Skin Licensing Thoughts

[Dreadlorde]

May I ask, what the fuck is this shit?

You may NOT make any changes to this file without strict permission from the author.

Note: This thread has been split out of the following thread to try to keep that thread about the completed work. All discussion here is good discussion but this really is better as a separate thread.

http://quakeone.com/forums/quake-mod...ad-link-3.html

--- Baker

[Lightning_Hunter]

May I ask, what the fuck is this shit?

I was just thinking the same thing about your post.

If Fragger wants people to ask his permission before doing anything with his skins, then that's his right. These days, people steal everything on the net. I can understand fully where Fragger is coming from. Texture artists get fed up with people stealing their stuff and claiming it as their own. And seriously, how hard is it to send a simple e-mail to get permission from an artist? Anyone that doesn't have the patience to do that has no business even modifying the artists work in the first place. So please, be courteous. Think before you type with those nasty appendages on your hand next time.

[Fragger]

May I ask, what the fuck is this shit?

This is me:

This is you:

[Baker]

May I ask, what the fuck is this shit?

Hehe, well you know that could have been worded differently:

"Dear sir, might I inquire the purpose behind and your thoughts on the subject matter of this statement in the readme"

^^ Not that I haven't been [very] guilty on occasion of strongly worded statements here and elsewhere, hahaha. But hey, I'm a free speech advocate.

Note: On my Mac, when I unzip the rar file the readme is blank. I justed wanted to look.

[Baker]

May I ask, what the fuck is this shit?

You know, I was thinking about putting the missing readme into the .rar file but the readme disallows that! /end kidding around

On a more serious note, Fragger just fyi on a Mac they can natively unzip zip files but to unzip a .rar file you have to hunt all over the net for a utility that can decompress them (there is no "WinRAR" for OSX, well, there is but it is a rotten command line terminal app).

Just a heads up about "operating system" friendliness considering Quake is multi-platform.

[terminus]

"Dear sir, might I inquire the purpose behind and your thoughts on the subject matter of this statement in the readme"

You forgot *adjusts monocle*

[Dreadlorde]

Sorry if I might have offended you Fragger, it's just your 'license'; like my last post, is worded horribly. You could have easily used one of the creative commons licenses to achieve what your 'license' bluntly says. There's even a page to create a license on Creative Commons. Also the fact that your 'license' is so restrictive didn't make much sense to me.

I was just thinking the same thing about your post.

If Fragger wants people to ask his permission before doing anything with his skins, then that's his right. These days, people steal everything on the net. I can understand fully where Fragger is coming from. Texture artists get fed up with people stealing their stuff and claiming it as their own.

I can understand that (somewhat) too, but I honestly don't think that many people just go and take some textures and say that they made them. Some mappers may use some skins someone else made and not attribute them to the artist, but they're not claiming that they made it.

And seriously, how hard is it to send a simple e-mail to get permission from an artist? Anyone that doesn't have the patience to do that has no business even modifying the artists work in the first place. So please, be courteous. Think before you type with those nasty appendages on your hand next time.

The same thing could be said for the artists themselves. If an artist is going to distribute their works, they should have a proper license, not a vague statement on what you can and cannot do with the work.

[Baker]

Sorry if I might have offended you Fragger, it's just your 'license'; like my last post, is worded horribly. You could have easily used one of the creative commons licenses to achieve what your 'license' bluntly says. There's even a page to create a license on Creative Commons. Also the fact that your 'license' is so restrictive didn't make much sense to me.

Unless these skins were entirely made from the ground up without using any id1 textures or skins as a basis, he would NOT be able to do that.

For example, if I take the Quake grunt skin and modify it even heavily I can't release that under a copyleft license because it is a derivative use of id Software's work.

[Dreadlorde]

Unless these skins were entirely made from the ground up without using any id1 textures or skins as a basis, he would NOT be able to do that.

By 'basis' do you mean he took the textures from id1 and touched them up, or do you mean he used the look of the skins and made a completely new skin for a model, that had the same look, but didn't use any of id's original textures? The latter is what I think Fragger did; as far as I can tell from his posts about the remake process. So, is that considered derivative, or could he put the skins that he made under a copyleft-ish license?

[Baker]

By 'basis' do you mean he took the textures from id1 and touched them up, or do you mean he used the look of the skins and made a completely new skin for a model, that had the same look, but didn't use any of id's original textures? The latter is what I think Fragger did; as far as I can tell from his posts about the remake process. So, is that considered derivative, or could he put the skins that he made under a copyleft-ish license?

