"Celestia Community License" A proposal to conside

[HankR]

One of the things that got me thinking about the need for a Celestia Community License is that add-on developers are making their work available without specifying the terms under which downloads are permissible. Some add-on sites have prominent copyright notices, but no indication of what license they intend to grant to allow people to download. IANAL, but it seemed to me that this would mean either no rights are granted, or all rights are granted (no restrictions). I suspect the latter, since there would seem to be an implied permission for people to download, and no restrictions are cited. I'm not sure if that means the add-ons effectively become publc domain, but it might. Alternately, if specific permissions must be explicitly granted, it seems likely that we are all using many add-ons illegally.

I don't really expect to see any litigation by add-on developers (although I suppose it's possible). But lack of clear license terms could inhibit the use of add-ons by schools, or sponsorship of distribution sites, etc. So I think the future success of Celestia would be enhanced if we could clear these issues up.

- Hank

[Christophe]

I think an easy way out of this mess is that Chris add a comment to the distribution of Celestia stating that add-ons are not considered derivative works.

The add-on repository will also help clear up the licence issues, all add-ons will have to explicitly state the licence under which they are distributed.

[revent]

Henrik,

I trust you realize that if you insist on such an interpretation, many Addons (most of mine, for example) will have to be withdrawn from public availability. As I pointed out earlier, many are derivative works based on images which are not and cannot become GPL'd.

I addressed this point in my last post in the other thread, but I'll be less 'technical' here. The other is worth reading, tho.

If you release an add-on as a zip file, you do not hold a copyright on that zip file. Phillip K. Zimmermin (the author of PKZip) does (he holds a copyright on the zip format, and you are using his intellectual property). Luckily, he released it to the public domain a /long/ time ago. The zip file is not your work, it is an 'aggregation' of works, distributed in a licensed format. If your addon was on a cd, it would be an aggregation using the licensed cd format (another p.d. license, even more luckily).

When you include an image with your addon, that image is a 'work', and you are in no way altering that work, and are thus not creating a derivative of it. You are just distributing it (hopefully legally, but that's a separate issue). That work is in a licensed format (gif, jpeg, whatever), and both the owner of the work and the owner of Celestia are making use of that licensed format to either encode or decode that work. You, the addon creator, by directing Celestia to load that file, are not. Your addon (I'm talking about sscs here) has no 'legal interaction' with any license other than Celestia's GPL.

IANAL, BTW, I just play one on TV.

IMO, a Celestia-specific license is unneeded. The FSF spent a lot of time and lawyer's efforts to the end of making the GPL clear (to laywer-types) and bulletproof. On top of that, removing Celestia itself from the GPL would be practically impossible even for the owner (the GPL was intentionally written that way). I doubt Chris has had an explicit prestated agreement with every contributer to the code that he owns any and all contributions they make, so they all would have to agree to remove it from the GPL. What's more, since all addons must be GPL unless Chris (but not the others IMO, since he is the 'head' of the dev group) states that he will specificaly not consider them to be derivative works, and declaring them non-derivative would free them /completely/ from the GPL, there would be no way to compel add-on makers to use your license.
(You couldn't say only addons using a specific license are not derivative works)

Also, if you ever have to defend the GPL in court, the FSF will provide you with legal representation.

[Don. Edwards]

I think I am going to the watermarking route. There is a convenient way to do it. Use the old technique we used to plug in the specmap into a texture. Basically hidden in the alpha channel. I am going to try a few samples and see how it works. I know it can be retained in the .PNG format as well in the .DDS format. Now I am pretty sure if they extract the texture from .DDS and save it as a .BMP the water mark will be lost. But then they will of course be left with a texture that is not quite as good as the original. I also plan to hide a watermark in other areas that can't easily be seen. Of course even the best of watermarks can be defeated by a real Photoshop pro. But there are not going to be a hundred of them trying to rip off my work anyway and would it really be worth there time and effort. Yes and no. It all depends. My main concern is of course the big 32k texture I am working on. It would be worth stealing by the right person or persons. As well as the 16k that will come from it. Not to mention my 8k clouds. It seems my 4k clouds are running around the Orbiter sites at present. I don’t have a problem with that. There quality wasn’t that great. But with the new improved textures coming down the pike I am starting to wonder about how I should defend them. The other problem I may have it that the 32K texture is based on NASA’s Blue Marble images. So they are copyrighted through them as well. So I can never ask for money for any of these textures as per their copyright. Maybe I should just not worry about it in the first place. Easy come easy go.

Don. Edwards

[selden]

revent,

Unfortunately, from your comments it is clear that you've never gone through the steps necessary to create a usable addon.

An Addon's archive is not a simple aggregation. The contents of the archive file have to be organized in a particular way in order for an Addon to be usable by someone who is relatively unfamiliar with the structure of Celestia. Many people have problems caused by improperly organized archives. The preliminary design for the Addon Manager will impose even more strict requirements on the archive's contents. (Note that I am being careful not to specify the data format used by the archive. It could be zip, rar or tar, to pick a few obvious examples.)

