Re: [pygame] GPL'd music?

[Terry Hancock <hancock@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ethan Glasser-Camp wrote:
>  I see that there are resources linked to on the pygame site where I
>  can download music for use in a video game. But licenses vary on
>  these compositions, ranging from "up to 500 physical copies (with
>  purchase)" on massivetracks.net to Creative Commons licenses for the
>  tracks found with the Creative Commons search engine. However, if I
>  want to GPL my game, this rules out all of the above -- not even
>  Creative Commons licenses are GPL-compatible.

The GPL copyleft does not affect data played by the program, nor does 
the CC-By-SA copyleft on content affect programs designed to play it.

This would be like saying "you can't make proprietary art with Gimp" or 
"you can't write a GPL documentation manual in Microsoft Word".

It's perfectly legal to create a GPL game engine and create proprietary 
games that run on it, using proprietary art and music. And of course, 
you can do the reverse as well.

It is also, of course, legal to distribute them together, under the 
"mere aggregation" clause of the GPL and the "collective work" language 
in the CC-By-SA.  In terms of CYA, though, you'll want to make sure they 
are neatly separated in your archive file (e.g. pack the game resources 
in an archive within the main archive and unpack them when you play.  
Sub-directories -- which you're likely to use anyway -- might be 
sufficient for this, though).

It would actually be pretty hard to find a use case where the license of 
the music would need to have a "GPL compatible" license: the program 
would have to actually be "derived" from the music, or vice-versa.

Where you will want to think about this, though, is when it comes to 
distributing the game.  If you want to release it through certain 
distribution channels (such as free-licensed Linux distributions), you 
will need for both content and game to have "acceptable" licenses.

For many purposes, a GPL game engine with CC-By-SA game content will fit 
this requirement.  Currently, however, Debian rejects the CC-By-SA 
license (because of the anti-TPM issue), which may be a concern for you 
(I personally think that this is foolish and will hopefully be rectified 
in the future, but you never know).  Of course, if Debian rejects your 
game over CC licensed resources, you'll be in pretty good company -- 
CC-By and CC-By-SA are very popular licenses for such things, and 
(almost) universally recognized as 'free'.

Cheers,
Terry

--
Terry Hancock (hancock@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com