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Re: [pygame] GPL'd music?

I am quite sure (though IANAL or even someone who knows a lot about
it) that your program can use "share alike" and still be GPL because
the music is only a part of it. As long as it is just something it's
using I don't think it applies. It would, however, if you made a music
video of it, because it is a core  part of the end media.

An easy way to get around it would be to have the music packages be
separate from the game ones and not needed to run the game (ie, it
runs except for music). The program shoud probably be this way anyway,
so no loss.

On 10/23/06, Kris Schnee <kschnee@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: 
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. Isn't this a problem, or do most people
> ignore it? And if it is a problem, which sites provide GPL-compatible
> music?

I recently found the music site http://www.jamendo.com/ , and thought
some of the music there might be suitable for a game. But I begin to
understand the concept of these great-sounding open licenses "infecting"
a piece of software when I see language like: "You can copy, distribute,
advertise, and perform this album as long as you... distribute all your
derivative works under the same license." I interpret that to mean, "Not
only can you not do anything commercial with it, you're obligated to
invite others to give away _your_ work if you use mine."

FreeSound ( http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/ ) offers a lot of sound clips
that could be useful, under the "Creative Commons Sampling Plus
License." That license sounds less onerous, but there's a tricky part:
you may "creatively transform" the work for profit, or "distribute" the
whole thing not for profit. I took two courses in copyright law and I
still don't understand what that means! For our purposes, say I make a
game and use something from FreeSound as SFX or music, including the
whole file or an .ogg version of it. Am I "creatively transforming" it
by including it in a game, such that I can use it commercially, or just
"transforming" it and getting only the limited non-comercial license?

There was also a company whose name I've forgotten, offering "content
packs" featuring things like 3D trees suitable for PyOgre and various
sets of game music.

Kris