Adding GPL Exception for Digital Storefronts (CONSENT OF CONTRIBUTORS NEEDED) #27
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Reference: Cavemanon/SnootGame#27
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(this was originally going to be a PR, but git hates me with a burning passion. Laugh at my failure at https://git.snootgame.xyz/Cavemanon/SnootGame/pulls/26)
Anons and core team members have been very interested in a possible Steam release for the game. Though, Steam, if we uploaded the game to it, would violate the AGPL and possibly the CC-BY-SA 4.0 due to their use of DRM. However, I have decided to write a quick exception that would gurantee licensing to digital store fronts of a properitary nature while also guranteeing that we won't add any extra content to those non-freely licensed copies of Snoot Game. This is to both allow users of properitary storefronts such as Steam to get our games and also avoids some BS where Cavemanon could add non-free DLC to the game and make it Steam exclusive. I'd like to hear the thoughts of other contributers and get the consent of them to add this licensing exception. If you see any flaws with this or see how this could be exploited for evil, then do speak your mind. Assume Cavemanon is an evil company too if that helps you think of ideas of how this could be exploited. If this exception (or some variation) is successful, then it will be the operating norm for our games henceforth to allow us to both capitalize monitarily on our hard work, gurantee user freedom, and avoid nasty cuck-licenses such as MIT, LGPL, or BSD that could be easily exploited to deny user freedom.
More information on the ethical implications on selling exceptions can be found here:
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions
Side note: While I have no legal background, I have been interested in writing a VGPL (Video Game Public License) that would have exceptions for non-free storefronts and other trademark clauses to allow free software video games to be able to compete with properitary ones monitarily, though I do believe that maybe just going along with writing this exception is good enough as I doubt such a license could be GPL compatiable.
Exception itself:
Cavemanon and its contributors to Snoot Game agree to give Cavemanon initated and approved digital store fronts an exclusive, non-transferable right to host Snoot Game and its assets without triggering any of the copyleft or sharealike parts of the GNU Affero GPL v3.0 or the CC-BY-SA 4.0. This practically means that, so long as Cavemanon is the one listing the game on a storefront that would in some way violate the GNU Affero GPL or CC-BY-SA 4.0, the parts of the GNU Affero GPL and CC-BY-SA 4.0 that would qualify the violation would not actually be violations. Thus, these licesnes become non-transferable, permissive licenses for storefronts that can be revoked at any time.
This agreement is true so long as Cavemanon offers feature parity to the best of its ability to these permissively licensed versions of the game. I.e The alternatively licensed digital store-front version cannot have any more features than the usual GNU Affero GPL + CC-BY-SA 4.0 version except in cases where being on said digital storefront gives extras features (such as integration into the digital store front's services).
Wow, you are brave for attempting to tackle legalese especially in such a "young" field like video games.
So as an absolute layman, an uncultured swine in legalese surrounding copyright, IP, and DRM this sounds surprisingly clear.
When it comes to releasing on Steam (just to stick with the example), Snoot Game would still remain free and the features/content would largely remain identical between a possible standalone version (hosted like it is now) and the Steam one - bar update and other store-features that can be added in. This is how I understand it.
While it wasn't expressly stated in the post, I would assume it has to remain free due to the nature of the source material.
Or will there be a cost to the Steam release? I admit, I know nothing about releasing anything to a storefront like Steam.
literally pen on paper fren.
This is going to sound werid, but the term "free" is vague. Free can mean freedom to distribute, copy, modfiy, etc. or it could mean free as in free of cost. Hencefort for this issue we should avoid using the term "free" and instead use gratis and libre as these are more apt definitions for the issues that going into this licensing shumuckary.
Gratis - Free of monitary cost
Libre - free as in freedom to distribute, modify, use, etc. (all AGPL protections)
This is an absolute must for this to remain ethical. I would prefer not to lock certain important features to storefronts. There should be no practical difference between the two. For instance, the update feature should exist no matter what version you use, but the methodology of updating can be different (our independent updates for the standalone version and steam updates for the steam version). There should be no Steam-only content. Maybe we can make standalone only content though as that doesn't encourage people to use non-libre software like Steam.
