Added BSD license? Not that I recall doing that.
@drummyfish, in this case it looks like the BSD licence just refers to the Pokitto simulator that @catsfolly bundled with the code.
So the code itself doesn’t have a licence.
I checked the original game and Aphrodite says:
even though the licence implies that you must not use this game for commercial purpose and that you need to credit me, I accept gladly that you can utilise it for those purposes without credits if you do enough changes for it to not be the same exact game
But they don’t say what the licence actually is, and as far as I can tell there’s no licence embedded in the original source, so unless Pico-8 games are put under a particular licence by default then I’m guessing it’s not technically licenced.
It might be worth trying to contact Aphrodite to find out what the situation is.
1 Like
There’s an icon with cc on it in the bbs page. I think that’s Creative Commons 1.0.
It seems a lot of BBS entries have that mark, but not all.
CC on its own isn’t very useful, there’s a lot of different creative commons licences, if that’s what it’s even supposed to be for.
There is no plain ‘CC’ licence as far as I’m aware.
The closest is ‘CC0’ which seems unlikely.
Also Aphrodite’s mention of “implies that you must not use this game for commercial purpose” could only really fit with one of the -NC variants, none of the other CC licences imply that you can’t use the material commercially.
I find people often don’t realise that creative commons licences are (by CC’s own admission) not intended to be used for software.
We recommend against using Creative Commons licenses for software. Instead, we strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses which are already available. We recommend considering licenses made available by the Free Software Foundation or listed as “open source” by the Open Source Initiative.
1 Like
Yes, unless you want to contribute code to PD, in which case CC0 is usually the most recommended one.
By the FSF, but not by the OSI because of issues surrounding possible patent issues.
I’m not sure what CC’s stance is on the use of CC0 for source code.
I would assume the “don’t use these for software” stance still applies,
but couldn’t be certain without contacting them to confirm.
Either way, this is getting off topic from the main issue.
Thie main issue is that Aphrodite hasn’t made it clear what the licence is,
so someone ought to contact Aphrodite at some point just so we know what we’re dealing with.
Squiddy’s cartridge itself at the time of posting of pico-8 is under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
However, this was meant to be applied to the actual cartridge itself so nobody would wrap it up and sell it directly, the squiddy game concept (known as an unreleased work named under Rolly, made also by myself) ( http://rolly.netlify.com/ ) had no license attached to it, same goes for the squiddy character, I consider that anyone can use the squiddy character and game mechanics for their purpose as long as it’s not basically reselling the pico-8 cartridge itself, also the squiddy character belongs to me but may be used by others.
Sorry for the unclearness of the licensing, it is also tricky for me to understand those things clearly to be honest as I am not a lawyer, if you need more informations you can contact me, tbh if I wasn’t worried people would be able to take the cartridge itself, wrap it up and resell it one way or another, it would be as public domain as it could be.
1 Like
@Pharap I forgot to tag you in the former post so I will do it there, sorry for the bumping.
2 Likes
I’m glad you’ve taken the time to contact us.
Don’t worry about bumping an old topic,
it was the sensible thing to do.
I got notified anyway because you replied directly to my post instead of making a general reply to the thread.
Right, that’s good to know, thanks for that.
For the record, the creative commons licences aren’t supposed to be used for code.
(See this part of their FAQ.)
Basically it’s because the source code is used to produce software and software has a different set of legal terminology to art and literature, and the CC licences are written in a way that doesn’t cover the specifics of compiled software.
I’m not a lawyer, but it’s possible that using CC BY-NC-SA only protects the source code from being sold, and that it wouldn’t protect a compiled version of the source.
I understand why you picked CC BY-NC-SA though.
I use it a lot for art that I produce.
Unfortunately there’s no open source licence that prevents selling the source and/or the game.
This is because the key figures of the open source/free software movement consider preventing the sale of software as ‘too restrictive’.
Personally I think it’s silly that there isn’t one.
I think it makes sense to have a licence that prevents the code from being sold but still allows copying, editing and making derivatives (which also wouldn’t be allowed to be sold).
The only alternative I can possibly think of is that it might be possible to take an existing open source licence and add a clause that prevents both the source and the compiled version from being sold, but creating/modifying licences isn’t easy because legal wording can be tricky.
At least now we know you intended it to be under CC BY-NC-SA so @catsfolly can include a copy of the licence and make sure that the licence terms are being followed.
I notice you’ve now edited the Pico-8 page to make the licence clear.
Thank you, that should make it easier for other people to port.