The images used by Addons are derivative works, not the original images provided by the various "image servers". The images have to be manipulated in various ways in order to be compatible with Celestia. At the very least, the vast majority have to be scaled or padded so that they are a power of two on a side. Often an Addon creator manipulates them in other "artistic" ways, too: removing stars, making them transparent or reflective in appropriate regions, changing size and luminosity scale factors, etc.

As I mentioned, if Celestia Addons are deemed to inherit the GPL, then I'll have to stop making any and will have to remove most of the ones that I've already created: they're illegal.

[Christophe]

Selden,

Under what conditions are distributed the source images you use for textures? I think NASA images for example are distributed under a very liberal licence that is probably GPL-compatible.

But anyway, I'm sure Chris would have no problem with excluding add-ons from derivative works, so there is really no need to worry.

[t00fri]

Ok so it was a bad idea. So I retract the whole thing. I guess the only way to truly control what is being done with my work is to either stop releasing it, or start making people pay for them. I am not going to do anything like that at this point so I guess I will simply have to request that if someone wants to port my work over to another program or game that they let me know about it first. But in the end all I wanted was a simpler way to track what was being done with my work. What a mess.

Don. Edwards

Don,

here comes a fun-illustration for you;-) of what can happen to people's texture work (mine;-)):

User Star Lion apparently tries to rebuild/mirror Bruckner's dead WEB site:

http://www.bruckner.50megs.com/

When clicking today on 'GalleryPg.1' on that site, I made a stunning discovery.

First this, however:

I guess I was really the first 'Celestia Texture creating' person early in 2002 and tought to quite few experts of today the image manipulation tricks I knew at that time. Probably you remember... The Gallery on Bruckner's was the first exposition of my work with detailed descriptions how I got my results etc.

Today I rediscovered my old explanations when clicking 'Gallery.Pg.1', BUT

instead of my 'historical' images, these guys have substituted images by Don.Edwards, h? h?...

I rather guess, this is meant more as a 'substitute' perhaps, but still you got to have a look. Notably, the text does not quite match your images...

Certainly, I am happy that the placeholder for my old images is of such high quality!

Bye Fridger

[Harry]

The other problem I may have it that the 32K texture is based on NASA’s Blue Marble images. So they are copyrighted through them as well.

(IANAL, blah, blah, but:)

You may want to read
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/help.html

and then look for any "note" regarding copyright on:
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/viewrecord?11656

I read this as: there is no copyright on BM

Regarding the general license problems: I don't think we will reach a conclusion, at least not without a lawyer who knows this stuff. I simply refuse to believe some of what has been written , and some of this (like ZIP-files) sound to me more like patent-issues (argh). So what do we actually know about this problem? I conclude I know nothing

Harald

[selden]

Christophe,

As I mentioned in the other thread, different sites have different licensing requirements. See http://63.224.48.65/forum/viewtopic.php?p=27736&highlight=#27736
For example, many of the images on NASA sites were not created by NASA and are copyrighted by others.

[chris]

I think an easy way out of this mess is that Chris add a comment to the distribution of Celestia stating that add-ons are not considered derivative works.

Exactly . . . A quick paragraph stating this and specifying that add-on creators are free to choose whatever distribution terms they like.

The add-on repository will also help clear up the licence issues, all add-ons will have to explicitly state the licence under which they are distributed.

Another point in favor of the repository

As much as I hate to deal with this crap, I'm glad that the issue of add-on licensing was brought up so that we can take care of it now, instead of as a response to some strange legal threat (SCO lawyers? ). For now, no one needs to get too excited about this--I'm not going to hold any add-ons to the restrictions of 'derivate works' as defined in the GPL. It's just a matter of coming up with some clarifying text . . . Please no one do anything drastic like pull add-ons from your web sites.

--Chris

[Rassilon]

Don,

I understand your frustration...but its far easier to realise in your minds eye that those who rip you off are only cheating themselves...When those would be passer bys who copy you are put to the test...who really shines through as the talented one?

Thats why I could care less what they do with my textures...If I see it on the sci-fi channel some day Ill know that I did it...good enough for me...

However I do find it rather annoying when someone takes credit for something I did...but what can you do? honestly? create something BETTER DAMMIT!

[t00fri]

revent,

Unfortunately, from your comments it is clear that you've never gone through the steps necessary to create a usable addon.

An Addon's archive is not a simple aggregation. The contents of the archive file have to be organized in a particular way in order for an Addon to be usable by someone who is relatively unfamiliar with the structure of Celestia. Many people have problems caused by improperly organized archives. The preliminary design for the Addon Manager will impose even more strict requirements on the archive's contents. (Note that I am being careful not to specify the data format used by the archive. It could be zip, rar or tar, to pick a few obvious examples.)

