License Question: In Game Character Creator

[Corscaria]

I'm an indie game developer, a one person team. My artistic abilities are good enough for fantasy creatures and architecture, but not humans that look well... HUMAN. I've been looking at MakeHuman for a couple of years, as a possible answer to my problems, but the GPL license frankly scares me. Viral licenses belong on OS's not media... I'd much prefer a truely free license like MIT or BSD, even some varients of CC are ok... I can even live with LGPL, or custom opensource licenses. And yes i know some sites like sourceforge are stuck up about OSS approved licenses and thats why custom licenses are avoided, doesn't mean you can't dual license and let the end user choose which of the licenses they want to agree to.

Anyway... I've been considering having a character creator system in my new project. But I have been reading over the license repeatedly trying to figure this out to no avail. I'm a programmer not a lawyer... Would using the MakeHuman base mesh and morphtarget files (but my own morphing software) in a closed-source for-profit game with no ability to export meshes at all, be acceptable? I would of course included the license for the mesh in the files, and give proper credits on one of the games splash screens.

As a side note, i plan to use a system similar to proxy meshes, with polygon knockouts(no sense rendering triangles that aren't visible) for the clothing system to ensure they always fit (even wasp waist corsets).

If this isn't acceptable by the current license... I guess my human game characters will just have to look like crap...

[Manuel]

The reason we put the GPL license on the base mesh and morph targets
is because it is seen as part of the code. Instead of working
algorithmic, we chose to work artistic. An extraordinary amount of
time have gone into modeling all these compared to the time spent
coding. Writing code from scratch to make a character using these
files hardly takes a day. So placing these files under LPGL or BSD
makes no sense for us. We choose the GPL for our program, so if you
want to use the code, base mesh or morph targets, you will have to go
GPL too.

[Corscaria]

Ah... Thank you for the quick reply. While i don't agree that the base mesh counts as code, i respect your right to license it however you prefer... My human game characters will just have to look like shit ...

Please note that the GPL is not friendly to indie developers who make a living as indie developers, instead of working day jobs. As it stands the only people capable of making profit from make human, are people making still images or videos. If an indie game developer were to release a game as GPL, NO ONE would buy it. I strongly encourage you to pen a secondary optional open source license specifically to allow indie developers like myself to use the data for ingame character creators, while protecting your interests as well... Perhaps even add a clause that locks out corporations, or developers that make more than so much money a year.

Really, my own opinion is that the GPL is an afront to freedom, it prevents all but 800lb gorilla corporations from profiting off of anything it's applied to. I believe that most people choose GPL not because it is what they need, but because it is the "in" license. I mean really... As a developer of GPL software, what do you get from it, that you don't get from any other license, other than preventing indie developers from profiting? The large corporations could still profit, by simply having the resources to put your software in a box on the shelves in stores without your consent. Large corporations could still take your software, cut it to shreds, make new software, still adhere to the GPL and still make a profit by having the resources to place a CD of it in stores. Meanwhile independant developers relying on direct downloads and registration codes and maybe home rolled DRM, as thier sole distribution channel, are forced to avoid anything with GPL on it, or else they lose the ability to make a living from what they make. The GPL isn't freedom, the GPL is just disguised as freedom.

And there i go again ranting about the GPL.... I truly feel that people who choose it don't think about the consequences it has on others... but thats all i have to say.

Anyway keep up the good work, MakeHuman looks better than ever...

[joepal]

To use a closed source parallel: You're welcome to distribute your word documents in any which fashion you want, but that doesn't mean you're allowed to package and redistribute the whole microsoft office package without restrictions.

Same with makehuman... You're allowed to use what you produce with it in pretty much any way you want, but if you want to use the fundamentals of the character generating system there is a minor restriction, namely that you'll have to share the code you build upon it. At least if you plan on redistributing that code in any way.

While I haven't really been much involved, the license question has been discussed thoroughly through the years. The choice of GPL here isn't random in any way, it is a considered decision.

[Manuel]

To use a closed source parallel: You're welcome to distribute your word documents in any which fashion you want, but that doesn't mean you're allowed to package and redistribute the whole microsoft office package without restrictions.

Same with makehuman... You're allowed to use what you produce with it in pretty much any way you want, but if you want to use the fundamentals of the character generating system there is a minor restriction, namely that you'll have to share the code you build upon it. At least if you plan on redistributing that code in any way.

While I haven't really been much involved, the license question has been discussed thoroughly through the years. The choice of GPL here isn't random in any way, it is a considered decision.

100% agree with Joel.

