Geo

@georgio

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video game producer, terminal lurker. maybe cohost will unleash the peast (posting beast)

Geo @georgio12/5/2023, 4:34 AM

corru.works @corru

corru.works @corru12/5/2023, 4:23 AM

Is There a Lawyer In Da House?

hellohost cohost, I'm getting closer to an OSS/mixed license type setup for my website-game-visual-novel-thingy https://corru.observer, and would like a hand!! in short: I have some clear ideas, but not the knowledge to properly write them in the arcane language of Legalese

before I start googling and investigating on my own, since copyright-related legal things are kind of a delicate matter, I wanted to check with the wisdom of the masses first - does anyone know a good resource for legal advice on copyright and licensing? I've never had to interact with a l*wyer in my entire life, so I don't even really have a great idea of where to start (aside from just generally googling).

for those interested, I've also detailed my plans for the corru license below!

the end-goal is to have the corru.observer jekyll project as a github repo in its entirety! my CURRENT plan for the 3 licenses (note that none of this is effective yet) is something like this:

Structure/Code (i.e. 3D Stage/Dialogue/Bullethell/RPG systems): CC BY-SA - free for use in any project anywhere by anyone, with credit, and as long as they share the systems and any improvements to them alike. (I'll clearly denote which files they are, and it'll always be the files in their entirety.)
Story (written dialogue and setting) + Assets (images/music): Traditional copyright, redistribution/use not allowed without explicit permission. (this should kill plain rehosting or sale of the site contents) Contributions to these in the repo (i.e. typo fixes, localization) would be permitted, but the contributor will not gain copyright. (we'll still have proper credits for assistance though)
Community/Fanworks License: this will need to be a special license but I'm thinking of doing something like the Sixth History Community License - you'd be able to use the setting and aspects of it in your works for free, as long as credit is given, it's marked unofficial, and revenue is less than a certain amount (not yet determined). Anything over the decided amount will need to have bespoke licensing.

this setup, if we can cement it in valid legalese, should allow people to help iterate upon different aspects of the site in ways that they already are, but in a more official capacity... AND open up the ability for anyone to make fanworks using the same baseline systems! how cool would that be??

I'll probably still do new EP/ADD development in a separate repo for secrecy, but everything will ultimately live in the public repo once live.

#corru.observer #The Cohost Global Feed

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in reply to @corru's post:

authentic soft fennec friend brand fennecs @softfennec12/5/2023, 4:39 AM

CC's own guidance is to not use their licenses for source code so you probably want to use something different

authentic soft fennec friend brand fennecs @softfennec12/5/2023, 5:03 AM

Also, my non-lawyer perspective on the share-alike constraint is that it's a pretty tough constraint to satisfy for software - a common understanding is that a piece of software that uses, say, the corru.observer dialogue engine, would be a derivative work of the corru.observer dialogue engine in its entirety, and so you couldn't simply require that only changes to your code specifically be shared alike (though see edit below)

You usually either permit sharing a derivative work under a different license where only a copyright notice is required, or you require the sharing of the whole derivative work under the same license and therefore forbid use for people who do not want to use that license

Edit: it does look though like the MPL (see cassie's comment below also) might give you the source code file-level share-alikeness. I didn't remember the details of that one but a quick read through their FAQ does have this bit in it

Broadly speaking, the scope of the MPL, LGPL, and GPL can be summarized this way:

MPL: The copyleft applies to any files containing MPLed code.

LGPL: The copyleft applies to any library based on LGPLed code.

GPL: The copyleft applies to all software based on GPLed code.

so my description above about "sharing the whole work" is applicable to the GPL and to a lesser degree LGPL but MPL sounds a lot like it fits your plan for licensing specific source code files in full, and that only those files and modifications to them specifically would need to be shared alike

qim @queerinmech12/5/2023, 11:37 AM

one of the things i like about the EUPL is that it is a lot like the AGPL in that it covers networked software (which none of the others listed do) but it also only applies for changes to itself (kinda similar to the LGPL)

corru.works @corru12/5/2023, 7:19 PM

thank you for the insights!! I'm not going to edit this post (since it's just da initial plan after all), but I will factor this in and probably swap out the CC for MPL in whatever I end up sharing with a lawcreature once I read up on it some more!

@uppercasem12/5/2023, 4:51 AM

One thing I've learned about lawyers while setting up a company is that they often specialize in specific areas. Kind of like doctors, you wouldn't go to see a brain surgeon about your knee pain. When we went to turn out jam game into a proper project we found a lawyer that specialized in games and helping small studios setup businesses and that was super helpful. I imagine that there's perhaps a bit more overlap between lawyers than doctors though, so as long as you find someone in the general ball park of software licensing they'll probably be able to help you.

Osmose @Osmose12/5/2023, 5:11 AM

Yeah, a games lawyer or a lawyer with specific experience in open source would be ideal. I asked a friend who might have some better recs but it may be worth emailing someone like Luis Villa and asking if he has any referrals who you could pay an hour or two of time to answer your basic questions and get an idea of the scope of what you wanna do.

cassie @porglezomp12/5/2023, 4:57 AM

I was going to say the same thing as fennecs about CC. MPL or GPL might be appropriate starting places for your goals with the code?

For the story + assets portion, you’ll probably want to consider a CLA (for explicitly assigning over copyright) and see if you can set up a CLA bot to only trigger on contribution to certain files. I can’t give any advice on what specific sort of CLA you’d want though.

corru.works @corru12/5/2023, 7:22 PM

noted!! thank you for the suggestions! Fennec also edited in some info about MPL and the like, and it seems like a pretty good start!

Osmose @Osmose12/5/2023, 7:43 AM

I asked a friend and they recommended looking up and reaching out to any of the folks from this PAX talk or Ryan J. Black or Noah Downs as starting points. Shoot em an email with a short summary of your intent and ask whether they can help or have a recommendation of who can.

(This is from a "don't risk it just ask a lawyer" perspective, actual indie gamedevs may have a better sense of if that's really necessary.)

corru.works @corru12/5/2023, 7:24 PM

thank you osmose!! I'll refine my plan a little more and try emailing one of these folks once it's ready