"nemesis" <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote in message 
news:web.4576d7696ea74aa93976a8750@news.povray.org...
> "Chris B" <c_b### [at] btconnectcomnospam> wrote:
>> The License
>> ------------
>> It seems that we will probably
>> need separate provisions for licensing the source and for licensing the
>> resulting generated images.
>
> hmm?  Why is generated image licensing a concern?
>

Well. I may be wrong about this, but I thought that an image generated from 
a 3D model was a derivation of the artistic work contained within the 3D 
model. So my thinking was that if we don't explicitly grant permission to 
use and modify the images that people wouldn't be licensed to do so.

>
> Now, since we're talking about include files, not final scenes, i'm not 
> sure
> why the concern of licensing of generated images from the sources:  aren't
> we contributing stuff to the collection precisely for them to be used
> abroad?  Limiting them in this way doesn't seem helpful.
>

I agree that the intention is not to limit the use of images and that's what 
I was trying to say.
My concern was that if we simply don't mention them in our licensing 
statement that their use may be implicitly limited.
Does anyone have a definitive answer on this question?

Regards,
Chris B.

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"nemesis" <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote in message 
news:web.4576d7696ea74aa93976a8750@news.povray.org...
> "Chris B" <c_b### [at] btconnectcomnospam> wrote:
>> The License
>> ------------
>
>> The main candidate for a common license to cover the submitted Scene
>> Description Language files and things like height field files and input 
>> data
>> files, seems to be the LGPL (Lesser General Purpose License).
>
> Reading through the discussion i was under the impression a majority of
> people were inclined to go with CC licenses.
>

Maybe I phrased this a little innaccurately. It seemed to me that the 
majority considered that requiring credit to be given (Attribution) was not 
practical or necessary for the collection. This seems to rule out the CC 
licenses, the least restrictive of which still requires attribution 
(although there is some text that introduces the concept of 'reasonableness' 
appropriate to the medium).

Regards,
Chris B.

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4576e360$1@news.povray.org...

> Maybe I phrased this a little innaccurately. It seemed to me that the 
> majority considered that requiring credit to be given (Attribution) was 
> not practical or necessary for the collection. This seems to rule out the 
> CC licenses, the least restrictive of which still requires attribution 
> (although there is some text that introduces the concept of 
> 'reasonableness' appropriate to the medium).

The conditions in the CC licenses can be waived if necessary, so I don't 
think the credit is much an issue. I'm really under the impression that too 
much importance is given to the credit issue anyway. I've worked on scenes 
that used a lot of foreign material and credit was never a problem. We're 
talking POV-Ray scenes made by mostly individual artists, not large-scale 
F/OSS projects involving project teams and hundreds of dependencies.

I can only repeat what I've said in a previous post, which is that for 
non-programmers (at least for me...) the LGPL and others are completely 
abstruse and add some unecessary burden to the whole process. As someone who 
could want to reuse some snippet of code and possibly redistribute it, the 
CC-By is simple and clear enough. I can't say the same with a license that 
requires digging in a lengthy document that's using both legal and developer 
lingo (in a foreign language) to understand what one can and cannot do.

Example from the LGPL : "If a facility in the modified Library refers to a 
function or a table of data to be supplied by an application program that 
uses the facility, other than as an argument passed when the facility is 
invoked, then you must make a good faith effort to ensure that, in the event 
an application does not supply such function or table, the facility still 
operates, and performs whatever part of its purpose remains meaningful."

It may makes sense for a developer, but for me it's Tagalog.

G.

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"Gilles Tran" <tra### [at] inapgfr> wrote in message 
news:4576ed96$1@news.povray.org...

> news: 4576e360$1@news.povray.org...
>
>> Maybe I phrased this a little innaccurately. It seemed to me that the 
>> majority considered that requiring credit to be given (Attribution) was 
>> not practical or necessary for the collection. This seems to rule out the 
>> CC licenses, the least restrictive of which still requires attribution 
>> (although there is some text that introduces the concept of 
>> 'reasonableness' appropriate to the medium).
>
> The conditions in the CC licenses can be waived if necessary, so I don't 
> think the credit is much an issue.

I hadn't noticed before that the CC Attribution Deed does indeed say that 
"Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the 
copyright holder".

