A Short, Quick, and Easy Guide to Open Licensing

By Tucker 'Ophanim' Patrick

I'd be willing to bet most of the people on this forum that have released mods paid no thought to licensing or anything of that sort. This, my friends, is a bad idea. I'm sure most of you have been around long enough for there to have been arguments/bad blood between two parties because of accusations of theft and the like. This is neither conducive to a happy, friendly forum nor a healthy modding scene.
I'm writing this thread in order to hopefully prevent these sorts of events from happening by urging you to release your work under either the GNU or Creative Commons license. I've read through both of these, and I'll try and explain it to you, to the best of my ability. Keep in mind, though, that I am not a lawyer, so if I make a mistake, PM me and explain it and I'll fix it.

A better name for this segment would be GPL, since I'm only going to explain this license, as I feel none of you is likely to use the rest of them. To begin with, GPL stands for General Public License. As of June 29, the GPL is at version three. The basics of the GPL is to guarantee four freedoms:
[*]The freedom to use the software for any purpose.
[*]The freedom to change the software to suit your needs.
[*]The freedom to share the software with your friends and neighbors.
[*]The freedom to share the changes you make.
Taken from A Quick Guide to the GPL, by Brett Smith
More information here.
Now, as you may have guessed, this is geared more toward software developers writing in compiled languages, and not people writing into .ini files with no encryption whatsoever. This, my wonderful friends, brings us to:

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is the license that I, personally, urge you to use. The CC is broken into four, separate conditions. These conditions are:
[*]Attribution
[*]Share Alike
[*]Noncommercial
[*]No Derivative Works
So, I'll break it down by condition.

Attribution is CC's most accommodating condition. This license lets others do anything they wish with your work, even commercially, so long as they give credit the way you request. What this means is that anyone can do anything with your work, even sell it, so long as they credit you, and in the way you request. Distribution is free and modification is allowed, even encouraged in most cases.

Share Alike

Share Alike is the condition I urge all of you to release your works under. This license is the exact same as Attribution, but requires those editing, distributing, or selling to release their modifications under the same exact terms as you, with no exceptions of modifications to terms. This means that if you release it under Share Alike and require that you be credited, then no-one that uses your work may do so without crediting you, or in a closed-source project, or under any license but Share Alike. Derivatives of derivatives of the original work also must credit the first derivation.

Noncommercial

Releasing your work with the Noncommercial condition means, as you may have guessed, that your work may not be used in any project which is sold or used to make money, without your express permission. This condition does not affect the CC modding scene in the slightest, so I do not recommend for or against this condition.

No Derivative Works

This condition means exactly what it sounds like. While anyone may use and share your work, they must use it in whole, neither changing or removing any part of the work. I doubt anyone will need or want to use this license, but who knows.

Licensing Your Work

Creative Commons:
http://creativecommons.org/license/
GPL:
Simply include one of the files found here in the download and specify that you are releasing your work under the GPL in your post.

I hope this has helped. All that being said, I'm releasing this under Creative Commons.

Attempting to release a mod under a No Derivative Work license is utter foolishness; unencrypted CC variable modding is probably the easiest thing to duplicate on the planet.

You're utterly free to do so, random modder who feels they should, but good luck with it actually working out. Proving anything in CC is a copy of anything else is rather hard when everything ends up just about the same basic structure.

Brb, releasing a pack of base.rte weapons under no derivatives.

I have not yet read the entire GNU/CC info fully but would Like to know if any given work, can have MULTIPLE licenses, Such as, under creative commons, use the "attribution" terms as well as the "non_Commercial" terms, meaning that the work may be distributed and modified freely, so long as credit to the original author is given, but that specifically it may NOT be sold.

The reason I bring this up, is that it doesn't make sense to use the non commercial or no derivative works, in the context of Cortex command mods... YET...

Think about Half Life 2 mods for instance, there free for the most part... Oh wait, Garry's mod, it's NOT free and it's just a damn mod. What is to stop a person from Making a mod, a very damn nice mod, and then selling it?

Lets say Hypothetically that Grif makes a mod:

Grif's Hypothetical mod, consists of
12 Campaign missions in sequential Order, with scripts
24 Multi-player maps
2 Factions
-Consisting of 2 Humans, 1 brain, 1 ACrab, 8 guns, 3 grenades, 1 rocket, and 1 dropship

All of which using may or may not use lua, and custom sounds and sprites, made specifically for it.