Snoot Game ideally will be sold on steam, it won't be gratis, however, it will be libre. You as an individual, if you purchase on steam, should have the right to use the code however you wish so long as you make sure others have a gurantee of that right. The GNU Affero GPL will still apply to you. However, the parts of the GNU Affero GPL that require non-libre software residing in the code to be libre software won't apply to the parts added by steam.
Going by parody law, we can make money off of parodies. KO-OP themsleves have admitted this game is a parody already. They're also Canadian and that's another hurdle if they wanted to sue. We're essnetially in the clear for profiteering off our own work. Though, if we decided to play it ultra-safe, a release on steam could be gratis.
Steam doesn't require DRM, there's lots of DRM free games on steam.
I know GPL and friends are an issue with Apple (don't know if it's app store, mac store or both) I think because you have to link to some of their libs to release on their platform. But I don't think steam has this issue.
Anyway, I don't have an issue with the exception on principle, but I don't think it's a good idea. It's very tricky to get a license that does what you actually intended (which is why GPL is on v3 and there's AGPL and LGPL). This is also complicated further because you're doing this on contributions. There was an interesting discussion on an LWN.net article about GCC dropping their requirement for copyright assignment, I suggest you check it out.
Though, they do package propreitary software with their games distribution and that may constitute a GPL violation. We could just interprate that as a seperate program interacting rather than apart of the package (it isn't required after all and doesn't use our code).
Swapping license in anything even for minor purposes is always a bit of a headache. Technically no one else has really touched the code in terms of commits to master besides me, so this, all in all, would be my choice. Though, I would rather not impede the incoming PRs with legal BS.
On the GCC similiarty, I can see it. I like to always assume the worst out of any company (even cavemanon as we could be bought out and evil could ensue to our freely licensed properties), that's why I made is aparent that contributions must be AGPL, but can belong to their owners. This makes license changes hard, and thats a double edged sword that works in favor of the community.
If Steam really doesn't require any licensing changes, then i'll happily close this issue and let it be. I rather not open a legal can of worms and cause any unneeded headache. Being on the "applel store" isn't too appealing too lol.
I did see this and this is what got me to write the exception. Since different contributors own different parts of the code, it might be wise to declare that for code to be in the repo, the contributor must state that this sort of stuff doesn't constitute a GPL violation.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/sdk/uploading/distributing_opensource
Hmm, I see your point. I guess the question is if there's a way to upload without requiring steamworks, but it doesn't sound like there is.
I see where the exception comes from, you're following the valve's advice on that page. I still feel like your exception is a bit too complicated and opens itself up to a lot of questions.
Wouldn't it be easier to require contributors to dual license their contributions with AGPL and MIT/BSD? Don't know if that's possible, but it would allow you to then use MIT/BSD to distribute on stores where GPL is an issue. Of course that opens up the possibility of Cavemanon being evil and using the contributions in a propietary version later like you said. But I don't know if that's a serious issue for anyone. I don't know if you're really expecting anyone to invest significant effort into this project when they're not going to see any of the money if you sell the game anyway.
I'll leave it here, don't want to pretend I'm an expert on this, or discourage you if you think this is important.
Yeah, I was more referring the fact that you would tackle the quagmire of the emerging rights, permissions, licenses etc. of the digital goods/services/IPs. What little I have heard about licensing and the likes in this space makes me feel like walking on eggshells. But I suppose that is mainly due to me not being well versed in it (or laws, particularly international ones). I mean it has to be done. If I knew a trustworthy lawyer or just a law-close Anon, I'd flick the idea to them. Their perspective might be illuminating.
This is a great idea for clarification.
It sounds like the end goal is to have a parallel distribution method. Aside from being able to perhaps reach more people and monetizations, are there any other motivations for going for it? The reason why I ask is that is that if the game is available as gratis, it will essentially be voluntary to pay for it. Don't get me wrong, I know a sizeable amount of people will, if the price is right. Just want to better understand the desire.
I'm not sure if I understand GNU Affero GPL in this context right. So, the game as it will be on Steam would likely not be libre, meaning because of the Steam libraries that may or may not need to be baked in to various levels it cannot fall under the libre definition. But the standalone version will be free to acquire, modify and distribute as long as it is done as gratis?