However, the Legal Code for the CC Attribution license does state that "No 
term or provision of this License shall be deemed waived and no breach 
consented to unless such waiver or consent shall be in writing and signed by 
the party to be charged with such waiver or consent." .
It also says "This License constitutes the entire agreement between the 
parties with respect to the Work licensed here. There are no understandings, 
agreements or representations with respect to the Work not specified here."

If there is a way to explicitly waive the attribution clause of the CC 
Attribution license without having to manage signatures then this could be a 
great way forward.

> I'm really under the impression that too much importance is given to the 
> credit issue anyway. I've worked on scenes that used a lot of foreign 
> material and credit was never a problem. We're talking POV-Ray scenes made 
> by mostly individual artists, not large-scale F/OSS projects involving 
> project teams and hundreds of dependencies.
>

Well, I think the only importance in the issue of credit is that we don't 
want to place onerous and difficult to satisfy requirements on people 
maintaining this collection in the future. So we're looking to find a way of 
'not' mandating stuff, while trying to reduce the risk that anyone can 
interfere with the freedoms that we're giving.

> I can only repeat what I've said in a previous post, which is that for 
> non-programmers (at least for me...) the LGPL and others are completely 
> abstruse and add some unecessary burden to the whole process. As someone 
> who could want to reuse some snippet of code and possibly redistribute it, 
> the CC-By is simple and clear enough. I can't say the same with a license 
> that requires digging in a lengthy document that's using both legal and 
> developer lingo (in a foreign language) to understand what one can and 
> cannot do.
>

I agree. The LGPL terminology is difficult to interpret, particularly within 
our intended context. The Legal Code for the CC Attribution license is also 
quite heavy going, but seems easier to interpret within the more artistic 
context that we need. One of the nice things about CC is that they have the 
Deeds that put things in more straight forward terms.

Looking again at the CC site, there is also a CC LGPL license that I'd never 
noticed before. If I understand correctly, this is the LGPL accompanied by a 
CC human readable Deed. I don't know if this helps at all.

> G.
>

Regards,
Chris B.

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Chris B wrote:
> One question open in my mind (because IANAL), is, if the image generated 
> becomes the property of the user, is there any danger that someone could 
> incorporate our works in a way that could prevent others from using it. For 
> example, could they use the image of a contributed object as part of a 
> trademark, or in an advert that associates the object with a well-known 
> product and thereby constrains people from using anything resembling their 
> trademark or any image that might be associated with their brand?'
> 
>  Regards,
>  Chris B.
> 
> 

(IANAL but I could play one on TV)
Considering how much work some companies put into keeping trademarks
from being diluted, I doubt that a corporate lawyer would use an
established object from a publicly available library that was
copyrighted by someone else.

No one sane would attempt to use some brand name can of soda from
another company as a trademark. They may have a license to use it, but
they do not have the copyright to it.

Worst case would be that someone contributes something that they later
sell to a company to use as their trademark. However, if all the license
stuff is in order, people using the library have a perpetual and
non-exclusive license to use that object.

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"Sabrina Kilian" <ykg### [at] vtedu> wrote in message 
news:45772c0e$1@news.povray.org...
> Chris B wrote:
>> One question open in my mind (because IANAL), is, if the image generated
>> becomes the property of the user, is there any danger that someone could
>> incorporate our works in a way that could prevent others from using it. 
>> For
>> example, could they use the image of a contributed object as part of a
>> trademark, or in an advert that associates the object with a well-known
>> product and thereby constrains people from using anything resembling 
>> their
>> trademark or any image that might be associated with their brand?'
>>
>>  Regards,
>>  Chris B.
>>
>>
>
> (IANAL but I could play one on TV)
> Considering how much work some companies put into keeping trademarks
> from being diluted, I doubt that a corporate lawyer would use an
> established object from a publicly available library that was
> copyrighted by someone else.
>
> No one sane would attempt to use some brand name can of soda from
> another company as a trademark. They may have a license to use it, but
> they do not have the copyright to it.
>
> Worst case would be that someone contributes something that they later
> sell to a company to use as their trademark. However, if all the license
> stuff is in order, people using the library have a perpetual and
> non-exclusive license to use that object.

I guess you're right. I think maybe that reading all this legal gobbledegook 
over the last couple of weeks has made me a little paranoid.

Regards,
Chris B.

