is just a wild guess.
Also, wouldnt it be advisable to make all content added to the engine and tests and assets, comply with some license, and not just be “unknown”?
It would be interesting if all these without license were set as CC-0, CC-BY or CC-BY-SA at most (or equivalent, still have to read BSD one). So ppl could use them in their final project. This would help as a tranquil quickstart for careful indie devs, and would help back on promoting the engine itself I think.
and that page says: “Except where otherwise noted, content on this wiki is licensed under the following license:CC Attribution 3.0 Unported”
so, the license, of at least some, of the JME test data, is actually CC-BY, right? (the http://creativecommons.org/ down right now ) at least if I download directly from that wiki!
I learned also that, if I modify anything, I shall redistribute it freely but under CC-BY-SA.
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license:
assets/Effects/Explosion/flame.png by jMonkeyEngine Community (https://wiki.jmonkeyengine.org/legacy/doku.php/jme3:advanced:particle_emitters)
@teique said:
At first, I thought missing license means public domain equivalent to CC-0, but that is just a wild guess.
This is absolutely 100% not true. Everything has copyright by default. Without a license, it is illegal to distribute it at all. The license is the only thing that gives you the ability to make copies of something. Without it, you cannot. Period.
I am not sure but it seems that CC-BY-SA content may infect (like GPL does) all media on a project (or at least derived media like videos, screenshots an audio).
Therefore, CC-BY-SA (may be even CC-BY) content seems NOT usable advisable on proprietary projects as a tip I got from here: http://opengameart.org/content/faq#q-proprietary
I wonder if these assets (from testdata) could be released as CC-0, or if it is too late already, but anyway it is just a thought thrown in the wind…
IANAL but The copyright holders (the original artist usually) are the only ones that can give license for use/distribution of their works. JME developers can not release the testdata under CC-0 or any other license unless they are the original authors of the assets or the assets are licensed by the author in such a way that distribution under CC-0 is allowed.
@teique said:
I am not sure but it seems that CC-BY-SA content may infect (like GPL does) all media on a project (or at least derived media like videos, screenshots an audio).
Therefore, CC-BY-SA (may be even CC-BY) content seems NOT usable on proprietary projects as a tip I got from here: http://opengameart.org/content/faq#q-proprietary
I’m not sure how you got this idea from that link. It’s important to read sentences completely and specifically in cases like this.
So having CC-BY-SA on the collection, the pack must be at least CC-BY.
EDIT: But also (and this one could be considered infecting), I must point out that “For the avoidance of doubt, where the Work is a musical work, performance or phonogram, the synchronization of the Work in timed-relation with a moving image (“synching”) will be considered an Adaptation for the purpose of this License.” from Creative Commons Legal Code, what leads to think that the source code that does the synchronization (like a game does, I understand), could fall under this license… making CC-BY-SA a problem in this case.
@JohanMaasing I actually thought that, to the authors be asked for it.
oh wait… can a game be ever considered as “musical work, performance or phonogram” ?
EDIT: I think it could be considered as performance, something that is never 100% equal, not sure tho…
I still don’t get it. You have to read these things VERY specifically.
"All Creative Commons licenses (including the version 4.0 licenses) allow licensed material to be included in collections such as anthologies, encyclopedias, and broadcasts. You may choose a license for the collection, however this does not change the license applicable to the original material. "
In other words, you can license your stuff however you want but you cannot change the license of the SPECIFIC CC-BY parts. Your stuff is YOURS. Their stuff is still THEIRS. Your stuff does not automatically become THEIRS just because you sat it next to each other.
GPL is really the only pervasively viral license most people will have to worry about. It specifically DOES ‘infect’ any code base it’s included in because it SPECIFICALLY says so. In fact, it’s mostly the entire point of it.
Ok, maybe this is the part you are referring to:
“When you include CC-licensed content in a collection, you still must adhere to the license conditions governing your use of the material incorporated. For example, material under any of the Creative Commons NonCommercial licenses cannot be used commercially. The table below indicates what type of CC-licensed works you may incorporate into collections licensed for commercial and noncommercial uses.”
