Need some help about mod license

[Mooncat]

To me, license = tons of words. It is really painful to understand how the licenses work, what I can and cannot do with them, especially when the information from the Internet is mainly about generic software development rather than game modding, and also with the fact that English is not my native language. The professional terms almost broke the inserter in my brain.
Almost all of my mods use CC BY-NC 4.0, because it is simple and the words suit my needs! Reading its page is just like mining an iron ore, putting into a stone furnace and taking an iron plate out.

Unfortunately, it is not a very good license apparently. More specifically, the "Non-Commercial" part is overprotecting my works. A user of my mod has just raised the issue:

The current non-commercial restriction prevents anyone from posting a monetized video or ad-supported blog post that uses your mod to illustrate a test setup

While I don't allow people from using my works to earn money, I don't want it to be too restrictive. I'm fine with monetized videos and ad-supported blogs. They are not selling my mod. They may have been earning money this way long before I started playing Factorio. And they are telling others to use my mod. Why should I stop them?
So I have searched on the web, and sadly, it turns out "non-commercial" means money should be completely out of the way, even for charitable purposes: source (So... does donation violate this rule? )

Therefore, I have to study about the other licenses. During the process, I realized CC is missing the specific terms about the distribution of source code. This point is also mentioned by the user. Now I understand why CC is not a defined option on the Mod Portal. But the next question is, which license should I use? I have analyzed the options on the Mod Portal. Please correct me if I'm wrong:

• MIT: completely free. Too free. It doesn't restrict people from modifying and rebranding my works. In fact, I have seen a case of this here, in Factorio! So this won't be my choice.
• GPLv3: any distribution should contain the source code. I guess this is always true for modding in Factorio. But problem is, the same license should also be applied. Library mods using this license will require the mods that use the library also have the same license. Based on the discussions on other forums, it sounds like it is the same even for optional dependency. So, nah, this isn't for me.
• LGPLv3: similar to GPLv3, but without the restriction of preserving the same license from the depended mods?
• MPL 2.0: very similar to LGPLv3. The difference is.... here...

  The major difference is how MPL / LGPL licensed code must be linked into the project. MPL source code files can be directly copied into a (possibly) proprietary software project, while LGPL licensed code must be dynamically linked.

  I'm don't know who does it exactly apply to modding in Factorio.... does it mean people can copy my files into their works if I use MPL 2.0, while LGPLv3 does not allow that?
• Apache 2.0: Changes on the licensed code should be documented. I'm not sure how does it work. If someone used my work, modified it and pretended to be his work, can I say he violated this license?
• The Unlicense (Public Domain): AFAIK, this is bad. From here: it is not global, is inconsistent and unpredictable.

So, now I'm considering LGPLv3. Apache 2.0 and MPL 2.0 would be my second and third choices respectively. Before I'm applying any of them into my mods, I want to make sure I have got them correctly. Did I miss or misunderstood anything?

And finally, as a programmer, it is really time consuming to create artworks for my mods. I have successfully created some. Took me more than 4 hours to create and adjust the spark effect for my Glowing Capsule mod. I want to protect them. I don't want to see people stealing them without asking. But it sounds like the above licenses are mainly for protecting the source code, can they also protect artworks? Currently I'm using custom license (free for accessing or modifying the scripts, but not for using the graphics). But apparently I can't write good license text, thus it sounds pretty weak and I don't like it. It'd be better if I can use existing defined licenses.


TL;DR
Is LGPLv3 good? Any cons? What about Apache 2.0 and MPL 2.0?
Can they protect artworks?
Am I overthinking?

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

[mophydeen]

I'm using AGPL v3 for sl-extended.

[vanatteveldt]

Personally, I would just go with a permissive license, i.e. MIT or BSD. This will indeed allow other people to make any change they want and redistribute it in any way they like, and they could start selling it if they wanted [but who buys a cow if the milk is free on the forums?]. As far as they know, your moral rights to be acknowledged as author should not be affected, this is certainly true in the Netherlands, but might differ in your jurisdiction.

I understand that this feels too permissive. However: (1) this is not your job, you are not making money off it, you are doing it for your own enjoyment and for our benefit (NB: THANK YOU! I LOVE THIS MOD). And (2) If some jerk decides to rip off your code and sell it or pass it as his own, what are you going to do? Sue him? Where? And with which lawyers? It's not gonna happen.

So my completely non-legal advice: put it under a permissive license, and make it very clear how you want people to behave. 99% of us will obey those requests, and the other 1% was going to be a jerk no matter what your license is. So why make it more difficult for the rest of us to use your contribution in creative ways?

[disclaimer: I'm a software developer. My 'core' product is licensed AGPLv3, but anything I do on the side I license MIT/BSD or whatever the community I contribute to has as default. Because, again, I won't sue anyone anyway if it's not my livelihood...]