So briefly, you can use MH to make characters in a commercial game, but you can't use MH data to make a MH-like commercial software (for example, a commercial character creator system). Please. take a look:

http://sites.google.com/site/makehumand ... eHuman-lic

Best,

Manuel

[mflerackers]

There is no gain for us in changing our license to LGPL or BSD. The GPL makes it possible to share our code (and accompanying assets) with other opensource projects, as well as invites people to help fix bugs or add functionality. A closed commercial license would make it possible to earn money from our work. LGPL and BSD however don't bring any benefit for us, it only would make it possible for people to earn money with our work, without giving anything back to us, as you would just use a dll in your project and maybe make a mention somewhere. We work in our free time and we don't earn anything from our work on makehuman. Yet you basically ask us to give away more than 10 years of work for free so you can make a game to sell.
Personally I don't care about licenses, I just write code for fun and have worked on GPL, LPGL and even BSD licensed projects like Haiku OS for example. However I know how much work the project leader of makehuman has put into creating the base mesh and especially all the targets, so I respect his decision to protect his hard work from commercial usage.

[Corscaria]

Ah, but it wouldn't be makehuman like software, it's be a game that has a character creator as a feature. A game with a huge world (65KM^2), many many creatures and NPC (both hostile and friendly), complex quests and missions, an indepth story, and high levels of interactivity of which character creation is only seen by the user when they first starts the game.

And any corporation with the funds to put MakeHuman in a box on store shelves can profit from your work. They wouldn't even need a different license or to ask permission. Or should i name all the companies that SELL linux, the core of the GPL world. As for contributing, i already admit i don't have the skill to contribute to the mesh, which is what i want. And yes, i want to profit, so i can get off foodstamps! I don't program in my free time, i program for a living. Actual coding wise, i neither know nor respect python, but i would be willing to share snippets from the clothing system i'd be implementing in my game that you could port into MakeHuman.

And really how does GPL protect you that LGPL doesn't? The only difference is the GPL is viral, it takes away the rights of other developers while providing you no extra benifit.

LGPL still keeps your work opensource, it still keeps credits and license intact, it still requires that if i make changes to your work, i offer the modified source free of change. But it does not infect my own work, it doesn't take away my rights to license my work how i choose.

I simply want to add a feature to my game, that normally requires a multimillion dollar art team. Yes, that is how much the MakeHuman basemesh is actually worth in my opinion, though i think it still needs work in small area thats won't matter to my game. It would allow me to compete with the megacorps, that crank out formulistic games that look great but usually suck.

When you chose GPL, you chose it to protect your work, despite other licenses offering the same level of protection. But you didn't choose it with regard to possible uses outside of a standalone character creator, or how the GPL would effect those wanting to use it in a noncompeting product.

But, i've dealt with GPL fanatics before... i know you are unlikely to reconsider changing the license. But would you consider a for pay commercial license, to let me use it in my game? Just give me terms and a price. I'll probably have to seek funding from an outside source, IndieFund for example... But if you are willing to do the forpay commercial license, i can integrate it into a NDA'd demo, to show IndieFund or other investment sources to get the money to buy the license.

[joepal]

And really how does GPL protect you that LGPL doesn't? The only difference is the GPL is viral, it takes away the rights of other developers while providing you no extra benifit.

Hm, I think you're missing the point here. The viral aspect is the desired effect. With GPL you want to take away certain rights for third parts. That is the whole point. Of course GPL is less "free" than, say, BSD. But that is by design and the major selling point of choosing the license in question. The reason for choosing GPL is when you want to enforce propagation of the openness.

I don't see it as fanaticism: You choose the right tool for the effect you want to achieve. You want the option to mix the library with closed source? Fine, choose apache 2.0. You want to enforce propagation of open source of derivates and aggregates? Fine, choose GPL.

As a side-note, I usually choose apache 2.0 as a license for my own projects. However, after teaching classes on open source licensing I do appreciate the varying philosophical standpoints involved with choosing another license.

[Corscaria]

Unfortunately, "openess" doest not make many good games if any, nor does it allow the creators of those games to feed themselves. There is a reason most GPL games are clones of existing and usually severely outdated games, or only opensourced a decade after release. It's because games take ALOT more work than applications. If you want to make a top notch game, you CANT work a day job, you have to work on your games 12-16hrs a day 6-7 days a week until it's releasable. That leaves no time for making money working for other people. I can turn out clones of games from 15 years ago in a week, but if i want to make a living, i need to make games that can compete with Fallout and Mass Effect.

And yes, wanting to take away other peoples rights IS fanatacism. I don't know a single fanatical group who isn't out to take away other peoples rights. Whether it's religious fanatics like Extremist Muslims, who having recently gained majority vote in the UN have taken away the rights of Homosexuals to even LIVE, as far as international law is concerned. PETA, who want to take away your right to have pets while secretly killing them as soon as they get your pet into their van. Governments who conspire to slowly take away any right you have to protect yourself from them. Foreign nations, who seek to ruin their enemy country, by becoming the lowest bidder for all outsource contracts and then secretly putting poisons into everything they make. Or Media companies who conspire to remove your right to make personal copies of your legally purchased goods. It's all fanaticism. Every single one of those groups seek to protect or benifit themselves by hurting others uneccessarily, and thats exactly what the GPL does.

People should have a choice, even if the other choice requires paying money.

[jcapco]

Since the founder and the developer do not want to have it as any other form of license and since you wrote that you respect their decision, I guess that puts the case to a rest. We can agree or disagree and we can read those arguments but that is all there is to it. Let's please end this thread.