open content, sharealike licencing and permissions?

BACKGROUND:
I've just discovering Second Life and one of the first things I did was create a TShirt texture using open content artwork from Battle for Wesnoth (http://wesnoth.org/).

The artwork is released under the GNU GPL licence , which grants the rights to copy (including for charge) and mody the artwork. It requires that copies and derivative works remain under the same conditions. (The Creative Commons by-sa licence is very similar).

I would potentially like to sell this and other open-content-licenced objects.

QUESTIONS:
If you give an object to someone else, can they change the permissions on it?

If so, is it possible to set permissions for an object so that you can give it to someone else but they are unable to turn off the copy, modify and resell/give-away permissions if they pass the object on?

If it's not possible to configure an object in this way, how do I go about agitating for such a feature request?

Thanks.

Hi Irrevenant ...



If you leave an item as full perms and give it to somebody, they will be able to change the perms, however they will not be able to change any "next owner" permissions that you set as "off", if that makes sense.



The trouble with this is that if you leave an item full perms and sell it, you will probably find it is given out far and wide as a freebie before too long, making it a difficult thing to continue selling. You'd really need to either turn off copy or transfer if you want to sell it for any length of time.

In the case of textures, they cannot be modified once inworld anyway. The only modification you can do with a T-Shirt is with the appearance sliders to change the sleeve length etc., or to apply an overall tint to the item, and the results are not generally very good.

You could make the T-Shirt no mod, but use the description field to point people to the website and the GNU licence, or to somewhere they can download and modify the T-Shirt texture, so allowing people access to the original modifiable artwork. Once it is no mod, nobody can change the description field.

That's fine, I want it to be given out far and wide.

What I want to ensure is; when I release an object for free distribution and modification, the new owners can't turn off those permissions for copies (including derivative works). The spirit of the licence is that the content can be freely used and redistridute and must STAY free to be used.

BTW, does an object credit the original creator when it changes hands? Or can that be edited away by the new owner?


Good point re: textures. I intend to produce full-fledged objects as well, though.

If the textures were under a GNU license that says derivative work must remain free, then they can only be used to make freebies and stuff for personal use. Not stuff for sale.

But there is no way that you can "lock" a full-perms freebie in its permissions so it can never be resold. The SL Permissions system doesn't cover that possibility, though it certainly should.

You would need to distribute the shirt as copy and mod OK, but no transfer, which would mean your freebie vendor or giveaway box would be the only source. Others could not get it from you and then give copies to friends.

Unfortunately (although it's a good thing in the larger perspective) that would be a violation of the GPL. If I give GPL licenced content to someone they have to be able to redistribute it. It has to remain Free.

Anyway, this concern has apparently already been logged as a feature request at http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-2626.

Thank you everybody for your assistance!

I would tend to agree with that interpretation of the GPL license, so I would generally refrain from using such textures at all in SL, unless it was for my own personal use only. Why? Because let's say you make that shirt, and distribute it for free, with full permissions. Some other Player gets a copy, and starts selling them. When a complaint finally comes down that the shirt violates the GPL license for the textures on it, the person whose name is associated most clearly with the shirt is YOU, as the creator of the shirt. The reseller's name isn't attached to the copy that someone paid money for. That is a legal exposure I would rather not risk, myself.

That looks like a good jira.

Am I right in thinking that the GNU GPL licence doesn't mean you have to give it away for free, just that the content must remain open?

Yes. When you transfer the content (in this case an SL object) you transfer the right copy or modify the content. This right remains affixed to all copies and derivative works of that content.

But you can ABSOLUTELY charge for the act of transferring the content. As you said, it becomes increasingly hard to charge for it as it's spread around. But the advantage is that you add to the communal pool of content - which you can then draw on if you want to make something.

A copy of the full licence is at: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html (I'd probably stick to using v2.0 of the licence. 3.0 is a bit overkill for my purposes.)


As noted above, there's absolutely no problem with selling GPLed (or cc-by-sa) content.

The only possible breach is that someone toggles copy or modify to 'off' then sells or gives away the content.

I doubt I would get in trouble for such a thing since the violation occured 'downstream'. But it's not in the spirit of the licence and I'd prefer to 'lock the content open' if at all possible.