Republishing under different licence is one option. Another one is receiving permission from authors of all used pictures to publish them under different license. (Maybe this is the easier one.)
I would like to note that I am not a lawyer, I am just giving my best guess. (And I really hate that we have to discuss such things, instead of focusing on what we love to do.) Seems to me that no option offered by Lulu is OK.
With "Creative Commons Public Domain" or "Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0" you could remove some rights of the image authors. Both licenses allow third party to create a work based on your book (that means a work based on original images) and forbid its commercial use by image authors. GPL guarantees that whoever makes a work based on the original images, if the authors of original images receive it, they may sell it.
"GNU Free Documentation License" is incompatible with GPL, don't ask me why, but Wikipedia says that.
I am really not sure about this, but it seems to me that perhaps the best option would be to publish the book under "Standard Copyright License", and add a text description that the book is provided under GNU GPL. I do not know how much legally OK is such hack, but under given circumstances it seems to me like the only way to publish it under GPL on Lulu. (Even stronger hack would be to put the GPL information inside the book.) Now I would really like some lawyer's opinion on this.
Viliam wrote:Republishing under different licence is one option.
If it means publishing under GPL, yes.
Viliam wrote:Another one is receiving permission from authors of all used pictures to publish them under different license. (Maybe this is the easier one.)
Yes.
Viliam wrote:With "Creative Commons Public Domain" or "Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0" you could remove some rights of the image authors. Both licenses allow third party to create a work based on your book (that means a work based on original images) and forbid its commercial use by image authors. GPL guarantees that whoever makes a work based on the original images, if the authors of original images receive it, they may sell it.
Public domain is simply "everyone can do everything", which is obviously more than allowed by GPL. (CC did not invent this, only created a logo.)
CC-By-NC-SA does not allow anyone using something commercially, while GPL allows it. So this is less then GPL.
But the fact with GPL is: When you create derivatives, they have to be under GPL, not any other license. Even if this other license gives really the same rights to anyone as GPL would do (like CC By-SA), it is not permitted.
Viliam wrote:"GNU Free Documentation License" is incompatible with GPL, don't ask me why, but Wikipedia says that.
The thing with software licenses are, that they have to be designed to be compatible, by mentioning this explicitely in the license. GNU GPL and GNU FDL are both only compatible to itself. (With the slight exception of this "migration clause" for wikis given by GFDL 3.0.)
GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL, also known as "Library" license) is an example of a license compatible to GPL - but only because it contains a sentence like "you can also take any component and relicense it as GPL instead of LGPL".
Viliam wrote:I am really not sure about this, but it seems to me that perhaps the best option would be to publish the book under "Standard Copyright License", and add a text description that the book is provided under GNU GPL. I do not know how much legally OK is such hack, but under given circumstances it seems to me like the only way to publish it under GPL on Lulu. (Even stronger hack would be to put the GPL information inside the book.) Now I would really like some lawyer's opinion on this.
I think, putting it inside the book is a good idea independently of how to mention this at lulu.com. Since anyone could get the PDF from some other source.
I hate having to worry about licenses as much as the next person, and I realize that this issue has been effectively resolved, but I would like to make the case that the comic didn't need to use the GPL after all, because it's covered by the fair use clause of U.S. copyright law (of course, this is specific to the U.S.).
The "fair use" clause is *extremely* vague, but is neither long nor particularly incomprehensible:
Section 107 of U.S. Copyright law:
§ 107 · Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include— (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copy-righted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copy-righted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
As has been mentioned, screenshots are in some ways a gray area, but I'd be a bit surprised to find that Wesnoth as a community counts the comic as other than "fair use" for the following reasons:
First, legally, you'd have to take into consideration the fact that the comic has if anything a positive impact on the market for the copyrighted work. You also have to take into account that the work is made available for free, and that the comic is produced in a totally separate medium from the game.
Second, although the work certainly uses whole single sprites, it doesn't use anything like the whole "content of Wesnoth the game", and in more general terms, the similarities between the comic and any part of the game are to some degree superficial. The strongest case for a connection that could be made in my opinion is that the comic is a reproduction of the copyrighted scenario plot in a different medium. And perhaps this case is enough to back up a copyright claim (not that anyone would make one...).
However, I object to the notion that things using Wesnoth sprites (as long as they make creative, non-game use of such sprites) should be GPL'd. The screenshots that peileppe used were more than just reproductions of the sprites: they used the sprites to create a larger piece of art, and the specific sprites, although important, were rather less important to the piece of art as a whole than their arrangement (not to mention the accompanying text).
Basically, I just think that it's draconian and counter-productive to require/ask/encourage people who use Wesnoth screenshots as the basis for other art to GPL their art, especially given the fact that the GPL is particularly poorly-suited to art in general, being intended for things like code. I'd argue that even if such works are not technically covered by fair use, the Wesnoth community should actively refrain from mentioning the technical GPL requirement, since it discourages artists, and the likelihood of anyone ever suing over such an issue (not to mention winning the resulting ambiguous case) is miniscule.
On the other hand, I fully support propagation of the GPL when Wesnoth sprites are used as sprites in other games (or when frankenpacks from Wesnoth sprites are used), because this is exactly the kind of use that the GPL was intended for (albeit with code): if someone upgrades your GPL'd sprite, the resulting sprite should be usable (and upgradeable) by you and anyone else who wants to do so.
Teamcolors for everyone! PM me for a teamcolored version of your sprite, or you can do it yourself. If you just happen to like magenta, no hard feelings?
by thespaceinvader » March 10th, 2009, 12:00 pm 
