Sellable?

[Egarwaen]

Well, a bunch of people (3, I think) make NTAI buildtrees.

Right, but the NTAI code can be distributed independently of the buildtrees.

[AF]

the people who currently have stuff in XE8: Argh(buildtree), Lindir(buildtree), me, Veylon (stuff I ported over from OTAI then modified), bamb hasnt sent anything yet so no AA buildtrees

[Trevor]

Thats ok. Ill be sure to get all the permission I need from all contributers, and AF, if you dont want me to include your AIs, Ill respect that and create my own. Don't think Im trying to be critical or anything, but if the devs put TA Spring under the GPL, doesnt that mean they wont mind me using it for a commercial product? "Targ Collective", you say I should obide by ethics and not sell anything including it, but is that not what the GPL gives me the right to do? After all, if they thought they didnt want anyone making money off of their work, they wouldnt have put it under the GPL, right? It strikes me as odd that someone would license something under specific terms and the revoke certain ones they dont like. If your going to do that, than why not just put it under a stricter license? Dont get me wrong, I will check with all members of the team, but I just wanted to make that heard. And I wasnt trying to be hostile or snap at you guys, so dont see it as that.

[jcnossen]

The source is released under GPL, meaning you can do anything with it that is allowed under the terms of GPL (including commercial stuff)

However the content has no proper license, or worse, is under Atari copyright, so you should stay away from that.

[SinbadEV]

In particular the UNIT SCRIPTING LANUAGE AND COPILES UNIT FORMAT are copywrite atari, as is the 3DO object format... so if you are going to sell it you'll need to help us make a new complied scripting language...

[jcnossen]

A format in itself isn't copyrighted actually. We are not using any cavedog code (or headers), we just happen to use the same format.

But I'm not sure if the same applies to the COB tools, do they use Cavedog/Atari code?

[SinbadEV]

fomats can be copywrited, MP3, PDF, XML, are all copywrited, with variouse licences attached to them... even C++ if you want to get right down to it... (I don't know what licence or whatever... but Python has one http://www.python.org/doc/Copyright.html )... just because you ignore a fact doesn't make it false.

Edit: Unless of course I am wrong.

[Egarwaen]

fomats can be copywrited, MP3, PDF, XML, are all copywrited, with variouse licences attached to them... even C++ if you want to get right down to it... (I don't know what licence or whatever... but Python has one http://www.python.org/doc/Copyright.html )... just because you ignore a fact doesn't make it false.

Python's implementation and documentation are copyrighted and licensed under the GPL. The language itself isn't. MP3s and PDFs are covered by patents. Not sure about XML and C++.

[mr sharpoblunto]

There seems to be a bit of confusion over trademarks and copyrights here.

Simply put a copyright protects a specific work, i.e a book, song, peice of software etc. and prevents you from using copies (or a very close approximation) of all or part of the work (this excludes fair use which governs using a small part of the work for a justifyable purpose) without the authors permission.

A Patent covers an idea, not a specific implementation. If something is patented it doesn't matter if you've implemented a system without using a single piece of copyrighted material. If it uses the patented idea, you have to get permission from the patent holder.

Finally a trademark protects a specific image or logo, but thats not really an issue for spring.

So basically the OTA content is copyrighted by Atari, but the spring source code (since none of the OTA formats or systems were patented to my knowledge) uses no cavedog code/copyrighted code it is perfectly legal. So as long as no OTA content is distributed with spring theres no legal issues (as long as the source is available as under the terms of the GPL).

[Targ Collective]

Thats ok. Ill be sure to get all the permission I need from all contributers, and AF, if you dont want me to include your AIs, Ill respect that and create my own. Don't think Im trying to be critical or anything, but if the devs put TA Spring under the GPL, doesnt that mean they wont mind me using it for a commercial product? "Targ Collective", you say I should obide by ethics and not sell anything including it, but is that not what the GPL gives me the right to do? After all, if they thought they didnt want anyone making money off of their work, they wouldnt have put it under the GPL, right? It strikes me as odd that someone would license something under specific terms and the revoke certain ones they dont like. If your going to do that, than why not just put it under a stricter license? Dont get me wrong, I will check with all members of the team, but I just wanted to make that heard. And I wasnt trying to be hostile or snap at you guys, so dont see it as that.

No, I didn't say that. It's perfectly ethical to sell your work. It's just not ethical to sell others' work, or to use it as a vehicle to your own project, without their explicit permission.

I really do wish you luck, and am eager to see what you can come up with. I'm just trying to ensure that the Devteam's interests are respected; I have no reason to squash your ambitions.

[Tim Blokdijk]

I'm quite busy at the moment but I do like to reply here.
I have no problem with commercial exploitation of the Spring stuff (Engine, Mods, AI, etc..)
The only this is that "we" as the Spring community need to do it.
Something like a MySQL AB, Novell or RedHat model would work with Spring I think.
But right at this moment Spring is not ready.

[AF]

I dotn object to my work beign sold, I object to me not getting anything from it. I'm not bothered how much but if you do I would like something even if it's just an offering of a penny (£0.01/$0.0099) as a symbolic token of appreciation representing collectively all you've sold.