Oh, I did not know about this. But it does look like they have admitted it as such. We need to preserve their admission somehow though so they can't deny it later on. (I'm sure if it becomes a case they will still try, not necessarily out of malice, but because it simply would work against them.)
no concerns, y'all seem to know what you're doing with the legalese / parody laws and i just want to coode for funny dino game
chalk me down as compliant
Same here. I give consent for any and all licensing changes.
I am absolutely no expert on this stuff so it's nice to see that we have someone on the team who seems to know what they're doing.
lmao, yeah I get that feeling. The law is cringe, but you must know cringe to fight it. Anyway, yeah I'm a bit of an aspiring lawfag despite the fact I hate the law, so most of my legal autism is just autism and not skill. Hopefully its good enough though.
Start asking said questions then so we can avoid legal cringe. I rather not have snoot game be removed from steam because of something that's not related to a realistic school shootings or dino boobies.
We're trying to avoid cuck licensing for a good reason. Look what happened with Friday night funking and proprietary mods. I rather not go down that route and have "Snoot Game : Booba Edition" be propreitary garbage that doesn't respect the user's freedom. It's better to carve exceptions than to throw the whole concept of copyleft out. I also think that any license thats not a GPL variety will cause problems with CC-BY-SA 4.0 since the GPL is compatable with that. I don't know if the assets when combined with cuck licensed code would require the code to take sharealike upon it, bringing us back to our original problem.
If Cavemanon got big, it'd still own snoot game. If someone bought out cavemanon, then snoot game would have its rights transfered to the owner. Thus, Snoot Game could be made propreitary/have propreitary assets if we used a cuck license. We're aiming to not be a one trick pony and I am trying my hardest to make sure that if we do make it, we'll make it freely.
As of now, yes, but it's moreso about the future and our future works. If we have a carved out, legally strong exception that won't bite us in the ass for proprietary storefronts, then we'll be able to reuse that on future projects.
Welcome to law! Where safety is how charming you are to a judge!
As stated before, having a good exception in place would mean the exception can be reused for later games, thus giving us the ability to distribute libre software in "traditional" ways that many game players would find familiar. I'm trying to strike a balance between profitablility and software freedom so we can both take home cash and have our users enjoy the benefits of software freedom.
The game on Steam will have non-libre components to it added by steam via steamworks. This violates the GNU Affero GPL as you must be able to distribute the entire source code of the project if you share it.
No. The standalone version will be free to acquire, modify, and distribute as long as you give others a copy of the source code (including any modifications) when you distribute it. Infact, you can as sell snoot game (barring trademark issues) to your hearts content and that's with in your rights due to how the Affero GPL works. We essentially have no control of what you do except for the one exception in that you must share.
Its been archived in screenshots and any anon could be a witness. Discord could be subpenoaed to give up evidence if the law came knocking on their door.
Anyway, seeing that this exception that we've carved is still neccessary and the main developers are in approval towards it, I will be revising the exception one last time with some more sheen and polish and then putting it in. Any further questions should be raised soon.
I appreciate the hard work and in depth break down of all of the Spears.
I realize up to this point I haven't contributed anything,but take this as a written agreement with the proposed plan.
Good to know! Most PRs seem good and I will merge a more refined version of the licenseing exception. Realized that many of the terms were vague and so I defined them to be as quality as possible. This should keep distribution as free as possible and just give exceptions to certain people in certain cases.
Thank you for clearing up a whole bunch of questions @PrincipalSpears . I now understand considerably more about the what and why.
Just a note, I don't think Steam has any right to axe Snoot Game for dino booba, the kind of shit they have on their store has much, much more lewd.
In any case, I came onboard to help the game I love so much. I don't expect any monetary benefits from helping out with the Snoot Game. So naturally, I consent to this.
If in the future the relationship between me and Cavemanon changes (i.e. some form of hiring/contracting/commissioning occurs) or if I am involved from the start, putting in as much effort as anyone else from the core team (who, in this case would be explicit beneficiaries of monetization, for the sake of illustration).
I bring this up since it has been mentioned that you want to have your team make it as a full fledged dev studio. This is something I am interested in as well, if Cavemanon would ever consider having me.