[ORX] Creative Commons Release Question
greyorm:
Thanks for the feedback, Eero! TSoY and your work with it was one of the examples banging around in my head when I asked the question, so I appreciate the details. I honestly wouldn't have looked at it that from that perspective.
Eero Tuovinen:
How about you, what's your own viewpoint? I mean, why are you looking at a CC license in the first place? Seems to me that your goals in using the license would be primo material for figuring out whether a commercial or non-commercial license is better for you. It's easy for me to say that the whole distinction is artificial and stupid, but somebody else well might have a different situation where they rely on it.
pells:
This is, for me, a complex matter. To be honest, a whole part of my own project is how to use the CC, in conjunction with other "techniques" (you can see license here). And, at this point, I can't talk much about it ...
Okay, let's take a look at the issues.
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I'm also curious about your statement regarding CC being a trademark. Could you expand on what you mean by that?
I was exaggerating. CC is first and foremost a license (license which is released under itself). And note that CC is not the only way to do what it does : go see a lawyer and he'll write you down an equivalent license.
But, in this context, CC has the main advantage of being well established, and more importantly, to be readable by humans (a lot of logos out there for CC).
So, in some sense, releasing some material under CC has the main advantage of putting the CC logo (read "trademark" here) next to your name, own brand ... whatever. Knowing that CC has a good name, it might turned out be a good commercial/marketing move.
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I've published Solar System and World of Near under the commercial CC license, but the choice was mostly made by Clinton, whom I'm emulating on this point. I can't speak for him, but my experience as his sidekick on the TSoY project has given me the impression that while Clinton started out with the non-commercial license, he switched to the commercial one for the simple reason that the distinction wasn't practically worthwhile; are you going to refuse it if somebody wants to do something with that material, really?
They are other ways an author who might wants to use your material in commercial way to obtain the authorization from you. And there are clever ways than email.
That said, Eero, personally, and I understand your point of view, I wouldn't released material under commercial use.
That is, for current working project. I think for projects that are just "abandoned" (sorry for the harsh word), commercial use might be the best way to go.
And please, note that the SA is a little tricky. Derivatives work is kind of complicated.
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I should also add that I would not myself start an ambitious project with CC-licensed material if I had to rely on a non-commercial license from the original author. Game design is too much like work and business for me, I couldn't enjoy it if I knew that I couldn't go all the way with the project if inspiration took me.
Eero, that is a tricky part !!! With CC-licensed material, you can do some tricky stuff, by separating the content and identifying which part is "contaminated" by the license. So, you could use some NC material as part of your final work.
For instance, for Avalanche, I could use some NC-licensed material, regarding "a system" for instance, modify it, and then release it in some form that would respect the original license (thru a wiki, a single pdf). But, this "part" wouldn't contaminate either the text nor the illustrations of Avalanche. Not even other systems I could have came up with.
And that is a very fun part of self publishing those days !!! Well, of course, you would need a project that work well for that ...
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How about you, what's your own viewpoint?
Hey Grey, was is it ? If you just want to release ORX in the open, you might go with commercial use ... unless you want to stay "in the true spirit" of open source (à la unix) and go with BY-SA-NC. Be a hardcore opensourcer !!
greyorm:
Quote from: Eero Tuovinen on February 28, 2010, 12:00:11 AM
How about you, what's your own viewpoint? I mean, why are you looking at a CC license in the first place?
I'm waffling on the commercial license because my concern is that the lite version will prove more digestible/usable than the full version, and might thus prove to be a more commercially viable property with outside development, and given I put a lot of time and effort into it, I'd hate to see someone else just "yoink!" the lite version and find success with it that I don't benefit from.
On the other hand, a non-commercial license may easily prove unattractive to anyone actually looking to develop the lite version further, and the fact is there may be no value in the property as it stands, so why not release it and let other developers do as they wish with it/to it and see if anything valuable DOES develop? I'm also attracted to the NC license on personal ethical grounds.
I think the truth is I'm caught between the needs of our society (to be a capitalist and cling tightly to anything that might ever be profitable) and the needs of our culture (for greater freedom), and I'm actually rather disturbed, intellectually and morally, that I am not just choosing the latter.
Eero Tuovinen:
Would you not benefit if somebody takes the game and republishes it successfully? Seems to me like that'd be a point of pride if nothing else. Financially I can't really imagine it mattering either way, unless the new publisher were willing to commit mucho dinero on marketing to make the game a bigger hit than indies usually are; if they do, seems to me like you're netting plenty of publicity and nerd-fame without risking your own resources on it. Win-win in my books, although I imagine that one could be jealous about the lean profits of such an enterprise.
I don't see much moral dimension in this choice myself - if you don't want people to republish the work, then don't use a license that allows it. Seems to me that the major reasons for using an open license in the first place relate to a wish to garner further attention to the product and a wish to garner cooperation from other people in developing and marketing the property. The latter motivation is, it seems to me, necessarily accompanied by a conviction that you'll be able to keep up with your "allies" to whatever extent you want to. In other words: even if somebody should decide to republish the game to great acclaim, do you feel that you couldn't yourself benefit from this in whatever manner you're thinking of benefiting of the CC license in the first place?
A thought experiment: if you were Clinton R. Nixon, would you feel pissed? I took his game and completely revised the text, then started selling it under the same brand name. I'm not paying Clinton for the privilege. Do you think that Clinton's getting an unfair treatment, or a treatment you wouldn't wish on yourself?
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