Readme & FAQ Suggestion

[Chris]

Even that is dubious and will likely be laughed out of court. Just because you use Photoshop doesn't mean your photos are now property or some how in a binding contract with Adobe. They remain your property.

It's not the fact that they're made in the CS that makes them Bethesda's. As you mention, making images in Photoshop, or models in Maya or Blender, doesn't mean those companies own what you create.

The CS's EULA, however, is an agreement between you and Bethesda. You agree to turn over copyright to Bethesda of the things you create in the CS. This isn't an unprecedented idea. Company and contract work uses the same principle; you agree to turn over copyright to what you create under certain conditions.

Whether or not the CS's EULA would hold up in court, I have no idea since I'm not a lawyer. I imagine it'd be a very tricky question for underage people using the CS, as they can't legally enter into a contract by themselves. Or for people who live in other jurisdictions.

In either case, though, the vanilla CS's EULA doesn't apply to OpenCS. OpenMW itself is licensed as GPL3, and any user-created content is licensed however the creator wishes to license it. So if someone wanted, they could create all new game content using OpenCS, Blender, GIMP, or whatever, to completely replace Morrowind's content, and sell it. They need to follow the terms of the GPL3 for the engine (i.e. provide source code, and allow modification and redistribution of that), but their assets can be under a no-redistribution license, so anyone that actually wants to play the game content has to buy it.

[Greendogo]

Woah woah, guys. I was just saying that we should offer an explicit "agreement" to circumvent any future argument about the engine. If someone has the most logical idea about where to take the engine next, we should make it clear to them that we withhold the right to appropriate said idea for the benefit of the greater more unified project.

[Chris]

Woah woah, guys. I was just saying that we should offer an explicit "agreement" to circumvent any future argument about the engine. If someone has the most logical idea about where to take the engine next, we should make it clear to them that we withhold the right to appropriate said idea for the benefit of the greater more unified project.

Well, ideas aren't copyrightable. They may be patentable, but generally if someone publicly mentions a cool idea, there's no reason we can't implement said idea by ourselves.

The only thing we can't do is take actual code from them that we don't legally get (contrary to popular belief, they aren't compelled to give away a GPL'd program or source to anyone who asks; only people that legally receive the program are legally entitled to the source).

[Tarius]

This is a whole can of legal worms and we wont get anywhere with it. I am sure someone has tested it by now on some other game or something and there is probably case law because of it.

I agree though, just to be thorough a statement should be added.

[psi29a]

"Not our problem." <-- Because it isn't, that is between the modder and bethesda.

[Greendogo]

Woah woah, guys. I was just saying that we should offer an explicit "agreement" to circumvent any future argument about the engine. If someone has the most logical idea about where to take the engine next, we should make it clear to them that we withhold the right to appropriate said idea for the benefit of the greater more unified project.

Well, ideas aren't copyrightable. They may be patentable, but generally if someone publicly mentions a cool idea, there's no reason we can't implement said idea by ourselves.

The only thing we can't do is take actual code from them that we don't legally get (contrary to popular belief, they aren't compelled to give away a GPL'd program or source to anyone who asks; only people that legally receive the program are legally entitled to the source).

I'm not talking about copyright, at all. I'm talking about the Morrowind community's unwritten rule of not using someone else's work without asking or getting permission. I think we need to make it clear that we'll use ideas based on OpenMW for the betterment of OpenMW, even if people don't want us to, even though that would normally violate said unwritten rule of courtesy in our sweet little community.

This doesn't have to do with legality at all, but courtesy, and the desire to prevent a flame war or a community rift somewhere down the line.

[psi29a]

Then what would you write? So we can steal it and put it in the readme.

[ezzetabi]

Do we mean to host OpenMW mods in this site? If we do I think we should refuse works with restrictive licenses to reduce the amount of unusable good work.

[Zini]

Nope. Mods are content and content is outside of the scope of this project (with the exception of the example suite).

[Greendogo]

Then what would you write? So we can steal it and put it in the readme.

Something along the lines of:
"We reserve the right to incorporate and adapt any alterations or additions made to OpenMW's source code by third parties. This is a heads-up for those in the Elder Scrolls modding community that we may choose to use your changes to OpenMW in a future version of OpenMW, either with or without your blessing."

Something like that, I guess.