The reason it's even on here is that it's a comment that we've gotten more than once, and frankly I personally agree with it. On the other hand, OGA's official position on licenses is that we don't have an official position on licenses, so it might be better to change the answer to something more vague, like:
"While it has been argued by some people that the GPL and LGPL aren't really meant to be art licenses, they are included anyway due to the fact that they were widely used for art before the CC licenses became compatible with free software. It is up to individual artists to decide which licenses are best for them."
That being said, with respect to preferred forms: Licensing is complicated enough already. I really don't want to get into having people specify what the preferred form of modification is for their art. If someone doesn't specify and they disappear, suddenly the art has a lot less utility because it's not clear what the appropriate way is to modify it. Whereas, with the GPL, you always know you can modify the source code and release your modifications under the GPL.
Also, while the hex editor case may be ambiguous, it's also a very rare case. I doubt there's any license that someone couldn't come up some way in which it's ambiguous, but in the case of the GPL when applied to art, that ambiguity is ever-present. Asking artists to specify what constitutes a preferred form for making modifications is self-defeating, because we'll be adding an additional layer of complexity to something that's already dauntingly complex.
Regardless, if you find the quoted text agreeable, we can end the discussion here and I'll just change the answer to the question.
This is a slightly different direction than what this discussion is taking, but I think it's on topic enough to be worth adding.
One of the things that stops computers from being able to write coherent plots is a lack of "common sense". Apparently there's a project going on at MIT right now called ConceptNet, which is a large collection of concepts and how they relate to one another. Apparently it's licensed CC-BY-SA, which means that it's free to use and fit for inclusion in FOSS projects. The download is over half a gigabyte compressed, so it contains an incredible amount of information.
What drew my attention to this is an article I saw on slashdot about how apparently ConceptNet has roughly the IQ of a 4-year-old, which may not sound particularly impressive, but is actually a pretty big deal in terms of artificial intelligence. (Caveat: ConceptNet still does dramatically worse than average on reasoning skills, but better on vocabulary and comparisons.)
Anyway, the point is, that "common sense" required to write decent plots isn't completely finished just yet, but it's out there in a form that people can at least play around with. Maybe in 5 to 10 years, the database will be at a point where it can handle some more complicated reasoning tests.
Hey, out of curiosity, what was your process for these? It might be cool if we could have a community project to create some more tiles in this art style.
It's probably worth mentioning that there are some fairly promising FOSS Minecraft clones out there, but as of yet they fall short of either:
Duplicating all aspects of the Minecraft experience, including polish (not that Minecraft is particularly polished), or
Adding enough to the experience to make them compelling on their own.
There are two clones that I'm keeping an eye on:
Minetest is probably the most well known and widely supported, and has a real mod API and support for a number of mods that are similar to the various industry mods in Minecraft. The texture packs need some work, and (as far as I know, correct me if I'm wrong) it doesn't support 3D models for mobs (only 2d sprites). Also, I think a better name might be in order.
Terasology is a bit newer and minetest and pushing towards defining its own nice with a unique look and gameplay that you can't find in minecraft.
Both of these are free software and built with modding in mind, which is cool.
Sorry, sometimes the spam filter can be overzealous (although unfortunately, right now the alternative is to have so much spam that I can't take care of it at all). In any case, the spam filter shouldn't give you any more trouble, so feel free to post whatever.
Honestly, I'd assumed we'd scared you off with information overload, so I'm glad that's not the case. It can be pretty daunting to get into programming, so feel free to ask questions here if you have any.
Quick question, do you know anything about a company called "Scoreiod"? They're distributing this and some of your other works as part of an art pack, and they're making it appear that you're affiliated with them in some way. If you gave them permission to do that, it's cool, but I wanted to find out.
Just to avoid further confusion when you contact them, we need specifics about the license they're providing them under. "Freely available" is pretty vague. If you can get them to agree to CC0, CC-BY or CC-BY-SA, that would be optimal.
Sorry to be such a pain about this, but open source and indie developers need legal specifics in order to make sure they're not infringing on anyone's copyrights.
