Accidental music contributor...

[xbriannova]

Hello guys... I was just surfing the net and all of a sudden, I've had the idea of looking for medieval music on the web to listen to... Mainly to get a hang of how they sound like when all of a sudden, I found this:

http://www.jsayles.com/familypages/earlymusic.htm

This guy is apparently distributing free medieval music that he created on his own. His copyright is basically... no copyrights. He wants his music to be distributed freely and used for any purpose.

What if we could convert them to the .ogg format and use these for our campaigns? I've listened to a few of these pieces and some of them are swell to use! Although... I have to admit none of the stuff I've heard so far are fit as that sort of really engaging battle music...

What do you guys say? Could we use these? I think I'm gonna search for more websites promoting such music...

[thespaceinvader]

Wesnoth is looking for music original and unique to the project, written for the project. So whilst this guy's music may be good, unless he's willing to come and contribute som original work, it won't be used in mainline.

[xbriannova]

Wesnoth is looking for music original and unique to the project, written for the project. So whilst this guy's music may be good, unless he's willing to come and contribute som original work, it won't be used in mainline.

Hmm... Wesnoth's policy is a little more complex than I thought then... So what do I have to do to use some of these music pieces? Do I have to fire him an email? If its about originality then I guess I can't use any of it now can I? I mean, if I want my stuff added to the mainline..?

Thanks for finally replying thespaceinvader, I was starting to get worried that for some reason, people are starting to shun me because of some obscure reason or something, as if I'm the heir of Slytherin or something XD

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

YOU can use it, I'm pretty sure, in your own UMC, but it won't be used for mainline.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong here.

[xbriannova]

YOU can use it, I'm pretty sure, in your own UMC, but it won't be used for mainline.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong here.

I'm sure you're right in reiterating what thespaceinvader was saying... You're not wrong... Unfortunately hahaz

[thespaceinvader]

Indeed, you're welcome to use it in UMC. However, getting your UMC added to mainline is not exactly easy. I doubt this would hold you back, given that removing music is not exactly difficult.

[xbriannova]

Indeed, you're welcome to use it in UMC. However, getting your UMC added to mainline is not exactly easy. I doubt this would hold you back, given that removing music is not exactly difficult.

Hmm... You're right but... I don't know. I don't know know what's the reason but somehow I think adding those pieces into my campaign would cause the developers to hate it. So... Maybe I shouldn't...

I'm aware that its hard to get stuff added to mainline but if I don't try it, who will (Okay, I know alot of people are trying but... XD)? Besides, I welcome the challenge and I won't be so worried if it doesn't because I'm in not just for that. It's also fun to develop a campaign here plus... I'd feel happy enough if people are entertained by me, and if it would have a permanent place in the add-on server.

[gmlion]

Actually, since Wesnoth Music is GPL, we can ask music to be original, but THEN it could be used everywhere, so there is not much difference I think

[xbriannova]

GPL seemed like a simple policy to understand at first but it seems that it isn't that simple after all in practice...

I don't think I'd go so far as to ask the composer to compose original music though, gmlion. I'd feel really bad about it, unless of course, he wants to join the Wesnoth Development community XD

[Sangel]

GPL seemed like a simple policy to understand at first but it seems that it isn't that simple after all in practice...

Just to clarify - "Wesnoth only accepts original pieces" is not dictated by the GPL. It's a preference of the Wesnoth developers that is unrelated to the legal license requirements.

[Jetrel]

GPL seemed like a simple policy to understand at first but it seems that it isn't that simple after all in practice...

Just to clarify - "Wesnoth only accepts original pieces" is not dictated by the GPL. It's a preference of the Wesnoth developers that is unrelated to the legal license requirements.

Indeed.


And anyways, ultimately our policy, like with art, is not a strict act of absolutely forbidding (appropriately licensed) content that wasn't specifically made for wesnoth, from being in the project. What we want is only content that fits.

Unfortunately, to any discerning observer, almost nothing that wasn't specifically made for wesnoth will fit; a few rare things might - over in the art department I was able, for example, to find some ships that matched our terrain art in another OSS project, and thus avoided having to roll our own, but nearly nothing can be borrowed and not stick out like a sore thumb.

It's the same reason why, even if they were licensed, I couldn't just throw some monster sprites from Secret of Mana into wesnoth. They wouldn't match. The shading gamut would be different, the color scheme in one would be bright and pastel, and in the other, more realistic. Etc. Things in a set possess common characteristics, and due to combinatorics, most stuff not made as part of that set won't have those characteristics.


The amount of stuff that would actually fit is surprisingly high, but the poison in the well is that, because everything is behind a commercial ownership wall, 99% of stuff out there can't be used. So we have to take the pool of potentially useable stuff and shrink it 100-fold, which basically makes it pretty negligible.

This is the sort of cultural-liberation stuff that the pirate party talks about; independent people trying to make games run into the problem of needing several 'verticals' of assets; they need several main ingredients for the game which are really hard to make. So hard that they take the skill-equivalent of a master's degree. The only options are to either be a polymath, or to get someone else to do it, and because it's such an enormous undertaking to 'do it' - often several man-months/years of labor, it's not something done on a whim. It's generally not done. It's generally such a barrier that someone without the capital to hire an expert fulltime to make a necessary ingredient (be it art or code) for a project is just forced to give up.

Whereas, if we have less restrictive copyrights, you could piggyback on existing stuff and actually manage to create something the world would otherwise not have.

[xbriannova]

Ah I see... I can understand. I mean, we wouldn't want Wesnoth to be just a giant Frankenstein right? Shiver me timbers, it'd remind me of Evony Online . Hence, I don't think I'd want to grab music from other place. I guess in a way, I knew this right from the beginning. Thanks for clarifying.

[Tyler Johnson]

This "Accidental Music Contributor" doesn't even know what Wesnoth is. That's the first step...

[xbriannova]

Hmm... Yeah... I can sense a conspiracy going to net that guy in for Wesnoth development... Hmm...