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Revise Licensing Policy #528
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Here's my proposed revision: Q: How do I license my artwork or code for inclusion in MyPaint? A: If you want your contribution to go into the official MyPaint distribution, you need to apply a license to it before we can distribute it. We use a mix of the public domain, Creative Commons licenses, and Free/Open Source Software licenses:
The reason for this is that we try to ensure that elements which are highly likely to be reused by artists in the creation of new works, for example background texture images or raw brush settings, are made as free as possible so that artists who use them don't have to worry about copyright infringement. Background textures and palette filesBackground texture images and palette files for inclusion in the main MyPaint distribution should be Public Domain so that artists can reuse them as freely as possible. The Creative Commons "CC0" dedication is a well-known way of advertising that. Here's what to write in your README:
Though words to that effect can be embedded in the images' metadata or comments fields instead. GIMP palette files have a description field which can be used for the same purpose. Background images and palette files you contribute may end up embedded in works that other artists wish to publish under other licenses, so this waiver is needed. Brush packsIdeally, use Public Domain. Alternatively, use Creative Commons "CC-BY" or "CC-BY-SA" version 4.0, but release the raw brush settings into the Public Domain. Long form: brush packs for inclusion into the main MyPaint distribution should be placed into the public domain just like background images, but they do not have to be. Instead you can use the Creative Commons "Attribution" or "Attribution-ShareAlike" licenses, both of which require redistributors to give you credit. Note that if you choose one of these fancier licenses, the pack's internal brush settings must still be Public Domain. Here's an example of how to say that in your brush pack's README:
We need the exception for the raw brush settings because those bits are copied around very enthusiastically by the MyPaint program — including into files others might want to distribute with their own license. Making the settings Public Domain allows them to do that. Of course, you can still claim copyright on the pack as a “work as a whole”, including all the preview packages and supplemental cover-type artwork in it, but excluding the raw settings. If you want to use a Creative Commons license, it must be version 4.0, and it cannot be a NonCommercial or a NoDerivatives one. If you choose Public Domain for the entire pack, you'll still be credited by us in the program About box unless you ask not to be named. ;) Supplemental artwork or promotional materialIf you want your work to be used for promotional purposes (e.g. on our website at mypaint.org, on third party sites, or within the MyPaint program), please use the "CC-BY 4.0" or the "CC-BY-SA 4.0" licenses. For example:
You can express this in any form suggested by the Creative Commons guys' license chooser: http://creativecommons.org/choose/. If you posted your work on our Community Forums or in Github issues, you'll need to provide this additional license on the post in a human-readable form and allow us to redistribute under just that license. Embedded metadata would be ideal for other situations. Creative Commons licenses on components of the MyPaint distribution must be version 4.0, and they cannot be a NonCommercial or a NoDerivatives license. We suggest marking images intended for use as promotional screenshots with the text “© <> <>, CC BY-SA 4.0”, in a readable but unobtrusive fashion. Program codeAll new program code and supplemental data files should be licensed under the GNU GPLv2.0, with the "or (at your option) any later version" clause. They must be licensed in a way that is compatible with this. This includes program icons and artwork for display within the program. Retain the existing license boilerplates when working on existing code. Please put a boilerplate header on each new program file in the format recommended by the license itself. It's fine for individual programmers to claim copyright over new files which originate with them. Updated 2015-12-14
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Looks good to me. The proposed changes don't change anything other than the CC version number and getting rid of "unported" language, correct? |
Yup that is correct. If there isn't any more objections, I'll update the page. |
Actually before I commit this change, there one thing I need to ask. Creative Commons dose allow the ability to wavier some rights to a particular entity of their choice. It's called Creative Commons Plus. Could we word it in a way that allows that allows the Artist to be able to license with NonCommercial and/or NonDerivative Use, but authorize MyPaint Commercial and Derivative Use? Here's an example excerpt from CC+ WIki Page: <span xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
<span rel="dc:type" href="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text" property="dc:title">My Book</span> by
<a rel="cc:attributionURL" property="cc:attributionName" href="http://rejon.org/my_book">Jon Phillips</a>
is licensed under a
<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/">Creative Commons
Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0 License</a>.
<span rel="dc:source" href="http://deerfang.org/her_book"/>
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at
<a rel="cc:morePermissions"
href="http://somecompany.com/revenue_sharing_agreement">somecompany.com</a>.