However selling it and not even telling me, or selling and disregarding me is another thing entirely, and that is more what I'm opposed to.

[Egarwaen]

No, I didn't say that. It's perfectly ethical to sell your work. It's just not ethical to sell others' work, or to use it as a vehicle to your own project, without their explicit permission.

They GPL'd it. That is explicit permission, as the GPL explicitly allows anyone to charge money to distribute the work in question or any derivatives of it.

[SwiftSpear]

I dotn object to my work beign sold, I object to me not getting anything from it. I'm not bothered how much but if you do I would like something even if it's just an offering of a penny (£0.01/$0.0099) as a symbolic token of appreciation representing collectively all you've sold.

However selling it and not even telling me, or selling and disregarding me is another thing entirely, and that is more what I'm opposed to.

How much of your code ships with the spring core distribution? Do your AI's?

Anything that you've consented to have ship with the main spring core distribution is now under GPL, meaning it can be sold without you being contacted. Content developers for spring are free to licence thier content however they please, so if you have only developed content and have yet to licence it then feel free to licence it however you please.

---------

The spring ENGINE is under GPL. Almost NOTHING that is shipped with the spring executable asside from the executable itself is GPL. ONLY the engine (and I think a few models in XTA pimped if you pull the textures off them, but you need to do your own recearch to figure out what is available and what isn't).

Most of our content as far as I know right now is under general copywrite or copywrite owned by atari, therefore if you want to use it you either need to contact it's author or atari. Like AF has already said if you're willing to pay him when you receive profits then he'd probably be willing to let you use his content. I imagine that other content creators would have the same sentiment, but they need to be contacted on an individual basis.

[AF]

I never said I would accept money either, a token offering, not a token payment.

Should you be making lots and lots and lots of money though, that is when I'll want royalties, and I'll take the necessary actions to change what needs changing.

[Torrasque]

AF : You know how many people have work for spring ? You know how many people will have worked for Spring ? In one year, it will be perhaps 50.

Your not alone, how can you give money to all people that have worked for Spring? How knowing who have not that much worked, or who must be the most rewarded ?

IHMO, if they make good change to the engine, it's engouh to be good for Spring.
If money have to be given, I would be really better to give it to the community to have better server or I don't know what else.

[SwiftSpear]

AF : You know how many people have work for spring ? You know how many people will have worked for Spring ? In one year, it will be perhaps 50.

Your not alone, how can you give money to all people that have worked for Spring? How knowing who have not that much worked, or who must be the most rewarded ?

IHMO, if they make good change to the engine, it's engouh to be good for Spring.
If money have to be given, I would be really better to give it to the community to have better server or I don't know what else.

They can't, that's why thier content is either under GPL or it isn't.

As far as I know we don't ship any content with the spring source distribution, and if there is content being shipped it needs to be removed ASAP because we can't legally claim that it's under GPL, which we are claiming the source code is.

That being said, if any author has agreed to contribute to spring source code they have also therefore agreed that those contributations belong to the spring GPL licence and not them any longer. The spring team isn't obligated to be contacted if someone wants to use ANY part of the souce code for a comerial endevor. We're really only being protected here by content that belongs to communitiy members here and the fact that we have by far the largest dev team working on project material to improve the source.

[BlackLiger]

heh. Alantai, you start charging royalties for your AI, and I'll start charging you royalties for the suggestions I made for it, whether you used them or not, on the basis that even unused ideas inspire further ideas

[Tobi]

Note though that technically anything distributed in the same installer/archive, on the same CD as spring, must be GPL too, effectively protecting us from people selling GPL'ed spring with non-GPL'ed content as an integrated package:

These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

Furthermore, selling a GPL'ed product is fine and perfectly legal, but you must include either the sourcecode or a written notice valid for at least 3 years, so that anyone who buys your modified/extended product can give it away for free and/or modify it.

Effectively I think this means that you can sell a mod or a pack of mods and maps, but that you can't include spring in the same package, unless you distribute mods and maps under terms of the GPL too (which is not really sane IMHO).

E:hm, reading that part of the GPL better, it seems that you can do that after all, as long as it's a mere aggregation of different product on the CD / in a package, and the other product do not depend / are not based on in any way on the GPLed product.

Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program.
In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License.

[Egarwaen]

E:hm, reading that part of the GPL better, it seems that you can do that after all, as long as it's a mere aggregation of different product on the CD / in a package, and the other product do not depend / are not based on in any way on the GPLed product.

Content used by the GPLed program can be under whatever license you want. Take Python, for example. A Python program fills the same role as a Spring mod, but I can distribute a Python program and interpreter on the same disk without GPL-ing my Python program.

As another example, take a Linux distribution. Here you have a core "engine" (Linux) running "content" (programs). Yet these programs don't have to be GPL'd. Or a GCC distribution.

The only time the GPL's "viral" clauses come into effect is if one work is a derivative work (as defined by copyright law) of a GPL'd work. It's long-settled that things like programs aren't derivative works of the compilers that compile them or the interpreters that run them. I think there's enough separation between Spring and the Mods it runs for the Mods to be independent works, but IANAL, and this is not legal advice. Trevor really should consult an IP law lawyer.