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nemesis schrieb:
> 
> hmm?  Why is generated image licensing a concern?  Just to draw an example
> from programming languages and environments:  most, if not all, compilers
> do not place any limitations on what kind of license the generated
> binaries/executables should be under.  It means you can use a compiler
> licensed under the GPL, say, GCC, and still license the generated
> executable for your source code under some proprietary license of your
> choice.

Please read what i wrote in:

Subject: Re: POV-Ray Includes - Licensing
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 14:40:19 +0100
From: Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde>
Newsgroups: povray.general

For all discussed licenses (both software licenses and CC) this depends 
on if the image can be regarded as derived works on the include files. 
And as illustrated there are definitely cases where this is the case and 
there are definitely cases where this isn't.

Concerning LGPL - you should keep in mind that this would allow anyone 
to integrate the covered include files into different 3D packages (by 
translating into a different language) and distribute them as a closed 
product.  This will be difficult in some cases (for example when 
POV-Ray's procedural patterns are used) but will be fairly straight away 
  for example for a tree generator.  I don't regard this possibility as 
bad per se but everyone considering using such a license should keep 
that in mind.  Trying to avoid this would suggest using the CC-'share 
alike' licenses.  In some cases this will of course impose significant 
unintended restrictions to the images using the file (see above).

-- Christoph

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"Chris B" <c_b### [at] btconnectcomnospam> wrote in message 
news:4576c842$1@news.povray.org...
> I'll attempt to summarise the discussions from this 'licensing' thread so 
> far and to draw some conclusions. It seems to me that we're moving towards 
> a general consensus on the main issues, so if we can address any remaining 
> concerns then we should hopefully be able to draw this part of the 
> discussion to a close pretty soon. Please feel free to comment if you 
> think I've got stuff wrong or if you just disagree with it.
>

There don't seem to have been any postings on this subject for a couple of 
days. I'm not sure whether that means we've reached a concensus or whether 
everyones just hacked off with the discussion.

I'll assume it means that we've reached a concensus unless:
  1.  anyone can suggest a clever way of waiving the 'Attribution' clause of 
the Creative Commons Attribution license without requiring us to manage 
waiver signatures, or
  2.  anyone has an alternative license that would better suit our needs,

It seems to me that we're down to using LGPL with a statement to clarify 
that images generated using contributions to the collection become the 
property of the user, even if they're pretty close/identical to what you get 
when you just render the SDL provided.

I would suggest that we use the CC LGPL version, because it incorporates a 
human readable deed.

Regards,
Chris B.

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Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde> wrote:
> > nemesis schrieb:
> > hmm?  Why is generated image licensing a concern?
> Please read what i wrote in:
> Subject: Re: POV-Ray Includes - Licensing
> Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 14:40:19 +0100
> From: Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde>
> Newsgroups: povray.general

Yes, i've read about the threshold of originality.  Well, i think if we dig
too much deep we're going nowhere.  Source code licensing is as far as i'll
go.

> For all discussed licenses (both software licenses and CC) this depends
> on if the image can be regarded as derived works on the include files.

I really don't like this generated image licensing at all.  What if someone
sees a cool povray image (not source) and recreates it in Blender and
renders it in yafray almost matching the original lighting, colors and
camera positioning and angles?  Isn't that the same as a povray render of a
real world Volkwagen?  If someone just releases the jpg how can we now if
they are ripping from a povray include file description of a 3D model or
have come up with something of their own?

This is why i think it's best for us to just keep on source code
licensing...

> Concerning LGPL - you should keep in mind that this would allow anyone
> to integrate the covered include files into different 3D packages (by
> translating into a different language) and distribute them as a closed
> product.

That's the purpose of the LGPL of course:  to allow unrestricted *use* of
the libraries by anyone.

Still, isn't translating the include file -- say, the algorithm behind a
complex macro -- to another language a derived work itself?  If so, the
community loses nothing from the company incorporating them, since they are
obligued by copyright law governing the LGPL license terms to give back the
source to the modification itself.

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"Chris B" <c_b### [at] btconnectcomnospam> wrote:
> I'm not sure whether that means we've reached a concensus or whether
> everyones just hacked off with the discussion.

I'd vote for having a summary of the discussed licensing issues and options
for licenses and posting a poll about it in the povray website main page.
Like:

Read this thread [here] and choose a license for the povray include file
collection:
(a) - Creative Commons by attribution
(b) - LGPL
etc...

But then again, mindless vandals would make a lot of noise without
significantly contributing to the discussion...

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