Celestia Forums

Hello everyone,
does the Celestia license allows commercial use of Celestia images? I would like to use some planets images for a poster and sell it. Is this possible?

Thanks,
--Manuel

tinoni wrote:Hello everyone,
does the Celestia license allows commercial use of Celestia images? I would like to use some planets images for a poster and sell it. Is this possible?

Thanks,
--Manuel

It is probably possible, but you are NOT going to find very many sympathetic contributors here...
What you also have to understand is that Celestia has made use of a very WIDE base of contributors, and each contributor (depending upon what they have done for the program) may have their very own set of restrictions for the use of their work.
Most of the add-on creators specifically state that their work is for non-commercial ventures ONLY. Have a look at some of the licenses posted for the freely-available work posted on the Celestia Motherlode, for some examples.

My (few) textures and other tools cannot be used for commercial purposes. Any other use, personal, educational, showing of, lending, redistributing, is not only allowed but encouraged. Dropping an email if you like them, as well as posting an acknowledgement if you use them of their products in public, will be appreciated.

Cheers,

Guillermo

Files created entirely by you for use as input to Celestia (i.e. an Addon created by you) are yours to do with as you want. In other words, the author of an Addon holds the copyright and determines the license for that Addon. Celestia's GNU license does not apply.

Images and movies created by you using only the Celestia base distribution or using your files as input to Celestia are yours to do with as you want. I.e. you hold the copyright for those specific images. They are not in the public domain nor does Celestia's GNU license apply.

However, images and movies created by you using files created by someone else as input to Celestia (i.e. using Addons created by someone else) may be used only as provided for in the license of that Addon. You have to negotiate any other use with the author of that Addon.

Well you may not use any of addons for commercial purposes, i dont do stuff for free s someone can profit without my cut.

Thank you all for your answers.

From what I understood, I may use all the images created by Celestia for commercial purposes, as long as I do NOT us any add-ons - Is this correct?

--Manuel

tinoni wrote:Thank you all for your answers.

From what I understood, I may use all the images created by Celestia for commercial purposes, as long as I do NOT us any add-ons - Is this correct?

--Manuel

and don't forget to give credit to Celestia after making money with it

Fridger

tinoni wrote:Thank you all for your answers.

From what I understood, I may use all the images created by Celestia for commercial purposes, as long as I do NOT us any add-ons - Is this correct?

--Manuel

Manuel,

I believe that this is the case.
I would think that Selden's answer above should be your guide here.

tinoni wrote:Thank you all for your answers.
From what I understood, I may use all the images created by Celestia for commercial purposes, as long as I do NOT us any add-ons - Is this correct?

Technically you are free to do a commercial use from Celestia images (default package). Now the question you should ask yourself is if this idea is fair/honorable/ethical, vis-a-vis the thousands hours of hard work from the dev team and the community, hours spend without counting to deliver to the public a real tool of knowledge and this without asking a single penny.

A bit of topic, I'm really wondering how people dare asking this kind of question... (it's not the first time if I'm not wrong...) Ok, I know, people wanting to do $ won't spend a minute to think before offending a bit more our poor world... Sad...

Chris,

It's no different from using Linux for commerce.
Most of Linux and its associated programs is open source freeware.

Many companies make money by providing support for Linux. (RedHat, etc) Many companies make money using Linux for their computer infrastructure: file servers, routers, spam filters, etc.

selden wrote:Chris,

It's no different from using Linux for commerce.
Most of Linux and its associated programs is open source freeware.

Many companies make money by providing support for Linux. (RedHat, etc) Many companies make money using Linux for their computer infrastructure: file servers, routers, spam filters, etc.

Oh, you are probably right, but the question is the same, is that fair/honorable/ethical? Personally I would say no. My philosophy is simple, you must pay the tools that will help you doing business. On the contrary, I would say that the tools should be free when the result of their use is free. Utopie, quand tu nous tiens!

Christophe,

while I am aware that the GPL licence is formally much more relaxed about commercial applications, I feel like you do.

I think it is just not right to exploit the huge amount of peoples' dedicated FREE work that went into such GPL-licensed software, for making business with the result. This is one MAIN reason why I am still hesitant to start my own GPL project about "cosmological visualization"... Each time, my wife comes across these GPL rules about the implied option of commercial exploitation, she tells me that she could never do work on such premises...


