License questions

License questions

Postby Edward_Lii » 13 Jul 2012, 18:27

Hello all,

One thing that bothered me about the license block at the start of each source file is that it only states the year 2011 while many, if not all, source files have changed during this year.
So I decided to take a closer look at the licensing of meandmyshadow and my conclusion is that it's quite a mess. :cry:

Here's a list of things that should change:
  • All copyright notices only cover the year 2011
  • Only three people are given copyright, even code that isn't written/contains no code written by them.
  • The copying permission text points to a non existing file (LICENSE.GPL)
  • I doubt the copying permission text is right/valid.

Let me clarify the last two points, here's the current header (email addresses removed):
{l Code}: {l Select All Code}
/****************************************************************************
** Copyright (C) 2011 Luka Horvat <>
** Copyright (C) 2011 Edward Lii <>
** Copyright (C) 2011 O. Bahri Gordebak <>
**
**
** This file may be used under the terms of the GNU General Public
** License version 3.0 as published by the Free Software Foundation
** and appearing in the file LICENSE.GPL included in the packaging of
** this file.
**
** This file is provided AS IS with NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING THE
** WARRANTY OF DESIGN, MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
**
**  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
**  along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
**
****************************************************************************/

As you can see in the first paragraph of the copying permission text on the third line you see "... in the file LICENSE.GPL included ...".
Now we compare this text to the one(s) on the gnu gpl site (link)
{l Code}: {l Select All Code}
    This file is part of Foobar.

    Foobar is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    Foobar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with Foobar.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.


So what should we do?
We must fix these problems, give copyright to the rightful copyright holders and update the year(s) (luckily we can look this up in the svn commit history).
But can and may we change/fix this without causing any legal issues?
My biggest concern is that we might have given some people copyright over the code and now plan to "take it away".

I hope someone with knowledge on this subject can help out.

Thanks in advance.
From,
Edward_Lii
User avatar
Edward_Lii
MnMS Moderator
 
Posts: 777
Joined: 20 Dec 2010, 16:46

Re: License questions

Postby Edward_Lii » 15 Jul 2012, 14:29

Hello all,

We've made some progress in resolving the licensing issues.
I've contacted gordebak and Luka Horvat, they both agreed on assigning the copyright to Me and My Shadow.
The copyright notice at the top of each source file has now been updated.

From now on we will request every (code) contributor to either assign the copyright to Me and My Shadow or disclaim copyright (public domain).
But we will by no means force contributors to do this, they are free to keep the copyright over their code in which case a copyright notice will be added to the header of the relevant file(s).
Basically we are doing the same as this: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AssignCopyright

Art licensing
We are currently resolving some uncertainties with the classic theme.
At first we didn't know the license the artwork at all, Luka has released the classic theme under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license.
This means a few things, first of all the classic theme used in meandmyshadow is also under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license.
And the Cloudscape theme should attribute Luka Horvat since the player and shadow sprites are based on the ones from the classic theme.

There are some art pieces in the classic theme of which I'm not sure what the source and thus the license is. :(
I know the checkpoint and the exit sprites were from XMoto, but I'm not sure what license they are under.

The classic theme also contains an (altered) version of Gem Jewel Diamond Glass.
We attribute him with his name, but the readme-license.txt file inside the archive goes a step further and I wondered if that was allowed with the CC BY license.
So I asked a question about it in the comment sections of the OGA submission, but maybe someone here can clear this up for us?

Anyway, we hope to will get everything fixed before V0.4. ;)
From,
Edward_Lii
User avatar
Edward_Lii
MnMS Moderator
 
Posts: 777
Joined: 20 Dec 2010, 16:46

Re: License questions

Postby acme_pjz » 16 Jul 2012, 08:02

Hi Edward_Lii,

It looks like the code and data of XMoto is release under GPL, but the license file doesn't say if it's GPLv2 or GPLv2 and above :|
Some of my open source games on GitHub
User avatar
acme_pjz
 
Posts: 665
Joined: 10 Dec 2009, 15:32
Location: PeeKing, China

Re: License questions

Postby Edward_Lii » 16 Jul 2012, 08:10

Hello acme_pjz,

acme_pjz {l Wrote}:It looks like the code and data of XMoto is release under GPL, but the license file doesn't say if it's GPLv2 or GPLv2 and above :|

I think I found something, on the "Send your sprite" page it says:
All the sprites you submit are published with the GPL license

Which contains a link to GPLv3, but looking at the url I guess they licensed it GPLv2/3 and above because that url will always point to the latest GNU GPL.
For now I've put GNU GPL as license with a link to 'http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html' just like they do on their submission form.

The art credits file is almost done, but another problem/question arose, what license should the level(pack)s have?
I first thought of a Creative Commons license, but that isn't going to cut it since levels are "functional" art and therefore CC is incompatible with the GPL license.

So we should license them under a GPL or GPL-compatible license.
From,
Edward_Lii
User avatar
Edward_Lii
MnMS Moderator
 
Posts: 777
Joined: 20 Dec 2010, 16:46

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest