Theme Licensing

[lights0ut]

Scorche brought up this topic on IRC, and I thought that I'd ask everyone what they thought about it. As things are right now, many themes do not state their license , if you've heard of the Soap Seal of Approval, it has a rule about stating the theme's license. The SOAP is a topic for DevCon West, so it, or a modified version, or some other approval method will be discussed, and hopefully adopted.

Scorche pointed out that if a theme doesn't have a license, users do not have permission to edit the theme and redistribute it, even bug fixes. You can always ask permission, but many themes that do not have a license also do not have a way to contact the author or the author is no longer around.
Something needs to be decided in order to implement an approval system so I thought I'd start some discussion on it.


(I know this is being discussed at DevCon-West anyway, and ultimately what is decided there may make this all irrelevant)

[Llorean]

My personal opinion is that we should take down all themes without an explicitly stated license, then post that you have to explicitly state a license for your theme when posting them.

[PaulJam]

My personal opinion is that we should take down all themes without an explicitly stated license, then post that you have to explicitly state a license for your theme when posting them.

In this case it maybe would be nice if someone could post an appropriate license on the WPS Uplad Guide on the WpaGallery wiki. Because i guess many people don't have a clue about this licensing stuff, so it would be nice to have a default one which allows redistributing, modifying etc.

[Llorean]

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License is probably a very good place to start.

But the key isn't that they have to post it with a license that allows redistribution, or modification. The key is that we want them to explicitly state what is allowed, so that people also know what isn't allowed.

At the moment, even doing something as simple as fixing bad date tags violates US copyright law, if one wants to be exceedingly technical.

[AlexP]

At the moment, even doing something as simple as fixing bad date tags violates US copyright law, if one wants to be exceedingly technical.

What about Swedish law, as given that is where the servers are located (and furthermore many of us are outside the US) it would seem more relevant than US law other than for US users.

I take the point that releasing with a licence would solve all these problems, but am just wondering about 'saving' older themes that were released without.

Of course, it is much easier just to have a clean break and not have to worry at all.

[Yotto]

I agree with Llorean, with the added part that anybody who has uploaded a WPS without any sort of license, who thinks their rights would be infringed by someone modifying them, should be taken out and shot.

[Bagder]

At the moment, even doing something as simple as fixing bad date tags violates US copyright law, if one wants to be exceedingly technical.

What about Swedish law, as given that is where the servers are located (and furthermore many of us are outside the US) it would seem more relevant than US law other than for US users.

The Swedish law is pretty much identical in this context, so without specified license we aren't allowed to redistribute (modified) versions.

[Nate!]

For the regular tester/wps creator, would adding the following statement to the WPS description be enough:

This WPS is being published under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.  Please feel free to edit, redistribute, and modify as necessary.

Would you have to add this statement to every file of the WPS? (Theme.cfg, .wps, config.cfg)

What if we put a blanket statement for future submissions stating in order to upload, the tester must agree to releasing their WPS under the above license and allow for editing, redistribution, and modification.

[lights0ut]

First, thanks to everyone for their comments.

Nate, I see where you're going with this, while it may be a bit of a hassle to force authors to license their work, I think this is the best method. I understand it would be much easier just to force all uploaders to agree to CC-by-SA, but it *may* prevent some users from uploading their work.
There is an advantage to having the info in the .cfg and the .wps, it lets anyone who is editing them know who the author is, and what the license is. There wiki pages ThemeGuidelines and SoapSealofApproval have 'templates' for adding the recommended info.

 

I agree with Llorean, with the added part that anybody who has uploaded a WPS without any sort of license, who thinks their rights would be infringed by someone modifying them, should be taken out and shot.

True.

[gwrtheyrn]

i've got the same problem, specifically i based my theme on the brushed metal theme by zakk roberts. now my problem is there's no license on the rockbox-theme page, and there's no way to contact this guy either.

so does that mean i cannot distribute the theme as long as i use some brushed metal graphics?

[senab]

Nate, I see where you're going with this, while it may be a bit of a hassle to force authors to license their work, I think this is the best method. I understand it would be much easier just to force all uploaders to agree to CC-by-SA, but it *may* prevent some users from uploading their work.

I would strongly discourage making people license their themes CC-by-SA. At the end of the day, the themes are the creation and copyright of the person creating them, you can not force anyone to use a license they do not what to use. Of course you could make it the default license, but there has to be choice.

I have today decided to license my themes under the Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales. This is for the simple fact I am fed up of seeing crappy knock offs of my work. This way I have control over any "remixes" and mods.

If anyone wants to make a mod or remix of my work, then I'm easily contactable through PM and email.

[Febs]

so does that mean i cannot distribute the theme as long as i use some brushed metal graphics?

Yes, that is what it means.

[linuxstb]

I would strongly discourage making people license their themes CC-by-SA. At the end of the day, the themes are the creation and copyright of the person creating them, you can not force anyone to use a license they do not what to use. Of course you could make it the default license, but there has to be choice.

I have today decided to license my themes under the Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales. This is for the simple fact I am fed up of seeing crappy knock offs of my work. This way I have control over any "remixes" and mods.

If anyone wants to make a mod or remix of my work, then I'm easily contactable through PM and email.

Authors are of course free to license their themes under any license they wish.

However, Rockbox itself is free software, licensed under the GPL, and that license gives users the right to modify and redistribute Rockbox in any way they wish (as long as they comply with the GPL - which mainly means making the source code to their changes available under the GPL as well).

My view is that the same freedom principles should apply to themes - users should have the right to modify and redistribute the themes in any way they wish, whether or not the original author agrees with those changes.

If I understand correctly, the CC-by-SA achieves this, which is why this was chosen as the "official" license for themes distributed via rockbox.org.  The license you've chosen doesn't appear to give the user any freedom to modify and redistribute, not even to fix bugs or adapt to changes in WPS syntax.

[senab]

The license you've chosen doesn't appear to give the user any freedom to modify and redistribute, not even to fix bugs or adapt to changes in WPS syntax.

True, but as I see it, there's only so much changes you can make to themes after they're made. To make a decent change you'd need the source images file. Of course people are free to contact me and let me know of any WPS bug (i'm currently going through all my WPS's to make sure they're bug free).

I will waive the condition of No Derivative Works, only if the results are for personal use. By personal use, I mean that the works are not distibuted afterwards. You are then free to contact me with any change and I may waive the No Derivative Works fully for your remix/change.

[linuxstb]

I'm sure people would be happy for you to share the source images - in the same way Rockbox developers are sharing their source code.

What happens to your themes when you lose interest in Rockbox at some point in the future and change email addresses?  Or if the WPS syntax changes, and you can't be bothered to update all your themes?

I respect your right to choose any license you wish for your themes, I just don't like to see the use of such "non-free" licenses encouraged for Rockbox-related things, and would hope that most theme authors are happy to choose the CC-by-SA.