So you cannot sell their stuff. It’s tricky to decide if you are selling their stuff with your game or simply including it and selling your own stuff. As long as the license is intact, it should be ok… presuming you have significant enough of your own content to not just seem like an anthology of someone else’s work.
Edit: and you can avoid a lot of concern just by contacting the original provider… which you should really do anyway. But yeah, any “no commercial use” stuff is probably not a good idea to include in your “for sale” game.
@pspeed, in the last days I discovered many interesting things:
I will surely skip any NC and even ND work.
I understand I can pretty safely use CC0 content provided I have common sense.
About CC-BY-SA, well, CC-BY-SA will force any media created with my application to be CC-BY-SA, even if I create a cut-scene video with my own project.
And CC-BY, for a proprietary application, could better use OGA-By, not that I would use DRM, but that licenses are a complicated reading to me, and if it is less restrictive, in this case, the less the better… But still… if there is a CC-0 good enough alternative, I would just pick such one.
About GPL: A proprietary application may use a GPL application IF it is called thru a socket, command-line, some kind of superficial communication that does not involve specific things coded on that GPL application. This can also be read at GPL FAQ about Mere Aggregation.
Also, if anyone is considering on changing their work license (if it can be changed at all), I suggest to not do it, but instead, add a license option, so ppl that used your work before will still link to such license.
@teique said:
About CC-BY-SA, well, CC-BY-SA will force any media created with my application to be CC-BY-SA, even if I create a cut-scene video with my own project.
This is only true in as far as you use the CC-BY-SA content. Your statement makes it sound like simply having the content live there makes all other content (even stuff that doesn’t include any of it) CC-BY-SA… which isn’t true. It’s splitting hairs and probably irrelevant to your use-case but licenses are confusing enough without a future reader misinterpreting that.
Edit: and the real point: you should be able to use CC-BY-SA in your game without your game becoming CC-BY-SA… because simple usage is not captured by: “If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.” Otherwise, every image viewer would also be CC-BY-SA every time it loaded the image/model/whatever.
Indeed, by CC-BY-SA, I mean, when creating a video, if any CC-BY-SA texture is loaded into geometries materials (instead of my default poor placeholder textures), it will force that video to be CC-BY-SA. If the content just sits there and not be used on that video, there will have no problem, it wont affect other media sitting by its side that came from another distributed package.
I just think that it is better I dismiss my doubts now than later, so I can choose right now than having to amend/rework/looseTimeAndResources later. I think if they really wanted to dismiss all doubts, they would themselves prepare several use cases that we could trust/base our projects packaging structure and distribution on.
The legal code make so many small references that I cant follow the main idea it is trying to explain/enforce. It is not a natural reading, very far from it… May be it could be more natural, but they just dont do it that way. Some ppl are able to fly thru that kind of text. I still have a very hard time on doing that… and from what I have been seeing, many other ppl do too.
I’m sorry for resurrecting this topic, but what this means is actually that this reproduction of Paul’s citation I’ve made just now is a perfectly valid formal reason for him to sue me, as I didn’t get any written permission from him prior to reproduction. If that’s right, oh…
If that’s not right then there must be some extent definition somewhere of what kind of information can be licensed at all. Can a forum topic reply be considered an article (when it wasn’t explicitly specified so by an author), for instance? I’m not joking, at all…
Update: OK, let me make the case even less abstract. Somebody uses Bintray. The license stated is CC0-1.0. However, Bintray claims:
Note: Bintray does not accept Creative Commons licenses for packages; these licenses were never meant to be used for software.
So I don’t get it, what restrictions are there to store assets and what license should be applied in this case?
There is, many jurisdictions have ‘fair use’ or similar definitions in their laws, allowing you to make short quotes of published works.
If usage of bintray is restricted to certain licenses then I guess that you are not allowed (by JFrog) to use bintray in that fashion. This has nothing to do with copyright.
But if an asset is in binary, it is still an asset (i.e. data, not executable code), it can be extracted, so this implies I can’t use Bintray to store assets? Or do I just pick a supported license (say, BSD), and that will cover assets too? I mean I was sure that was exactly CC area of coverage…
) at least if I download directly from that wiki!