Guild of Writers

Keep in mind that only the client is under the GPL. You as the copyright holder of your age decide how you want to license it--so make sure your license terms (whether it be CC, beer, or something else) work well with any resources that you may have used.

Sirius wrote:Is this aimed at me or am I being paranoid ?
(this is not a rhetorical question. I'm not angry at you either, Calena, but I want to be sure)

Definitely not aimed at you Sirius; you just happened to be the unfortunate soul that had that site named front and center in this thread. Heck, it's listed on Tweek's site. I've been using their textures and I'm certain a lot of others have too.

Sirius wrote:Let's say I mean to use CGTextures' textures in my Age, without modifying them.
Let's say I want to release the exported version of this Age, but WITHOUT releasing any of the 3D models (which are entirely mine) or textures (which are not mine).
(let's also forget about sounds or scripts)
The Age is free to download, and the textures with it (they are stored "out of reach" in the game files [even though reverse-engineering is relatively easy]).

If I understood correctly, my Age ISN'T an open source project, and it's not a profit-oriented project either. I'm not releasing textures in a scrap book either.
So theoretically, it would be fine, right ?

I think you've got this right, but this is one of the things I'm not certain about. If we were talking about a T-Shirt design or something, I wouldn't have even bothered mentioning it. But in our group of builders, we could have ages with hundreds of textures in the age. I'd rather know for a fact exactly how this works up front than discover we've misunderstood everything after we've done massive amounts of work that is now useless.

Sirius wrote:This kind of license and property restriction always bugged me, especially in Uru's case. If I were to release such an Age, I know I would triple-triple-triple check these anyway. Or even ask people around here. Or both.

But since I never had to, I just assumed I could do anything with it as long as it stayed on my computer

I also don't pay much attention to what I download for personal use. It isn't like I'm getting textures from one of those well-known pirating sites. As long as the NSA doesn't come after me, I'm not going to worry about this too much. Still, it's technically only legal if the copyright owner says it's legal.

Sirius wrote:BTW, without being sure, I *think* I saw some textures from CGTextures in some fan-Ages already. I'm not pointing anyone (and I won't). Even though it's impossible to trace all textures from all fan-Age on UAM or DI or whatever, what if someone released copyrighted material ?

There's definitely some textures from cgtextures and similar sites in my ages on Deep Island. Then again, the entire shard is . . . I'm not going to worry about that too much .

Tsar Hoikas wrote:Keep in mind that only the client is under the GPL. You as the copyright holder of your age decide how you want to license it--so make sure your license terms (whether it be CC, beer, or something else) work well with any resources that you may have used.

This is the part where I'm still confused. I don't understand how the links between the age data and the source code work as far as copyright. I'm hoping all that is needed is maybe a little .txt file uploaded with an age and that takes care of it. That would make life easy.

Thank you for the clarification, Calena

As for the client's source code, since Cyan released it as GPL, I guess it would be ok to develop any Age on it, since it's just a way to "read" Age files.
Using open-source tools does not make your work open-source, IMHO (since Blender itself is open-source).

I too have many textures from CG Textures in my Age Sirius

If I understand all the posts here correctly, it's okay to release an Age if you avoid to release it under GPL or any other open-source licence?

But what if I want to release the source of an Age (Blender files or MAX files)? Isn't this necessarily open-source then?

tachzusamm wrote:If I understand all the posts here correctly, it's okay to release an Age if you avoid to release it under GPL or any other open-source licence?

You can license your own work under any terms you wish, generally speaking. If you used the work of others in the parts of your work that you wish to release (such as textures, models, sounds, etc.) then you are bound to distributing those assets under whatever terms you accepted them, if you are allowed to distribute them at all. Pay attention to the licenses for what you pull into your own works, or only use things with terms compatible with how you intend to release your own later.

tachzusamm wrote:But what if I want to release the source of an Age (Blender files or MAX files)? Isn't this necessarily open-source then?

No, it's not. Like anything else you create, the terms you release it to others under are entirely up to you. If you utilize the works of others in the data you release, then you are compelled to adhere to those as well when applicable.

You can release your Age source under a license that permits people to do absolutely nothing with it, but that would be practically useless, and you'll find at least a few people using it anyway. You could release it under the public domain (or legal equivalent in your country), or you can license it anywhere in between, using either a pre-written license (GPL, CC), or one of your own devising (not recommended if you're not a lawyer).

However: the moment you use assets from another party, you must have a license from them to use those materials, and if it's going to be useful at all, to redistribute them at least in some form. Textures are an easy example. You might run into trouble if you attempt to release your Age source, including the full-res textures from a site that forbids you redistributing their unmodified high-resolution textures.

