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Seeking permission to re-license the sound edits by OpenTTD contributors #6

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Wuzzy2 opened this issue Jan 25, 2021 · 11 comments
Closed

Seeking permission to re-license the sound edits by OpenTTD contributors #6

Wuzzy2 opened this issue Jan 25, 2021 · 11 comments

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@Wuzzy2
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Wuzzy2 commented Jan 25, 2021

As my research into the license status of the original (unedited) sound samples from Freesound.org showed, a lot of files were actually released under libre licenses! This contradicts the current claim in the READM

But it seems that is not really "enough" to truly liberate OpenSFX. Because most sounds were actually edited. The following people are listed as editors in the README:

  • Janis Lukss ("Pendrokar" at "wiki.openttd.org")
  • "janusz" from "dev.openttdcoop.org"
  • "Jklamo" from "wiki.opentd.org"
  • Remko Bijker ("Rubidium" at "dev.openttdcoop.org")
  • Richard Wheeler ("Zephyris" at "dev.openttdcoop.org")

I am hereby asking permission from everyone in this list above that the OpenTTD community is permitted to use your sound edits under a libre/FOSS license. That would mean we could instantly flip the license of many of the actual sound files in OpenSFX to a libre one without needing to edit anything. It would make the entire OpenSFX 'libre' yet, but it would greatly speed up the effort.

How I imagine a relicense would work: It would work if two conditions are true:

  1. The source sound(s) that were us is under a FOSS license (see my research in Document license status of source sounds #5)
  2. The person who edited the sound (see above) also gave their OK to relicense

If both conditions are true, then the sound in question can be kept, only the license in the text files needs updating. Ideally, this would happen for all sounds, but I know it won't.

Hint: Seems like src/opensfx.sfo does a good job in documenting in what happened to each source sound.

I don't know how to contact most of the people on the list above, so if anyone knows, please reach out to these people. If we get the OK even from one person, that would be nice.

In case that we get the OK from nobody, then there's still the semi-nuclear option: Redoing them by someone who can give their OK. Thankfully, at least most source files are already libre.
(Note that for the sounds with clear non-libre sources, we only have the nuclear option; those need to be replaced no matter what. I already reached out to pretty much any author of the originals, and a few sounds got libre (yay!), but not all.)

I basically just opened this issue for the chance to simplify the work of 'liberating' OpenSFX before moving on to the nuclear option.
@planetmaker
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In essence the more difficult job is to (re-)find all the original sounds - which were found on different sites which provide(d) free sound samples; thus the original creators are mentioned indeed in opensfx.sfo. IIRC, the people above in this issue mostly were afterwards kind enough to edit them so that they match to the game (like cutting, adjusting loudness etc).

Given that the sounds were taken under the CC-BY-Sampling-1-Plus license 10 years ago from websites I don't recall... the sounds with that original license likely need to be replaced or their original creators contacted. Searching for a few of the filenames or creators mentioned in opensfx.sfo, search leads for quite a few to https://freesound.org
It might be worth to checkout the files by their name and check whether their license changed. On a single test it returned CC-0 for a file mentioned in opensfx.sfo as obtained under the CC-Sampling.

The people mentioned above by you who did most of the editing to match this set somewhat left the community or got busy with RL - yet searching for them and getting into contect via linkedin, facebook, email or so might actually be feasible as they seem unique enough that in case of doubt only a hand full of people need be asked whether they are the right person (I can provide a gmail contact for janusz which might still work - contact me privately for that).

@Wuzzy2
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Wuzzy2 commented Jan 25, 2021

GitHub notifications:

@Pendrokar
@zephyris
@rubidium42

I was unable to find GitHub accounts (or any contact information) for janusz and Jklamo. I was also unable to find accounts with these names at the websites mentioned above. The accounts don't seem to exist

@Wuzzy2
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Wuzzy2 commented Jan 25, 2021

@planetmaker: Well, it turns out most source sounds are actually under libre licenses and from freesound.org, so this is a big help. See #5. Please write me about janusz to Wuzzy2@mail.ru.

This was referenced Jan 26, 2021
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@Wuzzy2
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Wuzzy2 commented Jan 27, 2021

Status report:

  • I alredy did all those GitHub mentions (obviously)
  • janusz contacted via e-mail today
  • Zephyris contacted via PM on tt-forums.net today
  • I already wrote to Pendrokar via PM on tt-forums.net 1-2 years ago, but things have changed now a bit (new information) so I wrote another PM
  • Felicitus and Rubidium were contaced via PM on tt-forums.net 1-2 years ago. No reply. I guess they're gone …
  • According to IRC, Rubidium was last seen in 2019 …
  • I have no knowledge of any other contact details. If you know anything more, that would help a bunch!
  • No permission gotten from anyone yet

@Wuzzy2
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Wuzzy2 commented Jan 27, 2021

In IRC someone showed me this:
https://dev.openttdcoop.org/issues/1364

Rubidium wrote:

I hereby declare that my original work can be relicensed to GPLv2. This includes the readme, changelog, osfx_34.wav, osfx_50.wav and opensfx.psfo.
I furthermore declare that my modifications can be relicensed to GPLv2 as long as the original creator of the samples I edited/mixed are allowing relicensing to GPLv2 as well.

I declare herewith that all my work on this project, past, present and future, may be re-licensed under GPL v2 or later, or under the CDDL; this includes namely all the work on the build system, the readme and opensfx.psfo

So Rubidium's work is either GPLv2 or CDDL (we can choose). Good to know.

@planetmaker
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Zephyris has an active twitter account @zephyris

@Wuzzy2
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Wuzzy2 commented Jan 30, 2021

I don't use Twitter.

@Wuzzy2
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Wuzzy2 commented Jan 30, 2021

I just got permission from zephyris!

Hey,
This is fine by me, any open licence is fine.

One down, four more to go!

@Pendrokar
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Permission to relicense my SFX contributions granted.

@Wuzzy2
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Wuzzy2 commented Feb 2, 2021

This is great! That already covers a big chunk of sounds. There are only a few sounds remaining for which I don't have editor's permission. But I already started working on re-doing those as well, basing the work on the original free sounds. This is not too hard.

I will post a new PR when #8 is finished.

This was referenced Feb 2, 2021
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@Wuzzy2
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Wuzzy2 commented Feb 9, 2021

Alright, I think I have gotten all the permissions I needed. For the handful of sounds for which I was unable to get permissions, I managed to find or produce libre replacements, thus a permission is no longer neccessary. The result of this effort can be found in #13.

I close this now.

@Wuzzy2 Wuzzy2 closed this as completed Feb 9, 2021
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@Pendrokar @Wuzzy2 @planetmaker