CC and GPL in the same project?

[whitewolf]

I read the Creative Commons Atribution licence is compatible with the GPL. Does this only apply to a certain version of the CC Atribution licence though? This is so damn confusing. Long story short, I want to include some CC sounds from freesound and some CC blender models into my GPL project.

[Cacatoes]

If I understand well how licenses work :

Nope, Creative Commons isn't compatible with GPL at all.
Not even in its BY-SA form.

Compatibility means you can take some work under a license A, and re-license it under a license B.

So, you can't take some Creative Commons song, and GPL it.
But you can take some BSD code, and GPL it.

Fortunately for your project, compatibility is not what you need

You rather ask if you can use conjointly several works which are under different licenses.
And yes, you can ! Provided you "follow License A rules for mini-work A, and License B rules for mini-work B".
That means you should make some readme.txt file, where you state what is the license of each file. So you'll have to list things saying "code is GPL, this blender model is CC-BY-SA-NC, these songs are CC-BY ..."

The thing you can't do is saying your whole project is only GPL, because GPL allows things that CC doesn't (such as obviously commercial use, but also these other things for which these licenses are incompatible)

[whitewolf]

Thanks, thats good news

Can I get someone else to confirm this too though, just to make sure?

Anyway, it puzzles me why all the free games, Nexuiz, Openarena, Urban Terror, Padman... use the GPL for non-code assets. From what I gather the gpl wasnt even meant for images, models, sound etc, and the CC licenses are much more suited for this purpose.

[Cacatoes]

This is right for Nexuiz and OA, but Urban Terror & Padman don't use free licenses for their assets.

Use of CC has already been discussed, such as here : http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=2520.0

I just read a text which says CC lacks the ethics GPL has. Mainly because it doesn't give a direction towards freedom. Just to say in the overall CC still has a negative image.

[andrewj]

Cacatoes is right that you can make a package with GPL code and other-licensed media.

However it does limit where your package may end up, e.g. Debian will not put it into their repository if it includes non-DFSG stuff (especially NC stuff).

It's also a pain in the bum to keep track of what bits are what license.  You definitely can't (for example) create a new texture with bits from a GPL one and bits from a NC one, the result is something you cannot legally distribute.

I just read a text which says CC lacks the ethics GPL has. Mainly because it doesn't give a direction towards freedom. Just to say in the overall CC still has a negative image.

A big problem is that the term "CC" by itself is too vague, it covers a broad range of licenses from very restrictive (e.g. no commercial use) to fairly free.  People don't know what you mean if you just say "CC", and maybe assume the worst case.

[Speaker]

I just read a text which says CC lacks the ethics GPL has. Mainly because it doesn't give a direction towards freedom. Just to say in the overall CC still has a negative image.

Ethics? How could ethics have anything to do with a legal license? A license IMO should not teach you ethics, it should just tell you in plain language what you may and may not do with the stuff under the license, and what your obligations are. I think what CC lacks (in comparison to the GPL) is the overly complicated language. I personally welcome this lack.

Anyway, if I put something under CC Non-Commercial Share-Alike, you can damn well do anything with my stuff (use, modify, distribute) except exploit it for your personal profit. Tell me, please, why should I grant you this additional right by using the GPL instead?

[sago007]

Tell me, please, why should I grant you this additional right by using the GPL instead?

If it is ok to use a "NonCommercial" clause why not also allow a "NonAfrica" clause?

"NonCommercial" is not always bad. But in software projects it is.

[Cacatoes]

except exploit it for your personal profit.

Seems like an ethical direction.

How could ethics have anything to do with a legal license?

---

If it is ok to use a "NonCommercial" clause why not also allow a "NonAfrica" clause?

Because NC is not an arbitrary discrimination. Admit what is behind some "non commercial wish" can be much more complicated than some racial thesis.

[Speaker]

@sago007:

If it is ok to use a "NonCommercial" clause why not also allow a "NonAfrica" clause?

I see you don't have to go out shopping for a little demagogy. This response is irrelevant and childish.

"NonCommercial" is not always bad. But in software projects it is.

A sweeping statement w/o any supporting arguments. Tell me why NC is bad. I am a rational guy (actually, a scientist) so you can convince me if you have good arguments.

@Cacatoes:

---

And this is not an answer, either. After reading this informative remark of yours, I still don't see how ethics has anything to do with licenses.

Seems like an ethical direction.

Bingo. But what really happens is that first I make an ethical decision, then select a legal license that best suits my purpose. I hope that you can perceive the distinction.