This mod would constitute a full on expansion pack, and potentially, he could SELL his mod, granted for a buck or 2 considering how simple it is to make said content, but he could actually sell it and make a profit.

Noone has done this yet, as the content we are restricted to is currently by inis, and existing types, but with the addition of lua, and completed campaign mission mechanics (of having a sequential order, or a tree of possible outcomes or story paths, as well as potential cinimatics), IE the game being finsihed, potentially we could create high-quality add-ons.

So far to my knowledge Data has made no mention of the license issues of cortex command mods, beyond that mods are OUR intellectual property and not his, and that only the game engine and core content is his. and therefor we could legally sell, unless he creates an append to the license/contract EULA for cortex command itself specifically stating against selling modification, IE place Cortex command and its modability on CC under a non-commercial license, in that he could sell it, and it could be distributed, but any modifications could not be sold.





There is a great deal of legal confusion when it comes to the concept of selling mods, because noone's done it, and so far there have only been really 3 or 4 mods that could get away with trying to be sold.

In fact I can name 2 of them, CRobo and Bear faction. Those are 2 of the most complete, and high quality mods in this game's history, and I can seriously see that if data doesn't require an EULA Excluding it, Those 2 mods could wind up being sold, rather than free (if they where greedy)

Granted at the moment most mods get downloaded maybe 20 times, others (like CRobo and bear faction) get a few hundred DLs, so if someone got the idea of "I'll sell my mod for pocket change, like a $0.25" and get maybe 20 bucks if its great, assuming that people here are honest and not at all the pirates that alot of people admit to being.





Yes its a stupid idea to try to sell mods, but the fact is it can potentially be done, which is why I had the legal question, because I honestly wouldn't want anyone editing my mods and selling them. and if anyone got the idea to compile every mod to a disc and sell a collection of "all the mods from CC" I sure as hell don't want my mods on it, because thats another commercial use, and with the exception of non commercial, it specifically states that they can be SOLD by a 3rd party, which means profit for a stranger and none for the creator.




The short version, by bringing up licensing and legal issues into a modding community, you sir, have opened up a can of worms.
Granted, for getting it so organized, you have earned a great deal of my respect for the attempt, and assuming people here aren't total idiots this shouldn't go over to badly... but it might.

I didn't actually want to double-post but this is somewhat important.

You left something out.

This is quoted directly from the Creative Commons FAQ.



So if you only use creative commons, you cannot defend your license in court, as US Courts do not recognize creative commons. so within DRL We're fine, and it means if someone trys to sell there mod we can all pirate it like hell, and they can't legally do a thing in the US. This to me is extremely stupid, but It's stupidity on america's part. I just thought I'd bring this up, and as it's unrelated to my previous post, opted for a 2nd post.

As modders of the game, we are assumed to have the right to modify the game. However, as soon as DRL stops allowing us to make mods, we're done. There's no legal basis for selling a mod, and I am about one hundred percent sure Data would not allow someone to sell a mod. If they did, he'd be fully within his rights to stop them; it's a derivative work that requires his product to function.

Nice work ophanim, though only really a good facet to some of the more major mods out there. Still, well presented for the most part, besides those ugly logo images that have white backgrounds. transparency man!

So, if I wanted to release one of my mods under CC, I just grab one of the images, like , and stick it in the mod's OP?

As opposed to a black logo image on a dark grey background?
Miles, for the love of ♥♥♥♥ god, cliffnotes. I am not going to read any of your posts ever if you continue to make them into ♥♥♥♥ novellas. I will, however, address the first paragraph. You didn't read anything at all, bud. They're conditions, not licenses. For someone who writes novels on a forum you sure don't read a lot.

Yey, added a licence to my mod and now the file size is 35kb larger!

The Creative Commons thing is customisable, there's a license creator on the site which has a bunch of conditions, including the ones you raised. So if you went through the form you could make one that specifically demands non-commercialness...

Whenever I make something, I just use share alike. It allows legal spread of your work as well as allowing others to express their creativity.

Which is exactly why I recommended it.

your idea will almost surely be ignored as there are ♥♥♥holes in the world, although i really would've wanted it to work (says the man who have died a lot)

Neither Creative Commons or the GPL are my idea.

Inverting the colours works fine; you should end up with a white logo on a dark grey background then. But in reality my point was just hairsplitting, the real point is the logos are there and that's a good thing