OpenArena Message Boards

Hi, Guys.

First, I'd like to thank all of you developers for making Open Arena. I've been playing now for over a year and I find it to be the most intuitive, balanced, and lastingly engaging FPS available today. Not to mention the most, uh, unprohibitive in its cost.

Second, I'd like to say I'm an experienced pop music writer, with free albums available at www.thegrammarclub.com (http://thegrammarclub.com/?page_id=22) and shaelriley.com (http://shaelriley.com/) (The Grammar Club being a more recent representation of my work) and, that I'm also a tracker. Though the songs in the albums above are fully-produced, multi-instrument works, that saw post production in Reason, Cubase, and other modern music suites, they were all composed in MODplug tracker: a dubiously workable old program that just happens to be the composition environment in which I'm most comfortable.

Third, I'd be happy to contribute a track or two to the game, if you're still in need of music.

I've run into one snag, however: to do make music (in IT format) for an open-source game, I need some open-source samples. Does anyone know of any?

Freepats (http://freepats.opensrc.org/)

they might sound ugly/tinny, but that doesn't stop anyone from reproducing tweaked freepats samples to sound better

Ah! Thank you.

Shael Riley:

1. http://wiki.freegamedev.net/index.php/Free_3D_and_2D_art_and_audio_resources

2. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sound_samples

NO

this translates to: sorry, we don't accept creative commons licenced work from this website (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sound_samples) in openarena - the project is GPL only.

Oh. Why GPL only? Throw links at me!

The About page is a nice place to start

I never liked Creative Commons. People pick it because it's vague looking but it's unfortunately not GPL compatible so it is unacceptable here.

The about page tells me "free content" - the good creative commons licenses are pretty free to me.

I at first didn't like them either. Then I came to terms with them. as they're well suited for art.

If there was a media license, which would require one to release the source file (and maybe even define what a source file is), I guess you would be friends with it? GPL is a software license after all.

Maybe we should write one. BSD style and all. Or is the Free Art License (http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en/) the one we're after? /me needs to read stuff

I think that if it is not SA (share alike) and just CC-BY you can modify and relicense the work as long as you do the attribution. isn't it?

The CC licenses offer different combinations of specific freedoms and restrictions, and do not talk about sources as that would very difficault to do. For example, I record a track played/sung by a band. What are the sources - the notation and lyrics? Is the band the "compiler"? Whatever the case, the recorded track is the "binary". Though this is fine for bands distributing their music freely, this doesn't satisfy the requirement that OA assets should have sources.

Indeed, but are not GPL compatible, which is a requirement for OA.

The GPL, though written for software, can be applied to anything that has a clear definition of the "source", which tracker music does.

Are there any lawyers willing to do that here?

Well, you don't need lawyers to write licenses (http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/).

There's the nice short free ISC license (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISC_license), maybe we can create a media version (http://forum.freegamedev.net/index.php?t=msg&th=997) of it..

I don't think it's cool to scare away a potential gpl licensed thing to integrate into a gpl licensed project by introducing immature licenses.

Well, the thing is, that at least LeChuck from the FreeGameDev forum wanted a BSD-like license, which is short and simple and permissive, thought requires attribution. An easy-to-read CC-BY so to say.

It would be GPL compatible (if we do it right)

Just like you, I think that this little license-writing project is doomed to fail (it will be regarded as unclear and ambiguous) but at least it will send a signal to experienced people that there's a need for such a license and maybe some other smartbutt will come up with a decent one. (which will mean that it wasn't such a failure after all =) )