Use of freebie textures in other products?

Hello all.

I am, I cheerfully confess, a relative newcomer to SL. Over the last month or so I've been dedicating myself to the study of LSL, and have made some progress. In fact, I'm almost at the point that I can imagine what my first, small-scale, for-sale, product might look like. Said product would be a combination of script, prim-building, and texturing. And therein lies the rub - though I will do all the work for the first two, I have no skill in texture making, nor $L to buy them (its a long story, please don't make me go there ).

I could offer the product for sale un-textured, but I imagine the vast majority of people only purchase stuff that works out of the box. I could use freebie textures, and it seems to me that this is ethical, provided I charge no more for the product than I am entitled to for my work on the scripting and building alone. That's OK in principle, but in general the only way we have to set "fair" pricing is via the market, and a prospective purchaser will judge what is a "fair" price by judging the entire product, not the scripting and prim-builds in isolation. Indeed, now that I think it through, if I truly believe that the product is un-sellable un-textured, then by definition the value of the associated scripting and prim-building is zero - in economics the value of something is what someone is willing to pay for it I believe.

My head is starting to ache now, so I'll turn to the wisdom of this forum.

Summary: does some threshold (as yet undefined) amount of your own work in a product, a product which also uses freebie elements, ever make it ethically sound to sell said product?

Cale.

Have you considered finding a partner to collaborate with ? You may have to split the proceeds but your product might benefit from the contribution of specialists in their field such as texture artists, and personally, I very much enjoy working with other creative people.

Cale - ask your fellow Regs, we'll tell you what you need to know.

If textures are sold as 'free to use', then you should have no problems in using them yourself in your own products.

The difference is how you're selling them. If, for example, you take 50 freebie textures, chuck them in a box and sell them as your own for L$100, then that's wrong. If, however, you take that brick pattern texture (whether free or bought from one of the many places in-world that sells them and says it's ok to do so) and put it on a house that you have built, then that's perfectly acceptable in my eyes.

In other words - reselling product = bad, selling product that uses other stuff when allowed = good.

There are also many free texture libraries on the internet, that give you permission to freely download and use them under the same conditions, ie that you aren't selling them off as your own work.

I have little to no texture making skills myself, and rely on a similar process of using other people's textures on the products I sell.

Good luck with whatever it is you're making!

Lewis

Conversely, without your scripts and building, the sum value of the textures is zero... but it may look unfinished perhaps, and not as saleable, but that doesn't devalue your input. CJ's suggestion is good... also I don't know what you're making, but you can go a long way with a blank texture and shiny. May be a good way to expand on what your limited texture collection will allow.

Other than that, what Lewis said, they're kinda intended to be used... just not resold as is.

Make sure you check out the GNUbie Store and Yadni's Junkyard for texture collections, I believe both of them do.

Not knowing your product, have you tried getting creative with the color picker? It may not be fancy, but a few prims colored the right way can look pretty slick, textured or not, depending on what you're trying to sell. I even own a nice, quite expensive hi-rise apartment building bought off SLExchange that was built texture-free, just good color picks.

I see it like this:

When I sell a build that was made with freebie textures, I'm not selling the textures - I'm selling the time and energy I spent for rezzing and positioning the prims, searching for fitting textures (maybe even editing them a bit) and putting them on the prims.

*noddles* Yes, you are entitled to charge for the amount of work you did in building and scripting the object. *grins* Believe me, building is a pain when you're lagging badly. Those stupid prims just jumping right back to the old positions after changes is just annoying! Hmm.. maybe I should learn to LSL myself.

Many thanks for the detailed replies - it appears I don't have too much to worry about.

Picking up on some of the points raised .....

I agree that teaming up is the way to go long term, but I'd like to try to get one product under my belt, making all the newbie mistakes that I'm bound to, before I inflict myself on another person. That said, Xceptopec and I have successfully completed one very small, non-commercial, project together, but we're Clubside (now GT) group members, and he knew what he was letting himself in for beforehand.

I take the point about shiny/colored prims looking good, but I'll need at least some textured as well. And yes, I'm a virtual magpie , and have hit Yadni's and GNUbie, as well as a number of other freebie spots.

Finally, I had a couple of offers of support in-game, for both $L to buy textures, or of the textures themselves. I've knocked them back for the moment, in case my grand ideas never hit prototype stage. But admidst all the doom and gloom on these forums, it says a lot I think about the generosity of some people, and the support that is available for newbies who show even the smallest amount of initiative.

Cale, I'm wondering what sort of things you want to build? What sort of textures are you looking for?

Coyote:

Part of the project would include furnishings, but I'm happy to use freebies to cover the texturing there, now I know that its OK to do so.

It's perfectly OK to use freebie textures to create products, in terms of applying those textures to the surfaces of prims that you make into something of value for sale. As Lewis said, it is NOT OK to slap a bunch or raw texture files into a box and resell them as a collection of textures.

That goes as well for any "Copy OK / Mod OK / Transfer OK" textures that you purchase. That is why most texture stores exist - to provide textures that content creators can use in making their own new products, like clothes, vehicles, buildings...

There are some textures that are sold without full permissions. An example of this are the textures sold by a builder, to go with specific pre-built homes, and intended for personal use only. These are sold so the home owner can make an additional matching handrail, or walkway, or wall to go in your own home. (Sally Seattle sells stuff like this to match her "Tiki" line of home products, and they are clearly labeled as NO transfer textures.) In general, if a texture is sold as anything other than "Copy OK / Mod OK / Transfer OK", assume that you should NOT use it to create anything you intend to resell.