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Hi,

On the OA Wiki in the section 'nottodo' it is explicitly stated that the project will never ever use any of the Creative Commons licenses. I am just wondering why the developers are so adamant about this. What's wrong with a reasonable CC license like 'Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike'?

I admit that the GPL is a great license, but it was specifically created for licensing software. Its language is fairly complicated, many people find it difficult to understand. I am quite sure that many more texture developers and modelers would agree to a CC license than to GPL, and this would make it much easier to obtain artistic material for use in Openarena. Just my 2 cents.

Isn't there some question as to whether GPL programs must have GPL assets? There has been some discussion of this on the freegamedev.net forums but as far as I can tell it's a gray area.

http://forum.freegamedev.net/index.php?t=msg&th=594&start=0&S=80525df5d1bfd73bce7ae0eb89eace1e

fromhell seems really scrupulous about licensing.

just a choice

It is a choice.

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike is a non-free license.
If one wants to use a CC license in a free software project it must be the 'Attribution' or the 'Attribution-Share Alike' license. That is the only two free CC art licenses.

CC licenses are often disliked in free software projects because a CC license does not necessarily means free and therefore sends the wrong signal. Stand alone works are a different matter. The dislike has diminished in recent years and more and more projects are preferring the CC-By-SA.

sorry, i don't obtain

@sago007:


Good point. But as you already mentioned, there are truly free CC licenses.  Does not matter, I was just curious. If I contribute anything later, it will be GPL. I couldn't care less :-)

@fromhell:


Sorry, but I don't get your meaning. The Oxford Thesaurus says:

obtain: get, get hold of, acquire, come by, procure, secure (et cetera, et cetera)

So I guess that 'to obtain' is a fairly accurate description of the process when for example some guy makes a map and contributes it to the Openarena project. OK, so it is not you personally who 'obtains', but the project. Anyway, this has nothing to do with my question on licensing.

-------------------------------------

OK, the main point is this. Many authors making e.g. textures and skyboxes allow free usage _except_ commercial: that is explicitly forbidden in 99 percent of the cases. So if I wish to make a map for OA I can't use these free assets because the authors will probably refuse licensing under the GPL. So I have to make everything from scratch, which seems to me rather silly (and I don't really have the time for that). Of course, it is not obligatory to contribute to OA, but I would like to and just wish that the conditions imposed by licensing would make it easier. My guess is that quite a few potential contributors have been deterred by these issues.

Then it may be a reason to contribute more textures in public domain (http://www.burningwell.org/), as there is a real lack.
The more you want things to be open, the more you have to start from stratch, sometimes ...

@Cacatoes:

Thanks for the link, a nice webpage. However, I am talking about professional quality texture sets, not raw photographs. You know as well as I do how much work it is to make a texture set out of raw photos. So if someone else already made it and offers it free, why not take it even if it means accepting an inferior (?) but still essentially free license? Personally I would rather restrict commercial use. Why should I allow anybody to make a profit out of my freely contributed work?

As for public domain, I just read a couple of essays on this topic, and it seems to me that not even the legal experts can agree on what it is and how to put something in the public domain in a meaningful and binding way. So I would rather use a specific license that clearly states what others may and may not do with my work.

Finally it's all about principles, some guys accept to pay to have their game (Q3), some others consider free (not paid) as their criteria.
Anything which is GPLed says "sell my work if you want", either as a way to say they don't care about making profit, or they feel confident about other ways to make profit from it (that specific economy around free softwares where you sell skill rather than the product).
Free licenses as their name stands are all about not restricting uses (which copyright does), what if there was a legitimate use of your work, selling it for a good reason, still not abusing it ? Behind their apparent simplicity, creative commons are still obscure in some points (what is commercial use ? Can I host some NC files on a website which has ads ?)
In case of GPL, commercial right is phantomatic, as it enforces the possibility to get it for free (by giving the holy sources), and the end-user has to be aware of that possibility to get it for free. Tricking and abusing only works because of misinformation, which shouldn't happen.
This kind of safety is usually why I don't like GPL :D As I prefer to let the individual take care of his rights and duties.
As for the legal experts, I don't remember well what bothers them (moral rights in some countries which are incompatible with no-copyright ?) but some guys say using a BSD license (without publicity clause) solves this uniformity problem.