[whitewolf]

What about me, the author of the content, choosing to license it under two different licences? I ask this because I am thinking of doing an asset trade with another modder "you get to use my texture pack if I get to use your gun model", but what if that other modder doesnt want to use the gpl licence for his mod? Can I say to him sure, you can just use my texture pack, no strings attached, even though the same textures as part of MY mod/game DO have strings attached?

[Cacatoes]

So why are you asking what link there is between a license and ethics, if you admit license is the result of your ethical choice ?
Why do I prefer a license to another, if not because of ethical choices ? Why should this choice be buried, neutralized, once formalized into a piece of paper (or in that case electronic file) ? What is wrong in admitting any license, copyright, copyleft, public domain is tainted with politics/ethics ? Seems obvious for me it is, even if some people tend to hide their believes (or their lack of believes) behind it, maybe in order to avoid conflicts.
Sorry for having been that concise in my previous answer, but I felt like making appearing that paradox between your 2 statements was enough. I think you can't draw a line between ethics and legislative, even if one is prior to another. Not only this is wrong, but it is dangerous, as throwing the ethical aspect of something is some way to establish it. Who would dare to discuss the holy GPL otherwise ? You can rather see ethics behind any act, any paper, any word, and it's better that way.

@whitewolf
Seems a mess to me.
I advise you not to melt licenses with particular deals. Choose some license with assets, and choose another (if you need) for code.
If you choose more, then your project in its overall will suffer from these particular conditions for this precise work, and you won't get anywhere.
You're using some already copyrighted material, so either you adopt the same license *because it suits you*, or you say it doesn't suit you, you choose the license you want, and you invite every contributor to follow or to STFU
I'd recommand you to think about what you want first, rather than just collecting works and licenses.

[Speaker]

@Cacatoes:

Thanks for the detailed answer, at least now your position appears to be quite clear to me.

I cannot deny that there is a clear logical connection between our ethical decision and the license we choose (this is also my position). But I think that it does not follow that the license per se must have some kind of explicit ethical content or message. You said: 'I just read a text which says CC lacks the ethics GPL has'. It seems to me that the article's claim is made to 'prove' that the GPL is the better license. But it cannot prove anything like that. Ethical statements are outside the domain of relevance of legal licenses. So the fact that a license contains ethical statements does not increase its merit as a legal document.

Inevitably, every political or legal document is tainted by politics and beliefs (because it is made by human beings). But we should recognize this as a flaw, and we should try to eliminate it. If a license tries to teach an ethical lesson, then it is flawed and should be changed. Licenses should be as clear as possible w/o muddying the issues with ethical statements. I would much prefer that all legal documents (including laws and licenses) be written in the language of formal logic, although probably 95 percent of lawyers would immediately give up their profession as a consequence. :-)

[Cacatoes]

The article's point could be "creative commons is too wide to give an ethical direction, so it's a poor ethic", and they see that as a lack, because on the contrary what GPL has allowed is to bring some awareness about what freedom is, at least for IT guys
If you just satisfy every one's point of view, then what did you bring from a human perspective ? Not much.
The problem may not be "should a license have or not ethical statements", because as we said this is rather inevitable.

This is not far from that debate, some people judge sterile, over "Opensource" or "Free Software" terms.
If you say "okay, this software is opensource", the ignorant will ask "but what is opensource ?".
Answer: "well ya know it's just you open the source ...", oww, okay...
Why is this term favorized by guys who are not so ethical ? Because it allows them to explain the current situation by two simple fucking words.
But hell, some guys lived this thing as a revolution ! Until now most programmers were selfishly programming their crappy softwares for a few bucks. That license is like an invitation to stop having that selfish natural attitude, making you take the decision to give from your own, giving birth to a whole collaborative process, which has established practices, where you care of people with disabilities, where you give people the opportunity not to depend on some ugly corporation which wants to control you and your money, and I forget so many things, but you can feel them with time only by using opensource softwares(*), all that thanks to some freedom guidelines which consists into allowing distribution of source code.
So yes, it's in their interest to forget the consequences of that opening, or in other words, to extract (suppress) ethics from a legal document.

I'm not clearly answering to you, I just try to make present ethics from any document, whatever its form, could it be legal, maths, or anything serious and scientific as you suggest. Maybe what you criticize is not presence of ethics but the potential lack of strictness of its form. What we expect from a document is to be strict and coherent with itself, and not melting various languages, otherwise it hasn't succeeded in being that "science" which tackles every problem only thanks to its own (and eventually artificial and controlled) vocabulary.
I'd prefer to see ethics as the content, be it hidden because formalized, rather than saying ethics and legal documents are separate domains which shouldn't be melt.