[ChurchOrganist]

I always use MIT for my mods. Even when they contain created content, like the samples in Deltic Honk.

MIT protects your copyright and intellectual rights, whilst allowing reuse and modification of your work by others.

Basically the MIT licence file (which - unlike the practice of many mod authors - should be included in the ZIP) specifies that the licence file must be included with any derivatives, so the hours of work you have put in is acknowledged.

Here is the licence file from my Deltic Honk mod, in which you can see how the acknowledgements work. Unfortunately Gotlag didn't include a Licence file in his original mod even though the klicence is designated as MIT on the mod portal, so I had to make sure his acknowledgemtn was added to my own.

If anyone subsequently wants to publish a derivative version, that licence files has to be included, or they are in breach of copyright law.

MIT licence for Deltic Honk

Code: Select all

Deltic Honk  0.15.1 is released under the MIT license.

Informally, this means you can 
do basically whatever with it you like, as long as you leave this file intact.

The full legalese is below.

Deltic Honk 0.15.1 is Copyright © 2017 Michael Cowgill (Church Organist), Gotlag and others.

Acknowledgements
Thank you to Gotlag who programmed the original Honk mod.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of
this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in
 the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to 
use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies
of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do
 so, subject to the following conditions: 

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
 copies or substantial portions of the Software. 

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR 
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, 
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
 AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER 
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING 
FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER 
DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

We are a community here, and most of us respect the intellectual property of others in the community, so it's best to keep things as open as possible.
Just my 2p

PS And that is why I always publish my mod source on GitHub - it aids co-operation and also helps people beginning modding.

[Supercheese]

+1 for MIT license

[Mooncat]

I'm using AGPL v3 for sl-extended.

Ah! A new term! Thanks for showing another possible choice! But I will need some time to study about it.
I have done a quick search of "AGPL vs GPL", but no one has mentioned about the problem of GPL: other mods depending on yours will need to use the same license. I'm not sure about this.

Personally, I would just go with a permissive license, i.e. MIT or BSD. This will indeed allow other people to make any change they want and redistribute it in any way they like, and they could start selling it if they wanted [but who buys a cow if the milk is free on the forums?]. As far as they know, your moral rights to be acknowledged as author should not be affected, this is certainly true in the Netherlands, but might differ in your jurisdiction.

I understand that this feels too permissive. However: (1) this is not your job, you are not making money off it, you are doing it for your own enjoyment and for our benefit (NB: THANK YOU! I LOVE THIS MOD). And (2) If some jerk decides to rip off your code and sell it or pass it as his own, what are you going to do? Sue him? Where? And with which lawyers? It's not gonna happen.

So my completely non-legal advice: put it under a permissive license, and make it very clear how you want people to behave. 99% of us will obey those requests, and the other 1% was going to be a jerk no matter what your license is. So why make it more difficult for the rest of us to use your contribution in creative ways?

[disclaimer: I'm a software developer. My 'core' product is licensed AGPLv3, but anything I do on the side I license MIT/BSD or whatever the community I contribute to has as default. Because, again, I won't sue anyone anyway if it's not my livelihood...]

There was some time I was also thinking about using the MIT license. But it sounds like giving up. It is like "I'm too tried to choose a license! Just do whatever you want!"
But the moment that changed my mind was when I saw a modder complaining about his mod being modified and redistributed under another mod name, and as the result he has to change the license.

While you are probably right that I would never sue anyone for violating the license, at least I can say "hey, I see you have used my work without my permission and therefore, I'm here to remind you to check the license". That way I can attribute myself with that sentence. Truth can be told to the users. I doubt I can do that if I use MIT. In addition, I believe the devs will help in anytime to resolve any licence violating issue.

I'm not really comfortable to give 100% freedom to everybody, especially after I knew bad case has happened in the Factorio community. So I don't think MIT or BSD will be my choice.
But thanks for sharing.
(If you really want to know about the case, I can ask for permission for showing the modder's name. )

I always use MIT for my mods. Even when they contain created content, like the samples in Deltic Honk.

MIT protects your copyright and intellectual rights, whilst allowing reuse and modification of your work by others.

Basically the MIT licence file (which - unlike the practice of many mod authors - should be included in the ZIP) specifies that the licence file must be included with any derivatives, so the hours of work you have put in is acknowledged.

Here is the licence file from my Deltic Honk mod, in which you can see how the acknowledgements work. Unfortunately Gotlag didn't include a Licence file in his original mod even though the klicence is designated as MIT on the mod portal, so I had to make sure his acknowledgemtn was added to my own.

If anyone subsequently wants to publish a derivative version, that licence files has to be included, or they are in breach of copyright law.

MIT licence for Deltic Honk

Code: Select all

Deltic Honk  0.15.1 is released under the MIT license.

