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Relicense OpenSFX under an actual FOSS license #2

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Wuzzy2 opened this issue Jan 25, 2021 · 4 comments
Closed

Relicense OpenSFX under an actual FOSS license #2

Wuzzy2 opened this issue Jan 25, 2021 · 4 comments

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@Wuzzy2
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Wuzzy2 commented Jan 25, 2021

Currently, OpenSFX is licensed under the ancient CC Sampling Plus 1.0 license, which is even discouraged by Creative Commons themselves. It's also a non-FOSS license. It forbids use in advertising, which is a really dumb restriction.

I like to have OpenSFX be licensed under a proper FOSS license. Possible candidates are e.g. CC BY-SA, CC BY, or CC0. Note that -NC or -ND clauses from Creative Commons are incompatible with free software.

First of all, yes, I am fully aware that this will be likely be a pretty big task, but I think it's pretty important, considering how OpenTTD prides itself as a FOSS project, and OpenSFX is kinda important for OpenTTD. The "Open" in "OpenSFX" should mean "open", and not "open, but ...". :D

My idea is to do this in multiple steps.

  • Step 1: Document the origin and current license state of each sound and put it in the README, so we know which sounds are problematic
  • Step 2: Keep the sounds that are looking fine (e.g. CC0, CC BY, CC BY-SA)
  • Step 3: Replace the remaining sounds with other ones that are under FOSS license
  • Step 3: Change the official OpenSFX license to an actual FOSS license
  • Step 4: Make a new release
  • Step 5: Celebrate. :D

I have done a part of the work in documenting the license of most of the original Freesound sounds. I even managed to convince a few authors to relicense their works. It was not a lot of sounds, unfortunately, but better than nothing. See here: https://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=85815

@Wuzzy2
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Wuzzy2 commented Jan 27, 2021

The big obvious question is … what license to choose for the entirety of OpenSFX? And I want to answer it. First of all, quick reminder that my goal is to relicense OpenSFX under a LIBRE license. So all non-libre licenses like CC Sampling Plus, CC BY-NC or CC BY-ND are automatically disqualified.

Long story short: The overall OpenSFX license will probably boil down to CC BY-SA 3.0, because of the licensing of source sounds. There are other theoretical license choises, but they require dropping even more sounds.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Why? Because all the sounds in OpenSFX that were derived from libre sounds are based on either CC0 (or "Public Domain"), CC BY 3.0 or CC BY-SA 3.0 sounds. Most libre sounds are CC0 or CC BY 3.0. We can ignore CC0, because it's "anything goes". So we look at the most restrictive license, which is CC BY-SA 3.0. Therefore, only that license can be the suitable overall license.

(Note: I am currently trying to replace all sounds that were made from non-libre sources (see #8), so I ignore those for my analysis).

But there is only one CC BY-SA 3.0 sound. If for some reason you want to get rid of the -SA clause, we have to drop that single sound. Then we could go CC BY 3.0. But I don't really think that is neccessary.
If you don't like CC BY 3.0 either, then a LOT of sounds have to be dropped. There will still be some sounds remaining, but I really don't think this is neccessary. Attribution is defensible.

@orudge
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orudge commented Jan 29, 2021

I don't think there's a reason we couldn't use CC-BY-SA 3.0. It appears to be considered DFSG-compatible so I think that should be fine.

This was referenced Feb 2, 2021
@Wuzzy2
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Wuzzy2 commented Feb 19, 2021

#14 will fix this.

@Wuzzy2
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Wuzzy2 commented Feb 25, 2021

#14 is merged. OpenSFX is now officially libre! Amazing!
😄

@Wuzzy2 Wuzzy2 closed this as completed Feb 25, 2021
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