hello

orvus · Post by **orvus** » October 15th, 2004, 10:11 am

I dont know a lot of licences and usages, but i could use the graphics of the this game for a comercial version of it for other plataform.

Thanks.

Elvish_Pillager · Post by **Elvish_Pillager** » October 15th, 2004, 10:21 am

A) What other platforms?
B) No, you can't. If you use GPLed graphics, you have to GPL your work.

cedric · Post by **cedric** » October 15th, 2004, 10:46 am

Elvish Pillager wrote:If you use GPLed graphics, you have to GPL your work.

Which is not incompatible with making commercial software.

--
Cedric

cobretti · Post by **cobretti** » October 15th, 2004, 12:40 pm

cedric wrote:
Elvish Pillager wrote:If you use GPLed graphics, you have to GPL your work.
Which is not incompatible with making commercial software.

--
Cedric

.. as long as you don't limit copying and distributing it, give proper credit to the original authors, and give all the source code with it. (and I probably forget many more clauses...)

cedric · Post by **cedric** » October 15th, 2004, 12:57 pm

cobretti wrote:.. as long as

As long as you comply with the GPL terms, indeed, which is what was being talked.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
COPYING file in wesnoth tree
--
Cedric

cobretti · Post by **cobretti** » October 16th, 2004, 1:29 am

Of course. I was only pointing that many times people think about 'free stuff' as 'something you can pick and use in whateverway you want without asking, because it's free(ware)'.

scott · Post by **scott** » October 16th, 2004, 2:21 am

cobretti wrote:
cedric wrote: Which is not incompatible with making commercial software.

--
Cedric
.. as long as you don't limit copying and distributing it, give proper credit to the original authors, and give all the source code with it. (and I probably forget many more clauses...)

Does this apply only to the borrowed graphics that were under GPL or the source for the entire commercial product? I get lost when I try to look this stuff up at gnu.org.

silene · Post by **silene** » October 16th, 2004, 5:38 am

scott wrote:Does this apply only to the borrowed graphics that were under GPL or the source for the entire commercial product?

Quick and imprecise answer: the entire commercial product.

cobretti · Post by **cobretti** » October 16th, 2004, 1:29 pm

silene wrote:
scott wrote:Does this apply only to the borrowed graphics that were under GPL or the source for the entire commercial product?
Quick and imprecise answer: the entire commercial product.

Not so quick and less imprecise answer: GPL is 'vyrical', that is, any product which contains some part licensed under the GPL must conform the GPL as a whole, unless the authors of the new product speak to the original authors (who still retain the authory rights) and manage to get those parts with another license which does not force them to make that new product fall under the GPL. It applies to any part of a GPL work, not just code, but of course it's more difficult to say precisely what 'source code' for an image is.

GPL is not about 'price=0', but about giving the user some rights commercial licenses usually don't (like redistributing, modifying, and so). You could charge for your GPL product so much as you want, but you couldn't stop others to redistribute their copies for free. That is usually the main reason to not charge at all, having printed manuals to be sold with, have dual licenses, or slightly different versions of the same program using different licenses. (This is not bad. Even programmers have to eat and support a family

)

The only more note to take is that the GPL has never be 'tested' in court, so it still hasn't got the same strengh when forcing it to be fulfilled as other, more classical licenses have.

silene · Post by **silene** » October 16th, 2004, 1:37 pm

cobretti wrote:The only more note to take is that the GPL has never be 'tested' in court, so it still hasn't got the same strengh when forcing it to be fulfilled as other, more classical licenses have.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?stor ... 2315554313

Iron · Post by **Iron** » October 18th, 2004, 1:59 am

Actually, the GPL isn't that great when applied to graphics and sounds. It protects the work in that a no-one can sell the graphics (they have to be provided freely). But the so-called "viral" aspect of the GPL, wherein if you include GPL'd programming in a product, the whole product has to come under the GPL, does not apply to graphics or sounds unless they are somehow linked into the product's code.

Section 2. of the GPL is the part that covers this. While its rather vague in saying what constitutes a work that is "based on" a GPL'd product, it is very specific in saying that mere aggregation of GPL'd content along with other work that isn't under the GPL, does not bring that other work under the GPL, and also that identifiable sections of the work not derived from the "Program" (in this case the graphics) do not come under the license.

The way I would read this, if a commercial program was told to load the image "./images/wesnoth_gpl_grass.bmp", the commercial program couldn't be said to be based on the GPL'd work. All its doing is loading a separate image, and it doesn't know what is in that image - the image may be GPL or may not be as far as the program is concerned. Even more so if the program is simply reading which images to load from a user-defined control file (as indeed Wesnoth itself does). In this case there's no way anyone could argue the rest of the commercial product was derived from those graphics files and therefore has to be GPL'd.

Sorry I'm a bit longwinded, but I hope I'm making sense. Personally I think it'd be very wrong for a commercial game to use Wesnoth graphics in that way, but I don't think the GPL prevents it from happening. If the artists really didn't want this to occur they should perhaps consider the AFPL (http://www.ghostscript.com/doc/AFPL/8.00/Public.htm).