Taking Artists Into Consideration

Sun Aug 24 14:38:51 UTC 2025

I see several misunderstandings in this otherwise-correct assessment of 
the non-free status of many derivatives in practice.

"Ifyour CC BY-SA licensed story is adapted into a game, you can only 
hope that the developer shares the source code." Right! The game has no 
source-requirement for the use of the CC BY-SA licensed story. But it 
*is* required to have the whole derivative by CC BY-SA as long as the 
story-use does indeed implicate the original copyright. Are the games 
released under CC BY-SA? If not, then we're discussing copyright 
violation, and that makes license differences irrelevant. "According to 
the FSF, "non-functional data" does not need to be under a free license 
to be distributed with free software." That's not a *copyright* opinion 
from a legal perspective. That's a political/ethical opinion. The FSF is 
simply saying that it is OKAY with them and their mission/values if you 
publish a video game with AGPL for the source code and 
All-Rights-Reserved for the story and artwork. This position of theirs 
has zero implication for interpretation of AGPL. If someone publishes a 
game where the story and artwork *are* themselves licensed with AGPL as 
well as the source code, then all of it *is* under AGPL. AGPL *can* 
already protect art freedom, and FSF's opinion that art-need-not-be-free 
has no bearing on this. The fact that AGPL isn't widely used for art is 
incidental. There's not much precedent for the interpretation of what 
counts as "source" for AGPL art, but there's no doubt that the license 
still calls for it. Again, FSF has never stated an opinion that clauses 
within AGPL are non-applicable to art. Instead, the FSF position is 
simply "we think it's okay for art to not be free". For your proposals, 
I see mostly good points. It would be ideal for copyleft-next to remain 
one-way compatible with CC-BY-SA (like GPL/AGPL are). 
https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/ShareAlike_compatibility:_GPLv3 
It's also ideal if copyleft-next can be broad enough in terms of what 
"source" means such that it does its best to make sure that art source, 
like code source, is the *preferred form for making changes* rather than 
some lesser source form. Overall, my point is that I don't think these 
are actual problems with the status quo. The current situation is simply 
that CC BY-SA does not require source availability and that licenses 
that do are not used for art often enough. But we also see license 
violation often, and no license can solve that problem.

Aaron

On 8/24/25 12:40, Jubei wrote:
> As things are currently, the creators of free art can not guarantee that all derivatives of their works will remain free. Most copyleft licenses designed for art fall flat when applied to multimedia works, particularly entertainment software like video games. Take the SCP Foundation, for example. It is a popular collaborative writing project licensed under CC BY-SA. A lot of games have been made based on it. Can you guess how many of those games are open source? Not a lot, and that is because CC BY-SA has no source sharing clause. If your CC BY-SA licensed story is adapted into a game, you can only hope that the developer shares the source code.
>
> Now if copyleft licenses designed for art can not protect all derivatives, what about ones designed for software? Surely then all adaptions will have to be free, right? Not quite. The strongest copyleft license for software currently is the AGPL stewarded by the FSF. According to the FSF, "non-functional data" does not need to be under a free license to be distributed with free software. They specifically cite game art when explaining this. Presumably the same is true in reverse. A game with art licensed under the AGPL does not need have free code. If this is the opinion the license stewards hold, it is doubtful that a broader interpretation of the copyleft scope would hold up in court.
>
> However, even if the AGPL also applied to art linked to the software and vice versa, would that even be desirable? Imagine trying to share AGPL licensed art on social media only for it to be immediately deleted because the site owners do not want to make their site AGPL too. If you take the AGPL as it is currently written and apply this maximalist interpretation, it would be nearly impossible to share art licensed under it. Regardless of how you view it, no copyleft license that currently exists can fully protect free art in a practical way.
>
> This is where copyleft-next comes in. I think this project has the potential to finally give free art creators a copyleft license that they can be entirely confident in. This does not mean I think that copyleft-next should stop being a software license. Rather, I think a license that is equally applicable to art and code is the key here. Before getting into specifics on how this would be technically feasible, let me lay down the goals.
>
> 1. A game whose plot, characters, etc. are derived from copyleft-next licensed literature needs to share its source code under the same license.
> 2. A game that includes copyleft-next licensed art needs to share its source code under the same license.
> 3. A game whose code is licensed under copyleft-next can only include artwork that is under a compatible license.
> 4. Art licensed under copyleft-next can be included with other types of software without triggering the copyleft clause.
> 5. Other types of software licensed under copyleft-next can include proprietary art without triggering the copyleft clause.
>
> Assume that by game I mean any software designed more for artistic expression or entertainment than for a practical purpose. Visual novels and other types of creative software apply here. Media sharing websites would not be included in this scope, as they are more so distributors of art rather than extensions of it.
>
> Please let me know what you all think of this proposal for copyleft-next functionality. Remember that the above points are just goals and not clauses. Figuring out what needs to be done to achieve those goals has yet to be seen. Over a decade ago, Bart Kelsey came up with an interesting solution, though it is not entirely applicable to this project.https://freegamer.blogspot.com/2011/12/why-we-need-better-copyleft-for-artists.html
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