Informally, this means you can 
do basically whatever with it you like, as long as you leave this file intact.

The full legalese is below.

Deltic Honk 0.15.1 is Copyright © 2017 Michael Cowgill (Church Organist), Gotlag and others.

Acknowledgements
Thank you to Gotlag who programmed the original Honk mod.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of
this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in
 the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to 
use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies
of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do
 so, subject to the following conditions: 

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
 copies or substantial portions of the Software. 

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR 
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, 
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
 AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER 
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING 
FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER 
DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

We are a community here, and most of us respect the intellectual property of others in the community, so it's best to keep things as open as possible.
Just my 2p

PS And that is why I always publish my mod source on GitHub - it aids co-operation and also helps people beginning modding.

Thanks for sharing!
I think I won't go for MIT, yet. But you made a good point that license file must be included with any derivatives, and I have missed this!

[ChurchOrganist]

Thanks for sharing!
I think I won't go for MIT, yet. But you made a good point that license file must be included with any derivatives, and I have missed this!

Actually I forgot to mention that once you have assigned an MIT licence then all derivatives must also use MIT - as you must include the licence file.

[urza99814]

Unfortunately, it is not a very good license apparently. More specifically, the "Non-Commercial" part is overprotecting my works. A user of my mod has just raised the issue:

The current non-commercial restriction prevents anyone from posting a monetized video or ad-supported blog post that uses your mod to illustrate a test setup

That just isn't true. Following that same logic it would be illegal to monetize ANY video about Factorio at all, regardless of any mods that may or may not be installed.

Your license doesn't have to authorize a video. It's generally already authorized under fair use, and there's no license that's going to protect that particular right simple because it isn't needed.

What removing the non-commercial clause from your license will do is allow others to directly copy your mod and sell it. Or upload a duplicate and claim they own it. Or create their own mod portal using your mods. What it WON'T do is give them a right to talk about it on YouTube. You don't have to grant that right, as you don't really have the right to take it away in the first place! The license is more for people who want to create their own mod using your code/graphics/resources.

[Mooncat]

Thanks for sharing!
I think I won't go for MIT, yet. But you made a good point that license file must be included with any derivatives, and I have missed this!

Actually I forgot to mention that once you have assigned an MIT licence then all derivatives must also use MIT - as you must include the licence file.

I think it is not true?
Just found this great website that summarizes the licenses with simple words: https://choosealicense.com/licenses/
If you look at the conditions...
GNU GPLv3: Same license
MIT License: License and copyright notice
So I think what it means is that you only need to show the MIT license file, but you don't need to use the MIT license in all derivatives. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Unfortunately, it is not a very good license apparently. More specifically, the "Non-Commercial" part is overprotecting my works. A user of my mod has just raised the issue:

The current non-commercial restriction prevents anyone from posting a monetized video or ad-supported blog post that uses your mod to illustrate a test setup

That just isn't true. Following that same logic it would be illegal to monetize ANY video about Factorio at all, regardless of any mods that may or may not be installed.

Your license doesn't have to authorize a video. It's generally already authorized under fair use, and there's no license that's going to protect that particular right simple because it isn't needed.

What removing the non-commercial clause from your license will do is allow others to directly copy your mod and sell it. Or upload a duplicate and claim they own it. Or create their own mod portal using your mods. What it WON'T do is give them a right to talk about it on YouTube. You don't have to grant that right, as you don't really have the right to take it away in the first place! The license is more for people who want to create their own mod using your code/graphics/resources.

I don’t know about the license of Factorio, but if you are talking about mods using licenses that are for non-commercial use only, then… maybe it really violates the license? I am not 100% sure about this.

I have searched about this for hours, looking for a good definition of "non-commercial use" and how does it work on video monetizations. Most of the results say it is not allowed, but they are not directly related to using a mod in a video (e.g. music being used as remix in videos, videos being reposted, etc.). The closest cases are game companies taking down gameplay videos on Youtube, also known as copyright strikes.
And I’m noted that Youtube only offers “CC BY” for videos uploaded to it. No option for “non-commercial” (NC). Maybe it’s because monetization on Youtube is always considered as “commercial use”?
You may ask why there are so many videos using CC-protected stuff but not being taken down. I think it’s just because the licensors don’t care, or worse, the licensors have complained but Youtube don’t listen. Money always comes first. lol

Again, I’m not entirely sure about this. Maybe there are other things I have missed or misunderstood. A quote from those blogs I have searched:

If you have any question on this, better consult a lawyer.

I don’t want to make it so complicated, so I just give up using “non-commercial” license.

I also concern people claiming my works as theirs, that’s why I don’t want to use MIT or BSD. I don’t think it is necessary to use non-commercial license to stop them. This rule is just about money after all. I think the rules about attribution are more suitable in this case?