pouët.net

This thread is still here?!?! I was convinced someone would have stolen it by now...

What license do you recommend? Or just the standard license, i.e. not stating anything at all within your prod, which I interpret as a common sense rule, i.e. the author has agreed about his prod to be spread and shown on demoparties, but not on everything else, e.g. commercial use?

you're not strictly required to use the new licenses, i guess? (i don't bloody know how this works.)

You can of course use old licenses if you really want to, just watch out for auto-upgrade clauses and the like. Such a trick was done with Wikipedia to move from GFDL to CC license: first a nwe GFDL was made that allows migrating to CC, then Wikipedia "auto-upgraded" to that new GFDL version and in turn used the CC migration option to finally move to CC.

God, this license thing is so pointless sometimes - when I was putting the firefox ext on AMO and GoogleCode, it kept insisting I had to select a license and they didn't really overlap on what they offered so I had to mix and match for something I essentially would've preferred as "who cares".

I'm seriously reminded of the time Legalize went bonkers over Partymeister because they didn't have a license attached.

If I recall correctly there's a licence along the lines of "do whatever you want but don't sell it or complain when it breaks".

Or maybe I just made that one up.

probably, but the trick is that sites like AMO only offer a very narrow selection.

creative commons was developed to simplify the licensing process. to clearly state what others can do with your work, without having to contact you.

there are several versions to cc, the current one is 4.0, the changes for deprecating nc and nd are being discussed for version 5.0. you will still be able to license your works with older cc licenses even when 5.0 is out. in the end you are the one deciding what license you want your work associated with, cc is more like a standard, something that helps others recognize faster what your license means. so you can chose whatever license you want or even extend on the terms of a chosen cc license you picked.

if you dont include any license on your work the copyright laws on most countries state the work cant be used by third parties without your consent until it reaches public domain status, depending on the countries it can be from 20 to 30, 50 or 70 years after your death. what has been happening with most popular works is that they never seem to reach public domain, someone usually files a claim they own the copyright for it and it gets perpetuated. it has been happening with very old works (that the author is long dead or unknown) due to new copyrights on derivative works (the old folk fables that disney appropriated for example). and it has been happening with new works (that the author is recently dead or wanting to public domain his own work) due to relatives and companies battling for the copyright claims and the copyright law being revised to delay the time the works take to get into public domain.

it might be what you want for your work. but it seems a great majority of indie artists disagrees and prefers to have cc licenses allowing others to share, remix and reuse without having to contact them.

this choice is more of a free culture discussion, which is also a big grey area discussion arena for most folks, some of their arguments varying with the state of the moon, so it's best i don't go there in this thread.

Knoeki: WTFPL

loogie, best pouet post ever. thanks for _finally_ writing something worth reading that will touch many extremely tender demoscene hearts; and at the same time is not another drama rant. penis in ass next time we meet. (not ours ofcourse, we will just make someone smaller and much more tender do it for us)

Knoeki: You're unlikely to find a licence in common use that has a "don't sell it" condition, because that would fail to qualify as free/open source by the people who define these things. Other than that, the BSD and MIT licences are basically what you describe.

Out of curiosity, what do people feel is so bad about CC BY-SA? I can't help but think that the whole "other people making money out of my stuff = BAAAD" attitude is causing people to reject it out of hand, when actually the 'share-alike' condition does a pretty good job of excluding "bad" commercial uses (of the Timbaland variety) while permitting things like the Mindcandy DVDs. The worst case is that someone goes the extra yard or mile to make your stuff commercially marketable and ends up reaping all the financial rewards - but as far as I'm concerned, if someone can achieve that while still giving me fair credit and ultimately contributing the result back to free culture, then best of luck to them. (If it's such an easy job to commercialise our stuff, why aren't we doing it ourselves?)

(OK, I phrased that totally wrong... "the CC NonCommercial licences they're trying to get rid of" and "the Microsoft Windows EULA" are two examples. What I mean is, the sort of people who come up with "as liberal as possible" licences are usually strongly opposed to "don't sell it" clauses.)

That is sad. To me, the best thing of CC is that it does not try to impose a pack of conditions and you can choose exactly what people can do with your stuff.

I do not understand why some people are afraid of the NC-ND clauses. These clauses just say what you can do with the work without contact the author.

But you can still contact the author and negotiate if you need to.

There was the additional issue that PM didn't support "standard" software at the time, because it didn't run on IE6.

Didn't netpoet say in his Revision seminar that WTFPL is not a proper license?

If you want to be cynical about it, lots of people break their own moral codes.

If you don't want to be cynical about it, find a moral code and live by it. Just make sure it isn't based on some lawyer's definition of how large part of a work you can steal without it being stealing.

It's wrong in by book to make money off releases without contacting the author.

by=my.

I love how it reached the point of such non sense. How would it sound with: "Your video doesn't support WMPlayer" or "Your photo doesn't support Photoshop"...

I'm with Gasman, I feel more comfortable thinking that someone is making a reward - as long as it's small enough to be considerd more a refund than an actual salary - by crediting my work and putting my name on it, than watching people stealing my stuff and putting THEIR name on it.
It may sound like closed-mind thinking, but I do also believe that if someone's is afraid that his own work/idea could be stolen, should not post it on the net: it happend years ago that some people tried to make money out the projects posted on my website (without my consensus, of course).
By the way, what should I do for applying a CC license on my code / artwork / etc? Is it enough to paste the CC logo and licence with the files I wish to distribute or should I do something more "trackable", like registering somewhere?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTbjLOem2Qg

bundling the license details with the package or having it clearly shown on the website where it can be download/streamed/viewed from is enough.

again, the cc license is _allowing_ others to do extra stuff, so it's actually giving _them_ the authorization to use your work in this or that way. if they use your work illegally it's up to them to prove, if you ever bring the case to court, where they got the licensing for that use that wasnt contemplated in your cc licensing.

also, cc isnt really meant for code, more for music, text and graphic artwork. you should look at other permissive licenses like gpl or mit if you want similar licensing concepts to apply to code.