(*) I permet myself to call them opensource software, because I systematically reduce opensource software to free software, rather than the contrary. If this was their strategy to oversimplify free software movement, then it's easy to inject back this free software sense into the opensource term, and this is now quite assumed for most free software partisans.

[Speaker]

But hell, some guys lived this thing as a revolution ! Until now most programmers were selfishly programming their crappy softwares for a few bucks. That license is like an invitation to stop having that selfish natural attitude, making you take the decision to give from your own, giving birth to a whole collaborative process, which has established practices, where you care of people with disabilities, where you give people the opportunity not to depend on some ugly corporation which wants to control you and your money, and I forget so many things, but you can feel them with time only by using opensource softwares(*), all that thanks to some freedom guidelines which consists into allowing distribution of source code.
So yes, it's in their interest to forget the consequences of that opening, or in other words, to extract (suppress) ethics from a legal document.

I actually do sympathize with your feelings. I lived for half my life in a so called 'communist' country (Hungary) so I am thoroughly familiar with socialist ideology -- and what you say is not very far from some of the basic ethical principles we were taught in school. I did believe in these principles and still do to a considerable extent. (Well, the practice of our socialism was of course something totally different, but I guess we are talking about philosophy here.)

I think, however, that it was not the wording of the GPL (the ethical message) that started the free software revolution. It was the activity of Richard Stallman, the very effective propaganda (no pejorative meaning intended) of the Free Software Foundation and the success of early GPLed projects like Linux. These factors would have brought about the software revolution even if the GPL had not said anything about free beer :-)

As for the non-commercial clause: I know the argument that if the GPL had had a similar clause, the companies like IBM and HP would never had taken part in the development of Linux. But IMO the companies jumped to the wagon only after Linux proved to be a success, and they would have found a way (because this is their best interest) even if the GPL had demanded non-commercial applications only.

Anyway, I am not against the GPL. As I already said, I had also released some software under the GPL. I just wish that licenses were less confusing and people a bit more flexible.

[Snickersnack]

-snip licenses and ethics discussion

 I would much prefer that all legal documents (including laws and licenses) be written in the language of formal logic, although probably 95 percent of lawyers would immediately give up their profession as a consequence. :-)

And the world would be a better a place for it!

[whitewolf]

Thought provoking discussion there.

And what I actually meant in the last post, put plainly, is can the same content be licenced twice by the author. I guess not.

And sure, I know the ideal situation is to have one license for all content, or one for code and one for assets. However it makes me angry that all that content on freesound is unnavailable to me or others who want to do a gpl project, and is basically wasted, because of some stupid license issues. Clearly the authors put their files on there to be USED,

The same goes for all the texture packs. They dont get used because they arent released under right lisence, when it was clear that the authors just wanted their content to be used. Last I heard someone got kicked off here for using textures from cgtextures in openarena without bothering to check that it was ok.

What hasnt been discussed is the fact that the GPL is not suitable for non code assets? One person knowledgeable on the subject even went so far as to say that the GPL had no effect on non code assets! Or so I heard.

[Speaker]

@Snickersnack:

And the world would be a better a place for it!

Indeed. I refrained from makig this remark, but I fully agree. But softly now, we might get sued by some lawyer lurking in the forum :-)

@whitewolf:

The same goes for all the texture packs. They dont get used because they arent released under right lisence, when it was clear that the authors just wanted their content to be used. Last I heard someone got kicked off here for using textures from cgtextures in openarena without bothering to check that it was ok.

A big problem is that many times there is no explicit license whatsoever. You will find some vague statement like 'use it but give me credit', 'it is in the public domain but only for non-commercial use' (a contradiction), etc. Thus you have no idea what you may do with the stuff.

What hasnt been discussed is the fact that the GPL is not suitable for non code assets? One person knowledgeable on the subject even went so far as to say that the GPL had no effect on non code assets! Or so I heard.

I believe that the GPL was created explicitly for use with computer code. It is a terrible license for artwork (see e.g. all the discussion about what exactly the 'source' means in the case of artistic works). Unfortunately, developers of open sourced (GPL) games like the Quake series often have the mistaken attitude that everything in the project must be under the GPL. Maybe they think like that because the engine is GPLed and GPL is pervasive? I don't know. Some claim that it is only the GPL that ensures the absolute freedom they want (IMO not true). Since at least some of them admit that mixed licensing is viable, I just don't understand why it is not done in such a way.