Okay, trying for a compromise wording. Read on...
On 07/03/11 23:31, Martin Renold wrote:
Nice catch. Fully agree about requiring backgrounds to be public domain, now
that you mention the problem. (But if the background was simply visible
behind a much more substantial artwork, it probably would be no problem no
matter where the background came from.)
Anything substantial may well add enough original content to be a new
work, but not -all- work will (very rough sketches with few lines may
not). Best to be as safe as possible here. CC0/PD still?
About brushes, yes, .myb files are saved into the ORA but I always thought
of the brush preview images or the collection of them as being the much more
substantial part. Brush preview images are not saved into the ORA. I think
they could be allowed to be of any CC license. MyPaint runs fine without
brushes, so I'd say the license doesn't need to be GPL compatible even. But
I might be wrong there.
Interesting. I think of it as about 50:50 previews and the "program
code" in the .myb, but .uk is a sweat-of-the-brow jurisdiction rather
than an originality/creativity one. Quite a bit of thought and
experimentation can go into brush settings. Copyright does subsist in
them, unfortunately.
I'd recommend strongly against a NonCommercial license for *anything* in
the main MyPaint distro - purely because then our downstreams have to
rip it out into a separate non-free package if they want to meet DFSG
guidelines or similar.
I'm a big fan of putting as much as possible into the public domain, but
maybe freelance artists are not so happy to see their brush previews as main
part of a commercial application, without even attribution...?
This too. Let's try to not be too pigheaded about this, but permitting
commercial reuse is a necessity for our downstreams even if we steer
well clear of it ourselves. So the MyPaint forums might be a good method
of distribution for artists who wish to fully prohibit downstream
commercial reuse, but we can't accept such works directly into the core
of an Open Source program.
One compromise: request "CC0 for the brush settings + CC-By[-SA] 3.0 for
the brush previews". Which is less simple, but nails the attribution
concerns for the visible, potential-commissioner-facing part while
keeping the generated .ORA files completely clean (and 100% under the
artist's own copyright from the start!)
Problem is, how to communicate this? Licensing is difficult to explain
already, let alone applying two licenses to different file types of the same
collection.
Really we're trying to prevent accidental infringement more than
anything else, so... official but friendly. Via the Wiki, as advice for
contributors, and having received as much feedback as possible.
Meshing different sets of values is hard!
My suggestion would be to ignore the issue of individual brush settings that
might be scattered in ORA files. They are not the main content of ORA files
anyway. I would only think of a "collection of several brushes, together
with consistent preview images" to qualify as a "work" in the copyright
sense.
Ideally there should be no legal grey areas at all, for stuff in core
MyPaint anyway.
But I also really like the idea of encouraging brush sets as the primary
way of distributing brushes, because matched and consistent sets are
really nice to work with. So possibly this idea, but with the "visible
part / internal machinery" distinction above? What about:
------------------8<-----------------
1. Elements which are highly likely to be reused by artists in the
creation of new works, for example bundled brushes or background texture
images, need very open licenses so that artists using them can get stuff
done.
* Background texture images should be CC0 1.0 or Public Domain.
* Brush packs should be licensed as for background texture images.
Alternatively, you can use CC-By 3.0 or CC-By-SA 3.0; the pack's
internal brush settings[1] should still be licensed CC0 1.0 or Public
Domain, however.
Even if you choose PD or CC0 everywhere, we'll credit you in the program
files unless you ask us not to :)
[1] those boring sliders most people never see.
----------------->8------------------
I think that retains an identity for the brush sets and leaves space for
the maker to claim the level of credit they want, but without any
possibility of accidental infringement.
Wow. This is turning into three or more Q&As for the FAQ, I think, Just
to keep it simple to read.
If someone takes random brushes out of ORA files, and creates icons for all
of them that make them attractive for users, then would say "well done, this
is a new independent work on its own".
IMHO, that's the ideal, the kind of community values we're trying to
express (and I hope nobody gets upset by that - keep repeating "just a
handful of numbers", "boring sliders"!) I'm just trying to cover
certain benighted copyright jurisdictions that might say otherwise :(
--
Andrew Chadwick
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