Choosing a License for Your Mods

[Luke]

Do you recommend a particular LICENSE (if any)?

[AL|EN]

@Luke You should start with a list of the content type of you mod:

1. Only weidu code?
2. Only art like graphic, sounds, item descriptions, NPC dialogues?
3. Mixed everything?

then, you should tell what is you purpose to include license, basically what you are want to allow:

1. use the source code from you mod by other modders?
2. include the data from you mod inside other people mods?

then somebody could share recommendations. But it's really legal hell.

Edited January 28, 2019 by AL|EN

[Mike1072]

I've had a discussion about this in the past.

Quote

Even though the Creative Commons licenses are not recommended for software, I think they would work well enough for mods. I like that it's easy to select between different variations and they have handy understandable explanations. I left out the share-alike versions since explaining those gets complicated and I don't know if our community really cares about that aspect.

Commercial use restricted

License	Permissions
©	"All rights reserved"
BY-NC-ND	Share the work non-commercially with attribution
BY-NC	Share and modify the work non-commercially with attribution

Commercial use unrestricted

License	Permissions
BY-ND	Share the work with attribution
BY	Share and modify the work with attribution
CC0	"No rights reserved" (Share and modify the work unconditionally)

 

[cmorgan]

I'm silly - and I should change my license to Creative Commons Commercial use restricted BY-NC - but it was fun writing it. In retrospect I should have said something like "Hey - talk to me before writing for my stuff" in louder form than a whole tutorial blog post thread on how to proceed with crossmod without hurting other modder's feelings or accidentally stealing the entirety of another author's work, as time passes and not many folks read stuff they don't want to know about.

So, I wrote this up as my "license":

Quote

This mod is not developed, supported, or endorsed by BioWare, BeamDog, Overhaul, or Interplay/BlackIsle. It is not released under any license at all, because it is a EULA-breaking Law-shirking Free Random Expression Of Fun(tm), and the only "license" it could fit under is probably not enforceable in any way shape or form. I hereby grant anyone the freedom to do anything they want with it. If you rip off large parts of it, contact Aran Sorkin, Joss Whedon, and any number of other sci-fi and fantasy authors and pay them, because any good stuff in here is probably rephrases of their work that have been floating about in my brain for years, only "Forgotten Reams-Ized". If there are any copyright issues or this statement needs revision then please contact me and advise me what to do about it. This mod was created to be freely enjoyed, mercilessly hated, or stalwartly ignored by all Baldur's Gate II players. If you are looking to make a buck or two off of it, you really have not played the mod. I'd advise you to do so, especially the naughty bits, because that will kill any ideas you had about actually, you know... profiting .

 

 

And the only phrase I would probably change is change "anything they want with it" to "anything they want with it as long as no one is restricted from using it behind a paywall, no one makes any money off of it, and they assume any and all liability when an angry company comes hunting for copyright infringement and cash."

But truly, almost any license you use is just about the same as just admitting "I can't stop you from ripping off my stuff because I don't have money for lawyers, and even more importantly because while I worked my butt off and the creativity and work is mine, I was doing it on an already copyrighted piece of intellectually protected code without paying a license fee or even asking their formal legal permission to write my fanfic into a commercially available product".

 

It does serve as something that modding sites can point to and say "ok, that is what the modder wanted". The modding community takes a dim view of other folks taking over a mod/copying most of a mod/rewriting content for other folk's mods without permission. And the license can help determine to the modding sites and the community what the author wanted.

[Rhaella]

3 hours ago, cmorgan said:

And the only phrase I would probably change is change "anything they want with it" to "anything they want with it as long as no one is restricted from using it behind a paywall, no one makes any money off of it, and they assume any and all liability when an angry company comes hunting for copyright infringement and cash."

But truly, almost any license you use is just about the same as just admitting "I can't stop you from ripping off my stuff because I don't have money for lawyers, and even more importantly because while I worked my butt off and the creativity and work is mine, I was doing it on an already copyrighted piece of intellectually protected code without paying a license fee or even asking their formal legal permission to write my fanfic into a commercially available product".

This is not legal advice, but intellectual property law is really trickier than that. I think a lot of modding would fit under the Fair Use exception--these are transformative works, and in our case at least is if anything providing an economic benefit to the copyright holder, since it helps maintain interest. That works in our favor.

Copyright protection is a real thing, though, even for us. Not primarily against each other, but against the companies themselves: if Beamdog had decided to incorporate mod content without permission, they would have been risking potential legal problems. (And there are legal activists out there who would help you: see the Organization for Transformative Works.)

Anyway, the only time I used a CC license on a mod was when I'd incorporated CC-SA (share alike) music into it, so that license carried over into my own derivative work. Technically that means that the rest of the community can do basically whatever they want with it as long as they credit me, which goes a good deal further than just writing crossmod content without permission.

