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Re: game screenshots with incompatibly licensed content



On Wed, 16 Jan 2013 09:37:54 -0800 Vincent Cheng wrote:

> Hi Martin,

Hi Martin, hi Vincent,

> 
> On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 8:15 AM, Martin Erik Werner
> <martinerikwerner@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm involved in the game Red Eclipse[1], both in Debian and upstream.
> >
> > We (upstream) were recently discussing including "art content" (in this
> > case a sky texture) licensed under the GPL (v2+ or v3 likely).

Good, I hope the source (== preferred form for making modifications to
the texture itself) is available.

> > (Yes, GPL
> > for art content is not a good idea in general, but that's a separate
> > issue.)

I respectfully, but strongly disagree with this misconception.
In my own personal opinion, the GNU GPL is a very good idea for artistic
works.

> >
> > Red Eclipse currently includes a lot of art content licensed under the
> > CC-BY-SA-3.0 license, and as far as I have understood this license is
> > incompatible with the GPL license?

I confirm that CC-by-sa-v3.0 is unfortunately incompatible with the GNU
GPL (both v2 and v3).

[...]
> 
> First off, IANAL.

I am no lawyer, either.

> 
> The general consensus seems to be that CC-BY 3.0, CC-BY-SA 3.0, and
> CC0 are DFSG-compatible and GPL-compatible;

Please let me clarify.
TTBOMK:

 * CC0 (which is a public domain dedication, rather than a license)
meets the DFSG and is GPL-compatible (as long as the source of the work
under consideration is available, and barring other issues)

 * I am personally convinced that CC-by-v3.0 and CC-by-sa-v3.0 do not
meet the DFSG

 * however, CC-by-v3.0 and CC-by-sa-v3.0 are currently accepted by
Debian ftpmasters as DFSG-compliant, despite my repeated attempts to
make them (and several other people) realize that they are wrong...

 * CC-by-v3.0 and CC-by-sa-v3.0 are GPL-incompatible (I had never seen
anyone claiming that they are compatible! Vincent, if yours is not a
typo, I think you somehow misinterpreted something about this topic...)

[...]
> I know that there's
> probably a few people on -legal who may not see the CC licenses as
> being DFSG-compatible,

I am one of those few, actually.

> but licenses are judged to be DFSG-compliant
> and suitable for main by ftpmasters, not by debian-legal. ;)

Yes, and, unfortunately, Debian ftpmasters seldom seem to be willing to
explain and/or discuss their decisions...   :-( 

> 
> > My impression is that using content under both licenses is fine in the
> > game itself, since it's dynamically used/displayed and not combined
> > otherwise.
> >
> > However, what struck me as a problem here are screenshots, videos, etc.
> > showing the game and the art content in it. A screenshot showing both a
> > CC-BY-SA-3.0 texture and a GPL texture would be a derivative work of
> > both pieces of content, and in that case said screenshot would be
> > undistributable, since the licenses are incompatible.
> 
> I've never actually encountered a work that was dual-licensed under
> both GPL and CC at the same time.

As far as I understand the issue at hand, we are not talking about
dual-licensing: this term is generally used to describe a disjunctive
choice between two alternative licenses, among which the recipient may
choose his/her preferred one.

Here we are talking about a set of game data, a subset of which is
available under the terms of a license, while another subset is under a
different license.

> Usually it's code being licensed
> under the GPL and the game's assets licensed under the CC.

Unfortunately...
I definitely prefer the really DFSG-free cases, where both game engine
and game data are, for instance, under the GPL.

[...]
> > Is this assumption correct? And should combinations of art content with
> > incompatible licenses in software that displays combinations of them, be
> > something to be wary about (when creating screenshots and similar) for
> > this reason?

I am not sure.
When all the involved licenses are mutually compatible, we definitely
have a much simpler and safer scenario.
When incompatible licenses are thrown in, I don't know...


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