Commercial spinofs from makehuman

[wassname]

I'm interested to know if there has been many attempts or successes at commercial applications for makehuman or makehuman content?

I could see it used for character generations in clothes, 3d porn (with you and your crush), clothes advertising, seeing what you baby would look like, and more.

[joepal]

Repackaging the makehuman code as such for a commercial setting sounds unlikely, since it's licensed AGPL.

There was a chinese firm a few years back which took it, burned it on a CD and tried to sell it as a commercial application (without changing it in any way whatsoever, and without mentioning that it was actually free).

[CallHarvey3d]

I have used makehuman models for several years in illustrations, software and VR and currently for fun am putting together a couple comic book ideas ive allways wanted to do. The use for illustrations is obvious, in software to illustrate biology/physiology, the port to unity is quite smooth for simulations with limited geometry the high poly models work fine. when working on more specific models like the ones for my comics or primary characters in simulations/games i use makehuman mostly to prototype characters. i take them to 3dsmax and do heavy rework of topology, mapping, textures and apply them to a new rig. sometimes i even rebuild a new model from scratch overtop of the makehuman model which i import for proportions. at this point i never start a character without at least poking around in MH first for ideas. recently i have gotten insterested in learning makeclothes as it will allow me to create a general set of clothes (ie scrubs/dr coats, or cowboy pants/shirts/boots) and create a full set of secondary characters in a day that would otherwise require weeks of effort. I have creative cloud and adobe has bought Fuse which provides similar features for these purposes. i have used it alot, it does provide great quick, money saving animation tools for games but i do not like the model sets or the inflexability of that program. I am excited to see MH grow into a very powerful tool.

[CallHarvey3d]

this is part of the reason my MH content is rough as i know it will be reworked or rebuilt later. i use it most of the time as a template and often need to cut out polygons. that is why depending on project i might find crude clothes models very helpful and finished models somewhat useless because the more finished the model the more difficult it is to alter. the opposite in comic/illustration the finishing work is done in photoshop i can hide/tweak a lot there and save tons of time limited only by the library which is growing daily. thanks to awesome crew and contributors, MH for me is functional but also alot of fun

[wassname]

Repackaging the makehuman code as such for a commercial setting sounds unlikely, since it's licensed AGPL.

It sounds like that is that case, which is sad because commercial spin-offs could contribute back to makehuman.

I'm considering porting makehuman and assets to a javascript AGPL library using THREE.js. Then this would be used as a library, with a closed source interface and additional closed source inputs (e.g. addition clothes proxies). The outputs would be AGPL. The makehuman community would gain a web interface, I would be able to pursue some commercial interests and contribute more to makehuman. E.g. use it as a virtual fitting room.

This would be OK under this interpretation of the AGPL where it can be used as a licence since it's not viral: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/107883/agpl-what-you-can-do-and-what-you-cant. However it's pretty clear that the makehuman team doesn't agree with this interpretation and intends their licence to be viral with no clear limits beside the CC0 exception.

Do I understand it correctly?

I guess in this case anyone looking to make commercial uses would be better off looking for non-agpl assets and write a javascript library to interpolate between these. Does anyone know of non AGPL rigged morph targets (I've found a few, but it would be great to know of any alternatives I missed).

[joepal]

What you are linking to is an interpretation by an individual who disagrees with the interpretation of AGPL as put forward by the authors of AGPL.

It's possible he's correct. It's possible that the FSF is correct. Exactly which is unknown until such a point where a court of law has decided the matter.

I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding so far has been different than what the guy in the first answer says. My understanding is that AGPL and GPL don't have the linking exception that LGPL has. For AGPL, if one source code part has an absolute dependency on another source code part, then the source code parts together constitute a combined work, and will have to be licensed AGPL.

This is why you will find that it is very, very rare that a library is licensed AGPL. It simply doesn't make any sense. Only example I know of is iText, and that seems mostly to be a marketing ploy to make people buy a commercial license.

It's slighty more common with AGPL:ed server software. And here my understanding correspons with for example MongoDB: An application which only communicates with an AGPL:ed server software doesn't trigger the AGPL virality and doesn't have to be licensed AGPL.

Now, the intention of the makehuman crew was to stop a commercial actor from simply exporting the base mesh and the entire target database and include it in a closed source application without giving anything back. Further the intention was to avoid putting any restrictions whatsoever on artists. After long discussions this was the best license approach we could think up. During the years since, a number of unfortunate side effects of this have been discovered. Some of these will probably have to trigger an update of the license at some point, but don't hold your breath: We won't make any changes without thinking long and hard to make sure we're not causing more problems than we solve.

I'm considering porting makehuman and assets to a javascript AGPL library using THREE.js.