There's always a question of what constitutes "modification" and "derivative", fortunately at least in the case of CGTextures they spell out that distinction for their license:

CONDITIONS OF USE

Use of the Textures is only allowed under the following conditions:
- Private or commercial use
- Use in 2D or 3D computer graphics, movies and printed media
- Incorporation in computer games, 3D models
- Selling 3D models bundled with modified versions of the textures, when the texture is customized for the 3D model

It is NOT permitted to:
- Sell or distribute any of these textures in an unmodified form
- Release the Textures or derivative products under Open Source Licences

So textures you use in the making of an Uru Age, Avatar, etc., are within the terms, and can be distributed as part of those assets. However, unless you've modified the texture specifically for your chosen usage, you cannot distribute the texture as-is such as providing the Age source with the textures embedded. That last bullet point is a bit silly: you can't relicense someone else's work, but it's probably worth reminding people just in case. They do also require that you document your usage of their textures when sharing something that contains them: "One or more textures on this 3D model have been created with images from CGTextures.com. These images may not be redistributed by default, please visit http://www.cgtextures.com for more information."

All-in-all it's pretty reasonable. But it means you need to pay attention, and be diligent when selecting sources. Don't just pull random images off of Google Image search. By default you have no rights to use someone else's creative works in one of your own. Fortunately there are some very good resources with reasonable terms that you can use to build your own creations. Always keep in mind how you eventually intend to release something you've made, and be certain that when you use a third-party source that it's compatible with your goals.

Deledrius, thanks for taking the time and making the effort to help clarify some of this for us. Since I started studying this, I've been keeping a notebook handy so I can keep notes about license requirements for assets I download. Most of what I have are images used to create textures and the site authors simply stated the images were free to use in any way I'd like. But I have used some images from cgtextures in this little age I've been building. I also have some soundtracks that are licensed CC-BY, so I guess I'll upload my first attempt at a fan-age license file when I upload the age . There's the skull model, but that's licensed CC only, no restrictions. I don't know about Karkadann's cutlass. Hopefully, he'll let me know if there's anything I need to put in the license about that (especially since I've got the thing publicly available through a link!).

Right now, I plan on creating a .txt file using "myAge_LICENSE" as a naming format. At that time, I'll ask everyone here to take a look at it and share whether or not it reads appropriately.

By "everyone here", I mean devs and builders with a direct stake in this process. I mean no offense to anyone else, but sometimes too many opinions cause more confusion than anything and I'd like to avoid that if possible.

Thank you, Deledrius. Your explanation was much longer than my questions, hehe. ^^
Generally, I understand what you wrote - seems pretty logical. Actually, my questions were meant to refer especially to CG Textures. I just forgot to mention that (it was late at night in Germany).

Deledrius wrote:

CONDITIONS OF USE

Use of the Textures is only allowed under the following conditions:
- Private or commercial use
- Use in 2D or 3D computer graphics, movies and printed media
- Incorporation in computer games, 3D models
- Selling 3D models bundled with modified versions of the textures, when the texture is customized for the 3D model

It is NOT permitted to:
- Sell or distribute any of these textures in an unmodified form
- Release the Textures or derivative products under Open Source Licences

So textures you use in the making of an Uru Age, Avatar, etc., are within the terms, and can be distributed as part of those assets. However, unless you've modified the texture specifically for your chosen usage, you cannot distribute the texture as-is such as providing the Age source with the textures embedded.

Okay, let's be more specific, and talk about Relativity, our community project.
When we use textures from CG Textures - and that's currently the case - we can publish the Age as game files, right?
But it's not allowed to re-upload the sources of the Age, as originally planned, to give others the ability to add own stuff?
Or is there a license model that is not open-source, but still allows others to work on the Age, contribute stuff, and re-upload the modified sources again?

Deledrius wrote:That last bullet point is a bit silly: you can't relicense someone else's work, but it's probably worth reminding people just in case. They do also require that you document your usage of their textures when sharing something that contains them: "One or more textures on this 3D model have been created with images from CGTextures.com. These images may not be redistributed by default, please visit http://www.cgtextures.com for more information."

Where does CG Textures require that? I cannot find it.
Instead, their FAQ says:

CG Textures FAQ wrote:Q:Do I need to add credits or a link to this website when I use these textures?
A:Credits or a link are always appreciated, but they are not required.

For me, this is all a bit confusing, and to feel safe, I think I don't like CG Textures as a source for Age building no longer.
Although a lot of textures used in Relativity are self-made (I took images with my own cam), there are still some (not too few) images derived from CG Textures material. Now I have to replace them all, which means, find replacements for them first.

I am afraid i have to do the same with the ages i have currently in build, i also relied on cg textures.
Probably its the best if we as a group from now on start to fill Texturu with our own photo's and textures made of those , so we can be sure to have a free to use library.
Since we all live in different parts of the world, we can find lots of interesting stuf around the corner that are totally unique for its area.
Lets share that.


Another question. May or may we not use the textures from cyan since they open sourced it, and if so what exactly and are there restrictions?
In my last age "cathedral" i have used a lot of URU textures in a certain area only because i wanted to get the same feeling of being in a dni'sh surrounding.
I can change it to my own made textures but then it wil give a different admosphere.

dendwaler wrote: Probably its the best if we as a group from now on start to fill Texturu with our own photo's and textures made of those , so we can be sure to have a free to use library.
Since we all live in different parts of the world, we can find lots of interesting stuf around the corner that are totally unique for its area.
Lets share that.

Could those of us who are not builders, but who like photography, help too? We'd need a steer as to the sort of thing you'd want and the format you'd need it in.