I’ve been wanting to start an open source art project for awhile now but the most confusing aspect of all of this is which licence to choose! I’ve already discovered that the GNU GPL doesn’t really cover art, and since I have stumbled upon three different licences that I could choose. Before I reveal them here’s what I intend to do:
I want to allow people to upload their original ideas onto a website and have those open for modification, whilst still crediting the original, and all subsequent authors/editors. Once an image is created I want the image itself to be available for modification and the original file i.e. the psd, xcf, svg etc file also available. All of these would remain free and not be allowed to be used for commercial work.
I thought Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 would do the trick but it doesn’t mention source files. I then came across the Free Art License 1.3, which seems to cover most things but there hasn’t been widespread adoption of it since early 2000′s so I’m questioning the validity of it. Finally I’ve come to the Open Art Source Licence, which is still in the draft stages but is more up to date, so possibly addresses more issues.
Can anyone provide any input?
Creative Commons licenses are great if you want to share the final form of your image (such as a PNG or JPEG), and there are lots of neat ways to share them (such as metadata-embedding via CC Publisher or CC search options in major search engines like Yahoo and Google.
On the other hand, if you really want to maximize the ability for others to re-use your image, you might consider an Open Art License. This license gives all downstream users access to the source files as well as the final form (eg, PSD as well as JPEG, FLA as well as SWF). As a vector graphics designer, you probably know how valuable the original version is, in terms of manipulating individual elements, layers, scale, etc.
In all these options you can choose terms–like noncommercial or sharealike–that restrict or prevent others from commercializing your image.
FYI The Pool has a license picker that helps you choose among licenses; since you can’t copyright an intent, it only kicks in when you add an approach or release.
Good luck with your decision!
jon
Thanks for your comment!
I’ve had a look on the Open Art Network website and can’t actually find a downloadable copy of the licence. Can you point me to a copy of it?
Also, is this licence compatible with others? For example, if I licensed a game under the GPL but made the original .xcf files (used for textures) available under the Open Art Licence are there any complications that could arise?
Recently, through Rob Myers (http://robmyers.org) website I came across GNUArt (http://gnuart.org), which I think has a similar licence. I think it’s fair to say I’m confused as to which to choose and what exactly the differences are to each licence.
Hi Antonio,
I can understand your confusion, with all the options out there. Here are some resources that may help:
* Direct link to Open Art License:
http://three.org/openart/license/
(Based on your feedback, I also added a more prominent link from the Open Art Network home page.)
* License Chooser:
http://three.org/openart/license_chooser/
(A standalone version of The Pool’s interactive tool for comparing licenses.)
While I appreciate GNUArt’s attempt to license art under the GPL, it’s tricky to do so given that the GPL is really for source code rather than pictures. That said, if you license your code with the “Lesser” GPL (see License Chooser), then you could license your media files via the Open Art License.
Hope this helps!
jon