The images used by Addons are derivative works, not the original images provided by the various "image servers". The images have to be manipulated in various ways in order to be compatible with Celestia. At the very least, the vast majority have to be scaled or padded so that they are a power of two on a side. Often an Addon creator manipulates them in other "artistic" ways, too: removing stars, making them transparent or reflective in appropriate regions, changing size and luminosity scale factors, etc.

As I mentioned, if Celestia Addons are deemed to inherit the GPL, then I'll have to stop making any and will have to remove most of the ones that I've already created: they're illegal.

Selden,

I am getting increasingly confused the more I keep reading about this stuff.

Suppose,

--I download a raw texture from a server that states that their data are free for non-commercial purposes,say,

--I then modify that texture to my taste

--I then state on my own WEB site that people may use that texture in Celestia if they so please and that everyone is welcome to download...

Are you guys telling me that in this case I have to specify a licence along with my texture??? I hope not!

I am certainly most naive in these issues, but it sounds just crazy to me.

Of course, remember I am not subscribing to any sort of 'organized' texture repositories, i.e. I am talking about my entirely /private/ initiative in distributing the textures from my site from raw textures that were free to start.

In other words, suppose I am not the ambitous type;-), in the sense that I do not aim at getting included in some major software distribution with my textures, or NASA or what not.

But suppose I am really good with these and many people are keen downloading my textures...(it happened before;-))

So if 50000 people, say, download my textures from my own site within a few months, do I need to specify a licence in order not to get into trouble?

Reading about all this crap, I am certainly happy to be a scientist and that I can afford being most naive about all this. In my life, I have written a lot of most sophisticated scientific software (no GUI and no repositories, sorry;-)). Many of my colleagues have, too. We never even talked about licences for a second...What is so different here?

Bye Fridger

[Don. Edwards]

Seasons Greetings Fridger,
I just took a look at the site and let me say this. Its wrong all wrong. Star Lion should just drop the issue all together and let the site die or rename the site at once. You are right the picture of the Earth isn't yours. But I don't think it is a picture of my Earth texture either. It is my cloudmap but it looks like Walton Comer's 32k Virtual Texture to me. The shot of Pluto is definitely of my Pluto texture. If my memory serves Bruckner's site went into a comma long before the whole Pluto debacle ever happened. So how is it my Pluto texture ever got onto the site in the first place? I do not know where Star Lion came up with half of this stuff but he needs to rename the site. It has absolutely nothing to do with Bruckner's old site at all and leaving it his way is deceiving at best. Maybe he should have tried a little harder to ask for any of the original pictures posted at the site. It would have made things less confusing. He should call it a site dedicated to one of the first Celestia add-on sites, Bruckner's World, and just leave it at that.

Don. Edwards

[t00fri]

Seasons Greetings Fridger,
I just took a look at the site and let me say this. Its wrong all wrong. Star Lion should just drop the issue all together and let the site die or rename the site at once. You are right the picture of the Earth isn't yours. But I don't think it is a picture of my Earth texture either. It is my cloudmap but it looks like Walton Comer's 32k Virtual Texture to me. The shot of Pluto is definitely of my Pluto texture. If my memory serves Bruckner's site went into a comma long before the whole Pluto debacle ever happened. So how is it my Pluto texture ever got onto the site in the first place? I do not know where Star Lion came up with half of this stuff but he needs to rename the site. It has absolutely nothing to do with Bruckner's old site at all and leaving it his way is deceiving at best. Maybe he should have tried a little harder to ask for any of the original pictures posted at the site. It would have made things less confusing. He should call it a site dedicated to one of the first Celestia add-on sites, Bruckner's World, and just leave it at that.

Don. Edwards

Don,

I sense that like me, you had quite some fun looking at that

"texture jelly/marmelade"

on that site.

Bye Fridger

[Flightgear-User]

revent,

Suppose,

--I download a raw texture from a server that states that their data are free for non-commercial purposes,say,

--I then modify that texture to my taste

--I then state on my own WEB site that people may use that texture in Celestia if they so please and that everyone is welcome to download...

Are you guys telling me that in this case I have to specify a licence along with my texture??? I hope not!

Yes, you have to.

Because your work is covered by the license conditions of the first copyright holder.

This means you will at least have to distribute your work with
a licsence that has this text in it:
"free for non-commercial purposes".



Also keep in mind, that if you ship your Addons under other license conditions than that of celestia (the GPL) your addons can never be shipped or sold with celestia together.
So using other licenses that the GPL is IMHO a
bad decision for the celestia project.

The flightgear folks do for example only accept works when they
are compatible with the GPL or are under the GPL
because that makes sure that flightgear
can be distributed with everything the flightgear project has to offer.

it would be a very sad if some buildings would need to removed or missing in flightgear when distributing it via cd or things like that just because of one of the autors of those buildings used
another licsense.
That's why using other license than the GPL is not a good idea.

[selden]

FlightGear-User,

You will notice that very few Addons are actually distributed with Celestia.

Also, you need to be more careful with your attributions. I did not write the paragraph you quote.