This is obviously perfectly fine. You can do whatever with the MakeHuman code as long as the end result is licensed AGPL.

[wassname]

I agree with you there, the makehuman teams intentions on whats not allowed is clear and in the end it's up to case law. I do think being explicit in what's allowed would remove uncertainty and allow commercial contributions back. E.g. If I make a makehuman virtual dressing room which is AGPL, but include a closed source library of clothing can I include it in a clothes companies site as an iframe? Or will I get in trouble with the customers because their whole site is now liable to be sued for not complying with the AGPL. And when I seek investment I need to point to some IP which cannot easily be copied.

I would like to try this, and it would be great if the makehuman team could make a statement about the intended boundaries. E.g. if makehuman is ported to an AGPL library with clear boundaries, outputs must be AGPL or CC0 for approved builds, but connected components which are not derived works such as the UI need not be. That way we all get a AGPL javascript makehuman library (even if my commercial attempt fails) which would be a really fun way to show of all the work that went into makehuman. Plus it would prevent people making a makehuman competitor using the makehuman assets. An alternative would be to offer an alternative commercial licence like MongoDB does, although I can't see the whole team agreeing on that. Do think either an exception or sublicence is likely, or perhaps you have a better solution?

That would be a great thing in my opinion because people love playing with makehuman assets in the browser, much more so than when I show them the makehuman desktop software, and you can link to a human you created where the modifier settings are encoded in the url query, and if it's all frontend it costs vert little to host. It certainly creates more exposure for the work you have all done on the makehuman data.

On another subject is anyone interested in collaborating in commercial attempts please contact me (wassname etc wassname org) with what you can bring to the table. E.g I'm strong in programming I'm weak in creating good looking assets in blender, and of course contacts with potential customers are always welcome.

Thanks for giving me your thoughts on this by the way

[joepal]

I agree with you there, the makehuman teams intentions on whats not allowed is clear and in the end it's up to case law. I do think being explicit in what's allowed would remove uncertainty and allow commercial contributions back. E.g. If I make a makehuman virtual dressing room which is AGPL, but include a closed source library of clothing can I include it in a clothes companies site as an iframe? Or will I get in trouble with the customers because their whole site is now liable to be sued for not complying with the AGPL. And when I seek investment I need to point to some IP which cannot easily be copied.

I would like to try this, and it would be great if the makehuman team could make a statement about the intended boundaries. E.g. if makehuman is ported to an AGPL library with clear boundaries, outputs must be AGPL or CC0 for approved builds, but connected components which are not derived works such as the UI need not be.

In practice, what you are asking here is that the license be expanded with more exceptions and/or additional terms. Basically that the AGPL license be rewritten or amended to work in a library setting. Or, in summary, that the AGPL license be changed to LGPL.

Yes, obviously it would be theoretically possible to list a CC0 exception for this specific case. But what about the next case that pops up? And the next one after that? To cover the foreseeable circumstances, these additions would then need to be either very broad and general (and thus invite further ambiguity) or a very long list of specific circumstances (and thus be impossible to overview).

If going down that road, it would make a lot more sense to instead simpy change the license altogether, to something more permissive. However, no-one in the MH team is a lawyer. We are not able to trivially make license changes and overview what the consequences of those are. Thus we are very hesitant to do anything at all about the terms without thinking long and hard about it.

Let me make a distinction though: I don't think what you suggest is in any way evil or a bad thing. I'm just saying that at the moment, I find it hard to think up a viable way to make it fit with how I understand the AGPL license to work. And that I'm very hesitant to start juggling with the hornet's nest that the license issue is without having a clear idea about what a sensible road forward would be.

[wassname]

I guess what I'm really asking is any acceptable way to make makehuman more commercial compatible. And yeah I agree the best way to do that would be to change from AGPL, especially given that people see AGPL as not very commercially compatible.

So I guess that status is that's its not clear how it can be used alongside proprietary components, reducing commercial contributions. And it's not likely to change any time soon. That's a shame but it's good to be clear on the situation, so thanks for explaining it to me.

What kind of clarity would it take to change the library? A similar project successfully using a different licence perhaps (without a commercial actor simply exporting the base mesh and the entire target database without giving anything back.)

[badwolf]

given the cases of scotch that might be consumed over this subject i think a framework that could work is



1 selling the code as is or part of a larger program is a NO NO (mods need to get sent to the MH team)

2 if a company uses MH to create models then mentioning this is "polite"

3 creating assets from scratch and selling those is quite legal ( it would be polite to have a freebie version for the community to use)

4 creating and using custom assets for a larger pipeline is fine


and sliding a snack bowl into this Custom Asset: An asset that only shares geometry with an existing asset only at points required for purpose of said asset for this purpose assets either created or licensed by a given company are exempt.