Well, the scrag skin for sure had to be a touchup or refinement of the original Quake scrag skin. That in itself means he couldn't volunteer that piece of Quake artwork under a copyleft style license even if he wanted to.

By the way, the Creative Commons is a terrible, terrible license compared to the GPL. Nexuiz and Open Arena use the GPL for example. The Creative Commons license agreement have numerous quirks (see link below, it's a truck-load of issues).

And the Creative Commons doesn't upgrade to new versions of the license. Something Creative Commons 2.5 isn't automatically available under, say, Creative Commons 3.0.

More or less the Creative Commons is a royal mess of a license.

On the ?Creative Commons?: a critique of the commons without commonalty

[Dreadlorde]

Well, the scrag skin for sure had to be a touchup or refinement of the original Quake scrag skin. That in itself means he couldn't volunteer that piece of Quake artwork under a copyleft style license even if he wanted to.

But what about the other ones?

By the way, the Creative Commons is a terrible, terrible license compared to the GPL. Nexuiz and Open Arena use the GPL for example. The Creative Commons license agreement have numerous quirks (see link below, it's a truck-load of issues).

And the Creative Commons doesn't upgrade to new versions of the license. Something Creative Commons 2.5 isn't automatically available under, say, Creative Commons 3.0.

More or less the Creative Commons is a royal mess of a license.

On the ?Creative Commons?: a critique of the commons without commonalty

I was using Creative Commons as an example. And the GPL is way too restrictive of a license for pretty much anything. I just put whatever I produce in the public domain.

Anyone having trouble getting these to work with darkplaces-sdl? I've renamed them and they're in 'C:\Program Files\darkplaces\id1\textures', but they aren't showing up in game. I haven't tried the .pak yet.

[Lightning_Hunter]

I can understand that (somewhat) too, but I honestly don't think that many people just go and take some textures and say that they made them. Some mappers may use some skins someone else made and not attribute them to the artist, but they're not claiming that they made it.

Amusingly enough, what you just stated doesn't happen has already happened to Fragger I believe. I'm part of a lot of gaming communities where graphics are created, and believe me - wherever there are graphics, there are thieves. This isn't just some obscure occurrence; it happens all the time.

I don't understand why you are continuing this argument. Just let this conversation die so the thread can continue it's previous course, please. Nobody cares how Fragger worded the License. His intentions were intelligible enough.

[Baker]

Amusingly enough, what you just stated doesn't happen has already happened to Fragger I believe. I'm part of a lot of gaming communities where graphics are created, and believe me - wherever there are graphics, there are thieves. This isn't just some obscure occurrence; it happens all the time.

Philosophically, let me ask you this.

If someone is willing to lie and claim something as their own work when it wasn't, odds are they aren't going to honor the readme so something in a text file is unlikely to stop someone with bad intent.

If someone with honorable intentions improves upon a work, a more liberal readme encourages that benign activity and honorable people always try to credit the source of their work.

Other games have less engaged community participants, in Quake honesty and frankly nobility (noble benign acts) are far more important in the community.

The remaining Quake communities like QuakeOne.com, Inside3d, Quakeworld.nu and Func_Msgboard would have little to no tolerance of a thief.

I'm just saying that thieves in the Quake community really do get "run out of town" so to speak by vocal complaints by members of the communities.

[Lightning_Hunter]

Philosophically, let me ask you this.

If someone is willing to lie and claim something as their own work when it wasn't, odds are they aren't going to honor the readme so something in a text file is unlikely to stop someone with bad intent.

Of course a license in the readme won't stop them; that was never my point. My argument was that Fragger's reasons for putting it there was justifiable, due to him having experienced first-hand what it feels like to have his work stolen. In counteraction to his experience, he put his own "strict" license in the readme, which I feel dreadlord wrongfully criticized. Had it been me someone stole work from, I probably would have counteracted with this in the readme: "Express permission be required before using thy work, else let thy imposter be burned alive at the stake with thee burned cinders consumed by large grubby rats". Yes, bad English intended.

I don't care to debate about how the license should read, which one should be used, yatta yatta yatta. I don't care. The only reason I started this argument was because Dreadlord originally bashed Fragger with no explanation. Now that my feelings have been expressed, the matter is closed. Enjoy the debate.

[Baker]

I don't care. The only reason I started this argument was because Dreadlord originally bashed Fragger with no explanation. Now that my feelings have been expressed, the matter is closed. Enjoy the debate.

I was skillfully trying to defuse a potential and non-helpful "argument" by acknowledging the value of copyleft works and derailing into intelligent conversation.

Did it work?