Fridger

t00fri wrote:Christophe,

while I am aware that the GPL licence is formally much more relaxed about commercial applications, I feel like you do.

I think it is just not right to exploit the huge amount of peoples' dedicated FREE work that went into such GPL-licensed software, for making business with the result. This is one MAIN reason why I am still hesitant to start my own GPL project about "cosmological visualization"... Each time, my wife comes across these GPL rules about the implied option of commercial exploitation, she tells me that she could never do work on such premises...

I obviously agree with Christophe and yourself, but let me ask here...
What is to keep you from creating your "Cosmological Visualization" under the terms of your very own license and its own terms?

Just curious, Bob

BobHegwood wrote:...What is to keep you from creating your "Cosmological Visualization" under the terms of your very own license and its own terms?

Yep, was also my thought but this kind of exercise is not so simple; at some point you probably need lawyers to be sure your terms are adequate and really reflect your desire from a legal point of view...

I really have no trouble with people making money from Celestia itself or from images and video generated by Celestia. I often see requests from people who want to use Celestia images as part of educational videos or in museum installations. Many of these people are indeed getting paid for their work, so in some sense they are making money from Celestia. But, the result is that Celestia is used in an educational role, which is one of the main points of the project. It would certainly be nice if people contributed some money to Celestia, but that's difficult right now. In order for money from for profit usage of Celestia to go back to the project, some sort of Celestia foundation would have to be set up--that seems like a big headache to me, and I'm honestly not sure if it's justified for a specialized and fairly small project like Celestia (someone correct me if I'm mistaken about this.)

I draw a distinction between paying for using Celestia (which is hard right now) and paying for developing Celestia (or add-ons.) Organizations can support Celestia by paying for support or for development of new features of interest to them. Because Celestia is GPLed software, the new code ends up benefiting everyone. This is the Linux model too, and I think that it's important to keep in mind that Linux wouldn't be nearly good as it is today without support from commercial users.

--Chris

chris wrote:I really have no trouble with people making money from Celestia itself or from images and video generated by Celestia.

I should clarify this by stating that there are some for profit usages of Celestia that definitely do bother me. I'm thinking especially of the people on eBay that sell CDs with Celestia and fail to mention that the program is available free from SourceForge and elsewhere. I believe that such activities violate the GPL; if anyone sees people doing this, please send me a message on the forum.

--Chris

OK, let me follow up Chris' "pragmatic" point of view a bit.

Indeed, the GPL software model may well bring along a number of concrete benefits for the project leader. The fact that commercial exploitation is part of that model will in general imply PR advantages and possible offers of contracted work for the leader of an open source project. Note that I am not saying that such advantages are unjustified!

By being very open as to what is done with the software, just means MORE PR and possibly concrete professional impact for the leader of such projects.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
But for those many other helpers and devs of such a project, commercial exploitation implies NOTHING but frustration. Usually these people are not even cited by name...Despite the fact that many of those have spent a lot of their time idealistically in this project.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Anything wrong with that logics?

Fridger

t00fri wrote:Anything wrong with that logics?

Of course, but not much solutions are available; changing the license seems to be impossible since the code is already in the GPL and creating some kind of Celestia foundation seems also a bit too much since we don't really know what is the real demand at commercial level.

In fact we are again facing a real philosophical question. Can we fight the capitalist system we are in? (by capitalist I mean the system based on the value of money and despite some countries are supposed to not like this system, in a way or another they do participate at a global level)

If we choose the easy way (going for money/controlling commercial use), we would have to GO for promotion to get Celestia as THE reference. This way we would have control on low fees and still have control on how Celestia can be universal. Then a whole palette of fees would have to be define from pure commercial to mass education, to local education etc, and the personal use would remain free but under a registration process to eventually trace out violators. The founds would have to go in priority to some people contracted for promotion/control and accounting, part to the dev team and part donate to whatever educational foundation for example. External addon creators would still be pure volunteers till why not included some of them in some kind of official addons creators remunerated at the piece. All money process could be totally transparent with a public edition of the accounting.

This is a whole machine, perhaps feasable, perhaps not, but will this be as hard as fighting isolated infractions and trying to keep Celestia completely free? On the long run, I'm not so sure because as we want Celestia to be the best, the product will become (is already?) too sexy/tempting to not gain the attention of some ferocious sharks...

Edit: BTW, in such scheme, Chris would of course be payed by the foundation and any agencies would have to pay a fee to see some particular code added to the source...