If you're incorporating your own music or artwork into a mod, though, it's probably a good idea to put a copyright notice of some sort or another on it. (Again, not legal advice.)

Edited January 29, 2019 by Rhaella

[cmorgan]

Cool stuff - and good to think about. And my stuff was *definitely* not giving legal advice - it was completely my own speculation and example! And I am going to go look up Fair Use Exception, as that sounds like something I would like to know more about...

[Jarno Mikkola]

56 minutes ago, Rhaella said:

... companies themselves: if Beamdog had decided to incorporate mod content without permission, they would have been risking potential legal problems.

 

But see, they kinda did.

See BG2Fixpack for example... not that it really matters that much, as they also took a bunch of the modders on their payroll and transformed the games engine, while using the resources that were available for them. Yes, the new kits for example used weidu to incorporate themselves into the game libraries. How I know this is, is because of... a preset number in the tool.

Also in legal matters, it's usually about money. The damage needs to exceed a set amount of income to be relative as a legal case vs the company.

Edited January 29, 2019 by Jarno Mikkola

[Rhaella]

19 hours ago, cmorgan said:

Cool stuff - and good to think about. And my stuff was *definitely* not giving legal advice - it was completely my own speculation and example! And I am going to go look up Fair Use Exception, as that sounds like something I would like to know more about...

Oh, I'm technically an attorney, though not a practicing one. That means I'm neurotic about accidentally giving legal advice because of professional responsibility issues and potential liability, so I always put the disclaimer.  

18 hours ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

But see, they kinda did.

See BG2Fixpack for example... not that it really matters that much, as they also took a bunch of the modders on their payroll and transformed the games engine, while using the resources that were available for them. Yes, the new kits for example used weidu to incorporate themselves into the game libraries. How I know this is, is because of... a preset number in the tool.

Also in legal matters, it's usually about money. The damage needs to exceed a set amount of income to be relative as a legal case vs the company.

Yeah, I remember using Weidu when I was scripting for Beamdog. It seems to have been released under a GPL license, though, so there's no problem with using it for commercial purposes. The various fixes and tweaks are interesting, though--I always assumed that they had sought permission to implement that stuff.

I imagine that's a greyer area than grabbing an NPC or quest mod and implementing it, though. A modder can't really get away with implementing fixes to a game and then telling the company that it can't fix those errors itself.

Edited January 29, 2019 by Rhaella

[CamDawg]

I've always viewed the 'copyright' section of a mod with a very skeptical eye. I've always used (and viewed) such sections as an expression of the author's preferences, since the most any of us can really do--from a practical standpoint--is to ask someone politely. The community relies a lot on norms of behavior, and there's not a lot we can really do against a bad actor.

[lynx]

Typically code is released under one of the plethora of FLOSS licenses, while blobs and other non-code as CC. However, most mods are small, so there's no real gain in making a distinction and using two. Choosing is a good idea though, not because github will ask you, but as it makes updating abandoned stuff clear as day and sets expectations from the contributors.

The authors can always agree to sublicense differently too. A very contrived example: I generally license gemrb mods as GPL, but I could grant them to Saros under a BSD license, in case he wanted to sell them without reciprocity.

 

Edited January 30, 2019 by lynx

[Ardanis]

It's utterly beyond me why on earth anyone would ever want to license a mod, unless it ships already licensed content - like music or art you are not author of, as Rhaella mentioned. Other than that, it just makes you look ridiculous.

[K4thos]

 

3 hours ago, Ardanis said:

It's utterly beyond me why on earth anyone would ever want to license a mod, unless it ships already licensed content - like music or art you are not author of, as Rhaella mentioned. Other than that, it just makes you look ridiculous.

No license = all rights reserved (at least in EU), even in the context of free software, so choosing one of the open licenses doesn't sound like a bad idea to me. It's also less work with explaining how you want your mod to be redistributed in case you go missing.

I think licenses became quite popular in TES community due to Bethesda mods monetization circa 2015 and plagiarism that happened at the time.

Edited January 30, 2019 by K4thos

[cmorgan]

Ok... now how I missed the TES thing is a mystery... except my Skyrim was probably dormant in favor of Civ and SWTOR. That link was massively eye-opening, K4thos. 

[CamDawg]

52 minutes ago, K4thos said:

I think licenses became quite popular in TES community due to Bethesda mods monetization circa 2015 and plagiarism that happened at the time.

Yeah, thanks for this--I was unaware, and that's a really good overview.

[Sam.]

One of my personal favorites:

Quote

BAM Batcher is copyright © 2009 by Miloch. This work (including all code and documentation) is licensed under the WTFPL. You just do WTF you want with it. While I won't stop you from making a mod with super-power-granting +10 items using these BAMs, I will probably ridicule you (or if I don't, someone else will). These are classy BAMs - make a classy mod with them :).