</span> I'll submit another revision explaining that later, and post the one we have now. |
@odysseywestra I always turn to the DFSG on these matters, as a benchmark of the sort of thing that Debian and derivatives allow into their "main" repo - the freest one. It's a very real concern, because that's exactly where I want to put MyPaint! Screenshots and other promo material might be candidates for inclusion in Debian because of docs. Program artwork always would because it it's part of the app. I think {CC-NC + not-NC-for-MyPaint} would fall foul of the discrimination clause (groups of persons) by giving everyone other than MyPaint a more restrictive license than members of the MyPaint team. Such a license would also fall foul of the free redistribution clause because it would prevent people downstream from selling MyPaint or collections of software which include it. So... no on CC+, please. Special-case licenses are a huge mess that will cause problems downstream. It's clearer and simpler to state that the license must be free for everyone if work is to be included. Our stringent requirements of free reuse™ don't affect:
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Updating the licensing policy raises one other question: what do we do about existing works licensed to us for inclusion that use CC licenses with version 3.0? I think it's fine to grandfather these. After all, we've already accepted the works into MyPaint, so we've already applied a freedom test and decided they won't hurt anyone. Do we need an actual grandfather clause to say that? |
I understand. I didn't know about the DFSG so thanks for highlighting that. Probably we want to mention the DFSG as well in case anybody asks on the forums about why we don't allow CC+ material. I believe v3.0 is compatible to v4.0, plus each are compatible to the GPLv2 for CC-BY-SA, and CC-BY. So we can grandfather them without problem. |
From mypaint/mypaint.github.io#8
Forgot we need to write that exception in so we can accept artist's work in our Gallery Page, and the website in general on MyPaint.Org. |
Okay I've revised the draft above include content on our community site. Let me know your thoughts, and whether I can use this draft to update our current license policy. |
Suggest saying they're "automatically licensed". I can see the lack of a NonCommercial module being unpopular. Control over your own postings is expected by posters on other systems. It would be surprising and alarming for posters to discover late that all their past posts had all been made commercially exploitable by everyone by an obscure TOS clause that nobody reads. The Discourse people chose CC-BY-NC-SA for their UCL. They didn't state in their discussion why they chose NonCommercial over a Commercial-Allowed version, but I suspect it's for that reason. IMO: NC would be a guarantee that both ourselves and anyone else aren't going to exploit posters' works without their explicit consent. They'd grant us that by applying a freer license in addition.
Typo: etc.
That's not really what the Dual License thing is about. Posters have to grant the site ops the right to republish, and we've selected a specific CC license to allow that. I would suggest:
This point needs to be dropped. We must be granted the right to republish, so our UCL must apply, whatever license we select for the UCL. If a user posts an image in full and tries to state "© Joe Artist, CC BY-NC-ND", then the result is nevertheless dual licensed. Downstream users would be free to select the least restrictive license for reuse/adaptation/redistribution, so slapping an additional stricter license on the content just wouldn't work. And it couldn't make the effective licensing more restrictive.
This is almost a recap of the first bullet point, given the way Discourse works (doesn't Discourse take an appropriate thumb when it does its fancy links? Fair Use / Fair Dealing applies for thumbnailing off-site links these days, I would guess).
With an NC license, we wouldn't be able to do that anyway. What do you think about making the UCL NonCommercial, just like upstream discourse? I'd suggest
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There is also the option of just have the policy of only the original poster may republish contributions Since the majority of our users will be artists they may opt for this. That way we can just leave the licensing policy(with exception of updating to the CCv4) the way it is and just tell if they want their artwork on our website or distributed with MyPaint, they would just need to license their content on our forums as CC-BY or CC-BY-SA. A good example of this is the forum for the KDE Forms where the Krita Community Resides Their policy clearly states that
I can see this in the long run would be the less headache route than trying to force a user or artist to use a certain license whether it's the Creative Commons or the GPL. I'm actually in favour with going this route. |
Deviantart also has a good section about Copyright in its TOS as well.
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Okay I've updated the Draft Licence Policy above to reflect the propose changes. Any thoughts? |
I've added my own little updates too, covering screenshots submitted via GitHub. That should work similarly to forum postings. The section needed a few other revisions too. I like keeping the Licensing Policy independent of the forum's choice of UCL, just stating "if you want us to be able to do promo stuff, you gotta license us (and everyone else) to distribute it freely". |
Alright, Awesome! I'll go ahead and push the changes to our WIki. If we need to do any more changes to our Licensing Policy, just open up a new issue. |
Alright Changes are pushed to our Wiki. |
Currently our Licensing Policy in our wiki currently uses version 3.0 of the Creative Commons License. We should update it for version 4.0 of Creative Commons.
What new in Creative Commons 4.0
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