RMS on the ethics of non-free art

[DangerOnTheRanger]

http://www.libervis.com/article/rms_on_the_ethics_of_non_free_art. Interesting that RMS of all people has such an opinion on a topic like this.

[qubodup]

This is from 29 Aug 2007.

In his "Hello Nvidia" talk, Linus also talked about games. http://youtu.be/MShbP3OpASA?t=58m25s .

He also says how he was wrong in the past about thinking that there could be no open source games. RMS might have realized since 5 years ago, that he was wrong about free art.

[Julius]

I think he (RMS) is quite right about the distinction between functional and non-functional software.
For a story driven single-player game, which you play once through and forget about it again afterwards, I am perfectly fine with non-free art (and even code). After all I am not expecting the cinema to hand me a copy of all movie production assets after a visit either

Sure it would be nice to have them, in order to be able to base a similar game on them etc. But it is really not all that essential after all.

Competitive multiplayer games (or MMORPGs) I would rather count to the "functional" software category though... sure they are "games" too... but you spend a lot of time with these, sometimes several years, and continuous development is also necessary for these. Which makes them rather different from the "play once and forget" SP games mentioned earlier.

[alexander]

I have talked to him about this myself, and I understand his viewpoints. art is not software. art does not pose a threat to you by doing hidden things. it's the same with "proprietary documentation". look at hyperspec for lisp. if this was "free", you might have a million -specs, and no actual standards.

personally I believe art should be free, but I agree with rms that *sharing* is the definitely most important aspect.

for those interested, here's some of rms's responses (he won't mind) from our lengthy chat,

"I think that many computer games can be split into a software part
and an artwork part. The software part should be free, but the artwork
need not be free.

[...]

In general, I think all artistic works should be _sharable_,
which means people are free to noncommercially redistribute exact copies,
but they don't have to be free."

[Julius]

In general, I think all artistic works should be _sharable_,
which means people are free to noncommercially redistribute exact copies,
but they don't have to be free."

I actually kind of disagree with that... if you are making your art non-FOSSlibre you might as well disallow free sharing in order to ease your own commercial benefit... after all artists have to put bread on their table too, and it is actually more difficult to live off art then of software/coding (even FOSS software), as art is usually only "consumed" while most software has an additional functional purpose (which allows you to live off service, maintenance or training etc.).
That said, I also think that the copyright restrictions for unfree artwork are way to long (similar to what RMS said in the article linked) and that the art should not be copyright protected by default but rather only if you register your commercial interest prior to publishing it (similar to how patents work).

[alexander]

art cannot be "FOSS", as it is not software. I think sharing is more important than allowing modification with software and art both. but personally I think art should be as free as free software is.

[Julius]

What point is there to freely share art if you are not allowed to build upon and remix it? If that is the case it can be merely consumed and might as well be up for sale only (given that it becomes public domain rather sooner then later).

But I think we are arguing for the sake of the agrument here as be both agree that libre art is the best

[qubodup]

I bet* it will take no more than 5 more posts for somebody to trigger a "what is art" or a "are games art" discussion.

*not real money though. That would be gambling, no?

[alexander]

in this discussion art is clearly referring exclusively to the non-software portion of a game.

[DangerOnTheRanger]

Personally, I think non-free artwork isn't as good as free artwork, but it's still perfectly acceptable. I've often thought of making a commercial game where the code is under some open-source license, but the artwork is proprietary, thus making me/my company the only legal method of getting the game. It's the closest thing I can think of to a full-blown commercial FOSS game.

[qubodup]

I only now realized that their Guidelines for Free System Distributions contain acceptance of no-derivate licenses. Quite infuriating, marking the efforts of open media projects as worthless in the eyes of FSF.

This has been brought up in a discussion about game licenses in F-Droid, a software manager for free software.

[alexander]

if this forum doesn't mind, I'd like to "spam" my blog a little bit. i.e., one specific blog post I did which I think is rather relevant. http://ride-bikes.net/blog/2012/07/05/why-we-are-more-accepting-for-proprietary-games-than-other-proprietary-software/. I discuss an effect that I believe to be the reason for rms's attitude as well as many others. they view games as *entertainment*, on par with music and cinema. other, more traditional software is on the other hand viewed as *tools*. tools are something you use on a daily basis, and as a result some people consider freedom more important with tools. to make an analogy - you expect to be able to paint the walls in your house if you want to, but you don't expect to be handed all the art assets of a film you saw. personally - and I make this point in the blog post - I think you *should* be handed all the art assets of a film you just saw.