Also, I want you know that I appreciate you taking the time to get this information.
I moved this until it can be sorted out.
The reason it's even on here is that it's a comment that we've gotten more than once, and frankly I personally agree with it. On the other hand, OGA's official position on licenses is that we don't have an official position on licenses, so it might be better to change the answer to something more vague, like:
"While it has been argued by some people that the GPL and LGPL aren't really meant to be art licenses, they are included anyway due to the fact that they were widely used for art before the CC licenses became compatible with free software. It is up to individual artists to decide which licenses are best for them."
That being said, with respect to preferred forms: Licensing is complicated enough already. I really don't want to get into having people specify what the preferred form of modification is for their art. If someone doesn't specify and they disappear, suddenly the art has a lot less utility because it's not clear what the appropriate way is to modify it. Whereas, with the GPL, you always know you can modify the source code and release your modifications under the GPL.
Also, while the hex editor case may be ambiguous, it's also a very rare case. I doubt there's any license that someone couldn't come up some way in which it's ambiguous, but in the case of the GPL when applied to art, that ambiguity is ever-present. Asking artists to specify what constitutes a preferred form for making modifications is self-defeating, because we'll be adding an additional layer of complexity to something that's already dauntingly complex.
Regardless, if you find the quoted text agreeable, we can end the discussion here and I'll just change the answer to the question.
This is a slightly different direction than what this discussion is taking, but I think it's on topic enough to be worth adding.
One of the things that stops computers from being able to write coherent plots is a lack of "common sense". Apparently there's a project going on at MIT right now called ConceptNet, which is a large collection of concepts and how they relate to one another. Apparently it's licensed CC-BY-SA, which means that it's free to use and fit for inclusion in FOSS projects. The download is over half a gigabyte compressed, so it contains an incredible amount of information.
What drew my attention to this is an article I saw on slashdot about how apparently ConceptNet has roughly the IQ of a 4-year-old, which may not sound particularly impressive, but is actually a pretty big deal in terms of artificial intelligence. (Caveat: ConceptNet still does dramatically worse than average on reasoning skills, but better on vocabulary and comparisons.)
Anyway, the point is, that "common sense" required to write decent plots isn't completely finished just yet, but it's out there in a form that people can at least play around with. Maybe in 5 to 10 years, the database will be at a point where it can handle some more complicated reasoning tests.
Hey, out of curiosity, what was your process for these? It might be cool if we could have a community project to create some more tiles in this art style.
Didn't know that.
At least textures are relatively easy to replace. :)
It's probably worth mentioning that there are some fairly promising FOSS Minecraft clones out there, but as of yet they fall short of either:
There are two clones that I'm keeping an eye on:
Both of these are free software and built with modding in mind, which is cool.
Okay, glad to hear it. Thanks! :)
@RainHippie
Sorry, sometimes the spam filter can be overzealous (although unfortunately, right now the alternative is to have so much spam that I can't take care of it at all). In any case, the spam filter shouldn't give you any more trouble, so feel free to post whatever.
Honestly, I'd assumed we'd scared you off with information overload, so I'm glad that's not the case. It can be pretty daunting to get into programming, so feel free to ask questions here if you have any.
Bart
I think that could work very well, actually. It would certainly feel a lot more coherent than just using them completely at random. :)
Also, one other one I thought of:
Hey Kenney,
Quick question, do you know anything about a company called "Scoreiod"? They're distributing this and some of your other works as part of an art pack, and they're making it appear that you're affiliated with them in some way. If you gave them permission to do that, it's cool, but I wanted to find out.
(Apologies for being off-topic.)
Just to avoid further confusion when you contact them, we need specifics about the license they're providing them under. "Freely available" is pretty vague. If you can get them to agree to CC0, CC-BY or CC-BY-SA, that would be optimal.
Sorry to be such a pain about this, but open source and indie developers need legal specifics in order to make sure they're not infringing on anyone's copyrights.
Also, I want you know that I appreciate you taking the time to get this information.
Thanks!
Bart
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