License information not accurate: Game media isn't all CC-BY-SA

[Viech]

Tremulous' COPYING file states

The media is licensed under the CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION-SHAREALIKE 2.5 LICENSE.

However, this is not completely true as many media files (especially textures) are released under different licenses. For example atcs, arachnid, nexus, karith, tremor and niveus all ship textures by evillair which have been released under the "Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License" (with additional rights granted).

My opinion:

Of course it would be awesome to have all media files under a single CC license but it's not possible unless every thirdparty texture and sound not fitting that exact license will be exchanged or recreated by a development team member. Otherwise it's necessary to attribute all included thirdparty media separately, naming the particular author and license. You could still state that all game media is released under various CC licenses if that's the case.

I think a good way of handling this issue would be to leave the license listing as a task for the mappers and refer to the individual <map>.txt readme files (which already exist for all included maps except for arachnid2 and transit). This would also allow maps with different licenses (e.g. noncommercial) to be included in the main game (which I think is an important side-effect).

[/dev/humancontroller]

Tremulous' COPYING file states

The media is licensed under the CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION-SHAREALIKE 2.5 LICENSE.

However, this is not completely true as many media files (especially textures) are released under different licenses. For example atcs, arachnid, nexus, karith, tremor and niveus all ship textures by evillair which have been released under the "Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License" (with additional rights granted).

that's pure bullshit. Tremulous 1.1.0 and all related assets (along with the said textures) were released before CC-* 3.0 even existed.

[Viech]

Tremulous 1.1.0 and all related assets (along with the said textures) were released before CC-* 3.0 even existed.

I'm sorry I actually didn't think of that. I also talked to Timbo hwo said that he made evillair to rerelease textures under CC-BY-SA for trem (so they obviously weren't released under CC-BY-SA back then). Still evillair's website says they are under CC-BY-NC-SA so thats the point where I got it wrong.

Also I didn't want to offend you. I know that you take licensing serious (see sound files). I just wanted to propose an improvement idea that might lead to more freely available non-CC-BY-SA content being includeable in Tremulous.

[ULTRA Random ViruS]

timbo still alive?

I also talked to Timbo...

[Undeference]

This topic again? Seems there's one of these every few months. (See this and this and let these die already.)

I just wanted to propose an improvement idea that might lead to more freely available non-CC-BY-SA content being includeable in Tremulous.

Modders/mapmakers can already do whatever they want. It just won't be included as part of a release.

[Viech]

timbo still alive?

I also talked to Timbo...

Talked to him on IRC. Didn't know he isn't active anymore.

I now understand that noncommerical-use-only licenses might be problematic when it comes to Linux distributions which are sold on disc or releases of Tremulous with gaming magazines, etc.

I also found the mail from evillair which Timbo released on the Forums some years ago and am going to reference it when I include textures from evillair in a Tremulous map. Same goes for ydnar textures which I currently don't use (thanks for the link).

I'm still confused about sound samples which are released under "CC Sampling Plus" (https://reativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/). Since I just sample them as defined in the license I should be allowed to release my derived sound files under whatever license I like but still I'd need to attribute the original author which I would do in my map's readme file. Am I getting this right or is there a problem I didn't consider?

Also I wonder if media licensed under the more relaxed CC-BY license (w/o SA) could be included into Trem. Normally it should be possible to mix CC-BY and CC-BY-SA as long as any result is released under CC-BY-SA but I'm not sure if the wording in COPYING would allow it.

I'm sorry if I got anything wrong, I'm no lawyer after all. Still I would like to handle things correctly and maybe retain the chance to contribute to the official 1.2 release.

[vcxzet]

FYI 1.1.0 sounds are pirated from BBC Sound Effects Library.