Licenses updated and some thoughts on them

[VanishMember]

Well met Taotics,

as you might have noticed, the tool for choosing the licenses in the posts got changed earlier this year. This was due to incompatibilities with the old tool and the newer WordPress versions (and also, because the old tool was somewhat incorrect about the links to creative commons). I have finally gotten around to updating all the old licenses to the new system, and I hope all is just as it was before.

The main difference with the new system is, that it only uses creative commons. Thus, if you choose a different license (the Public Domain), I manually included a link to the Creative Commons Zero page. If you want to use Public Domain, or any other license for your creations, please include them manually.

So much for the technical side. Now, I’d like to address two things and open them for discussion. Please keep in mind that the following is just my opinion, and by no means should be taken as anything more than that:

1. Many of you good people have used Public Domain as a “license” (bless you!), thus basically forfeiting all copyright on your creation. All I would like to say about this is: Please make sure your legislation allows you to give up copyright at all. While this is possible in the U.S., in some other countries (e.g. Germany) copyright is inextricably linked to the personality of the author and thus can neither be transferred, or, ultimately, be given up. In those cases, CC-BY might be a good alternative.

2. A few have licensed their works under a license that doesn’t allow derivative works. Please keep in mind that if you disallow derivatives, this not only keeps people from altering your creation, but also from incorporating it in other works which could very well mean they would, strictly speaking, not even be able to rez it on their avatar or on their land, since this “incorporates” the work in the greater context of another work (the sim or the avatar).

Finally, thanks to everyone who contributed to this site. I’ve been through hundreds of creations in the past hours, and I’m just awestruck with the amount of amazing things you have made.

Thank you
V

[Anonymous]

OH that’s it you!

Being Alicia/Tina is an Iowan girl in the US, I will from here on out, whenever possible release my creations as Public Domain! Yay!

Seriously, I noticed the change in the licenses listing, and I think it is a good thing. People should well note that if a license listed on the site doesn’t meet their needs (i.e. – You want users of your product to play hopscotch once per day) then you can manually write your license or include it as a download and make people note they need to see the download for license information.

Licensing should not stop people from posting here. And by that I mean never think that we are all hippies living in earth bag homes sweetening our tea with honey and open sourcing our work.

Licensing can be tricky – sometimes it is just not feasble to release under the license that is most open, because of license limitations on source materials – Sort of like you download an awesome door texture from commons.wikimedia.org, but find that the license there is share and share alike. Well you would be forced in that case to release as CC by A Share and Share Alike as well….

Heck now I am confusing myself!

Calgon take me away!

-Tina/Alicia

[hanheldMember]

After the licensing snafu I went through previously, I’ve considered only releasing items under a non-commercial license, with a zillion “I accept no responsibility” disclaimers. I’d never distribute under a no-mod license; to me that’s not open source.

A large part of open-source -what distinguishes open source from closed, in fact, is the ability to modify something. There are cases where you can’t allow modification, but whenever possible it’s better to allow it. If something cannot be modified, it can’t be incorporated -and if it can’t be incorporated then really, what’s the point?

Even the templates and textures sold on secondlife (which are definately NOT open source) are allowed to be modified. In fact almost all templates require modification and aren’t allowed to be resold as-is. The idea is to be reused, and incorporated into other works.

• This reply was modified 11 months ago by  hanheld.

[Anonymous]

Good Point Hanheld,

One thing to bear in mind is derivative works. See it has been my experience that most hobbyist artists that offer their textures for sale, cover things such as redistribution of the texture itself, but in no way cover the area of derivative works.

Since commercial use of their work is allowed, and with a lack of licensing on derivative works – it comes to a question of fair and acceptable use which is at the root of Copyright Law.

I tend to favor towards if you are not releasing their texture directly, and they have not stipulated any restrictions on derivative works, that using their textures as a source in designing other textures is more than acceptable.

I mean they know that you intend to use their work commercially, and most people I have talked to do not care if your shirt has their seamless pattern on it. They mainly don’t want you to redistribute the seamless pattern itself.

Licenses that restrict the creation of derivative works are totally useless licenses, and I know I steer clear of any product that restricts the ability to create and freely distribute derivative works.

~Alicia/Tina

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