Outils pour utilisateurs

Outils du site


Panneau latéral

Sidebar

english:legal

Legal Aspect

<note important>This article has been quickly translated and still contains MANY translation (and content) mistakes ;-)</note> <note>This article was geared towards french contributors of the website, but may not be particularly relevant for the foreign community.</note> Hiya,

If you wish to contribute, you must think about the license under which your work will be submitted.

Little tour d'horizon ;)

Commonly

By default, your work is submitted under restrictive rights, it can't be either modified nor distributed. The most commonly used license in free software projects is GPL. Platforms dedicated to artistic works let the author chose between several licenses, such as Art Libre or Creative Commons (notably by & by-sa), which are licenses written in terms appropriate to apply to artistic works.

OpenArena and Debian

OpenArena project is in its whole under GPL, which is notable because usually, source code is under GPL, and data (artistic) are under another license (proprietary, or one artistic license mentionned above which is not always compatible with GPL) The choice of all-GPL makes this project fulfiling wishes of most free software actors, notably Debian and its Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG). Thus Debian has been able to integrate OpenArena in its package list, and redistribute it without worrying.

TuxFamily

TuxFamily asks to the projects it hosts to chose a free license, as stated in their chart (http://tuxfamily.org/fr/subscribe). They are mainly the ones judged free according to Debian, i.e. BSD, GPL, Art Libre, Creative Commons (CC-by ou CC-by-sa exclusively)…

Licences BSD et ISC

Operating Systems of BSD family (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD…) are using very permissive licenses often refered to “BSD-type licenses” ISC license is grealty inspired by the first BSD licenses, and is similar to a 2-clause BSD license. OpenBSD is reusing it, and distributes a template we're ourselves using (see below) for this website. 2-clause BSD is also commonly used within free software projects.

OpenArena FR

What kind of content can we find on this website ?

  • A forum to share discoveries and to help each other.
  • A wiki to contain documentation.
  • Hosting of ressources which we create for the game (graphism, sounds, code, scripts…).

License used

We invite each contributor to submit his/her work under a 2-clause BSD license available here.

The use we have of the Internet is we're reusing ressources we find from it, we create things for our own pleasure and to share it with the community. We then have a creative chain which works pretty well. This simplicity is even reflected formally in the BSD license text, which spares us legislative language. Its content allows us to be in conformity with laws, and only aims at protecting ourselves from eventual misuse of our work. Development, simplicity, and protection, what else to ask ? :)

Some interesting points

  • Our initiative of creating texts, graphics and sounds under this license is original. There is notably a real lack of these ressources in the free world.
  • Ressources we create can be released under several licenses, particularly GPL, which ensures maximum compatibility with other projects, particularly with OpenArena.
  • If only Quake 3 community had followed a similar path to us, OpenArena would already have loads of great ressources. Maybe authors of a FPS game under BSD license will be grateful to us one day ;-)

Why not GPL ?

There are guys who are not convinced by free softwares, and who don't want to produce free ressources by themselves. Well, if they use GPL with reluctancy, we think this leads us anywhere. We prefer when a person uses free software because s/he has a free spirit, rather than producing free softwares with reluctancy. The problem of commercial and proprietary projects isn't not to do libre software, but not to believe in liberté ;-). The point with our use of BSD is just to show our initiative is viable, we're not expecting rents (which we could obtain with a commercial project) and we don't expect code (what enforces GPL). The interest is only to have a free spirit in a free software ;-)

And if I don't want my contributions to be used within commercial proprietary projects ?

We neither we don't like proprietary nor commercial. ;-) If you are not convinced by our choice and you hesitate, come discuss it on our forum, where even your trolls will have the right to a meal and a roof !

We don't enforce you to submit your contributions under that license, but we would find it a pity if you don't. Also, we can only host your contributions if they are submitted under one of the license recognized by TuxFamily. If you want to submit your work under one of them, list it in the dedicated section, and don't forget to tell the license.

We remind you that without mention of the contrary, our license by default is used.

english/legal.txt · Dernière modification: 2017/02/20 09:19 (modification externe)