Questions about addon licensing

[Anon]

What are the rules for acceptable licenses when it comes to add-ons? The licensing page on the wiki lists some acceptable and unacceptable licenses, but it's not clear whether it applies to add-ons or only tracks meant for the main game.

Specifically, are CC-BY-NC-SA and the license for these skymaps okay?

Also, will I be notified and told why if my add-on has been rejected?

[sj04736]

Hi Anon,

The NC clause in CC-BY-NC-SA prevents the license from being "free" according to DFSG. Likewise, the skymaps listed at your link have a restriction against selling the skymaps, which also violates "free" according to DFSG. These, then, would not be okay in-game. This restriction exists so that linux distributions can ship the game without replacing assets, which often ends up much worse than if the artist just finds a different texture, sound, etc.)

For addons, we rely on tuxfamily's guidelines, which are not too clear. "We accept any project released under a free license (GPL, BSD, CC-BY-SA, Art Libre...)." I would be inclined to accept add-ons with "NC" or similar clauses in the assets' licenses, but the downside is that if your add-on is really good, we can't include it in the main game without modification so we strongly discourage it. An example of an existing add-on with an asset having an "NC" clause is the China track which has both NC and ND in the license for its music.

If your add-on has a problem, moderators can submit feedback which you will receive by email. There is not currently a way for you to respond to these comments other than replying to the email, which I receive. Leyyin is working on a better solution for this as part of Summer of Code.

The other project admins might have more to add.

Stephen

[Calinou]

Hi Anon,

The NC clause in CC-BY-NC-SA prevents the license from being "free" according to DFSG. Likewise, the skymaps listed at your link have a restriction against selling the skymaps, which also violates "free" according to DFSG. These, then, would not be okay in-game. This restriction exists so that linux distributions can ship the game without replacing assets, which often ends up much worse than if the artist just finds a different texture, sound, etc.)

For addons, we rely on tuxfamily's guidelines, which are not too clear. "We accept any project released under a free license (GPL, BSD, CC-BY-SA, Art Libre...)." I would be inclined to accept add-ons with "NC" or similar clauses in the assets' licenses, but the downside is that if your add-on is really good, we can't include it in the main game without modification so we strongly discourage it. An example of an existing add-on with an asset having an "NC" clause is the China track which has both NC and ND in the license for its music.

The SIL OFL is deemed DFSG-compatible because of a loophole: you can bundle a very basic program with it. There are free fonts under SIL OFL in Debian. However, many people don't think like that. I've posted 0ptikz's skyboxes on OpenGameArt and they were removed.

So, people should really stop using those stupid clauses.