Readme & FAQ Suggestion

[Greendogo]

Later on, post-1.0, I'm sure there will be lots of player made modifications to the OpenMW engine and some of them may be things or ideas that we'd want in the baseline OpenMW.

The problem is that in the Morrowind modding community it is a social faux pas to use someone else's work or ideas without their permission. Sometimes, when this unspoken rule is broken, people get really bent out of shape and start flame wars and troll the offending project.

So my solution is thus: We should add a statement to both the FAQ and the Readme file informing people that any modifications or additions they make to the engine may be incorporated into the baseline engine. This would be a really helpful reminder to people who don't understand the license or think it applies to them so we don't necessarily need to get the permission of each and every good-idea-haver who modifies the engine down the road.

That's rarely going to be a problem, sure. But on the odd occasion that the original developer of an OpenMW modification is incommunicado or would otherwise be quite against the incorporation of his work, it would then be quite handy for OpenMW and the community as a whole for OpenMW to have a blanket statement frankly stating that it withholds the right to emulate or incorporate any good idea or modification that floats its way.

I just think the MW Modding scene operates by much different rules than the open-source programming world, and we ought to really make it clear which rules we're going to operate by so that people don't "get really bent out of shape and start flame wars and troll" us.

[Zini]

Not sure, if that will become an issue. The idea is to keep the development of OpenMW within this project. If someone want to fork it, they are obviously free to do so. But I doubt that it will happen and if it does probably for something very radical, that is outside the MW community anyway.

[Tarius]

I agree with the opening post. Someone people are just plan OC about this stuff. Some of them to the point that, I know of at least one guy, that would purposely break playing a mod through in a game because the person "cheated" at it; they even put a message in about cheating.(no, that 'story' wasnt really about permissions, but just look at the permissions page over at fliggerty's and how many people on there dont want anyone using their stuff)
Yes, it is unlikely/rare, but someone could definitly get angry about things being included that they created.

[psi29a]

I see this as solving itself.

OpenMW is GPLv3 and looks to be that way for a long time to come. We should probably have an explanation stating what this means for users, modders and developers.

For users, nothing changes.
For modders, their mods are their property to license it as they wish.
For developers, all their commits/forks/work will be GPLv3 and open-source.

If a modder puts a restrictive license on their mod... everyone must respect that.

If a modder has an idea and their mod does something that developers think is interesting to put into OpenMW, the developer has every right to implement that idea into OpenMW and credit the idea to the modder. This only applies to the idea. Assets like meshes, shaders and models are still the property of the modder.

Should also be noted that OpenMW does not ship any mods, nor content in any way, the only thing that comes close is the Example_Suite being worked on. This will be licensed under a Creative Commons license that allows for free use and distribution. We should encourage modders down this road anyway.

Does this sound reasonable, is there anything not covered?

Update: Here are the type of CC licenses that should be used by modders to make things clear what everyone may or may not do with their assets: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

[Zini]

Okay, that sounds reasonable.

[TorbenC]

How about selling? Does this mean a modder can sell their OpenCS created mod? If so, how does this not contradict Bethesda's licensing?

[psi29a]

How about selling? Does this mean a modder can sell their OpenCS created mod? If so, how does this not contradict Bethesda's licensing?

Not our problem.

That is between the modder and bethesda.

Can someone cite bethesda's licence with regard to mods? As far as I am aware, all mods are the property of the creator(s) of the mod. If you want to sell it, that is your business so long as it does not contain any IP that explicitly says that selling is forbidden.

[TorbenC]

How about selling? Does this mean a modder can sell their OpenCS created mod? If so, how does this not contradict Bethesda's licensing?

Not our problem.

That is between the modder and bethesda.

Can someone cite bethesda's licence with regard to mods? As far as I am aware, all mods are the property of the creator(s) of the mod. If you want to sell it, that is your business so long as it does not contain any IP that explicitly says that selling is forbidden.

You are an author so you have copywrite over the mod but iirc you are not allowed to sell the mod or to list it as a paid download.

Don't quote me though, I couldn't find the license online to double check.

[Chris]

You are an author so you have copywrite over the mod but iirc you are not allowed to sell the mod or to list it as a paid download.

These two ideas contradict each other. If you have copyright, it's yours to license as you wish, including commercially. The only thing you can't do is relicense stuff that you don't have copyright on.

The no-selling rule came about because of a clause in the vanilla CS's EULA, which says that anything you create in it belongs to Bethesda. But if you do not use the vanilla CS to create the content, its EULA has no say in it.

[psi29a]

The no-selling rule came about because of a clause in the vanilla CS's EULA, which says that anything you create in it belongs to Bethesda. But if you do not use the vanilla CS to create the content, its EULA has no say in it.

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.

Example here is if Zini wants to sell his project... he has every right to do that because he (and his co-developers) are the owners of the TC/Mod.