Add a license to this repo about a-little-game-called-mario HOT 12 CLOSED

@iznaut that seems reasonable! If I was licensing my own thing, I'd probably personally be slightly hesitant to go with the anti-capitalist license, just feeling slightly squeamish about using something that doesn't have any history of enforceability and worrying if there's some way it could be weaponized against me. That said, I totally get that in practice that risk is quite low, and you don't seem that concerned (and this definitely feels like it's in the realm of "reasonable personal preference" rather than me having some arcane expert knowledge). Without that risk aversion, I'd personally probably go with anti-capitalist.

@alice-i-cecile You'll note that link explicitly calls out CC0 as acceptable for software (since the distinction between distributing binaries and code doesn't matter when your goal is simply to relinquish all copyright). When I recommended other non-CC0 Creative Commons licenses above, it was in context of pairing with an OSS license as you suggest.

from a-little-game-called-mario.

thank you for going so in-depth with this! it's a lot to process but i have to say that this bit strikes a chord with me:

This license is on the extreme end of tradeoffs: it is an incredibly strong socio-political statement about how you wish your code to be used, but realistically is likely to leave you in the same legal IP situation as if you had not included a license at all. Using this license does have the positive benefit of normalizing licenses like this, which could eventually lead to future iterations of the idea that are more proven to be legally-enforceable.

i've recently had a couple of personal life scenarios come up where i had to balance the risk/reward of doing the thing that is less time/energy/money for me to deal with vs the thing that might require a bit more of those things but ultimately contribute (however small) to the greater community good. i had to go with the former option most times, bc We Live In A Society and i'm just trying to survive lol

my current stance (as someone who is nowhere near as educated and experienced with this kind of thing as you are) is that the risk of misuse is so minimal, that i would much rather lean in the direction of the anti-capitalist license. after all, i kind of consider A Little Game Called Mario to similarly be more "performance art" than anything anyway 😉

CC0 also sounds fine to me - especially so when you frame it as "chaos mode" 😈 that is definitely the vibe i want to cultivate!

i guess what it comes down to for me is this: which option would create the lowest barrier of entry for folks who want to contribute? maybe it doesn't matter all that much to the extremely "green" folks but i also would like more experienced devs to feel compelled to get involved and support others - maybe the anti-capitalist license would be a good way to signal to ppl like "hey! this is a weird unique thing that you should be a part of"

from a-little-game-called-mario.

Hmmm, I really like that lens! That's probably a toss-up, tbh.

CC0 is going to be the neutral option. It's still considered a weird and funky thing for licensing a game, but understood enough that nobody reasonable is going to be like "ew, this thing is weird and scary and I'm not going to contribute as a result". It's easy to understand "this thing is in the public domain", and it's backed by a non-profit with money to pay lawyers to make sure everything's chill.

The anti-capitalist license will turn off some people for political reasons (probably a plus, tbh), actively excite some people to contribute and encourage others to contribute specifically because you're using it, and maybe isolate a small group of experienced folks that are like "uhhh, I like the idea of this, but using a non-vetted thing sketches me out a little". So, slightly more of a gamble, but one that'll pay off if that second group is larger than the third.

from a-little-game-called-mario.

hmmmmm yeah i'm kind of leaning anti-capitalist......like you said, i think it's a plus if we're driving away the ppl who have political issues with it 😎

i'd defer to your judgment since you have a more intimate sense of the landscape than i do! but i personally am a fan of doing the weirder thing that makes this already absurd project more of a spectacle (and consequently, drawing in ppl that are politically aligned with us and the values of the project)

from a-little-game-called-mario.

FYI @lazerwalker, Creative Commons recommends against using Creative Commons licenses for software.

That said, they can still be a reasonable choice for the assets in projects like this :)

from a-little-game-called-mario.

Also worth remembering that the anti-capitalist license requires attribution, where CC0 doesn't. If those are the two options, that would be another big plus for it in my book.

from a-little-game-called-mario.

The Boost Software License is superior to the MIT License, reasons here: https://pdimov.github.io/blog/2020/09/06/why-use-the-boost-license/

from a-little-game-called-mario.

Oh! One more complicating factor: the Anti-Capitalist License still falls victim to the same limitations of MIT/GPL/etc in that it really shouldn't be used to cover art assets. If you want to use the Anti-Capitalist License, you should theoretically still probably license the assets under some sort of Creative Commons license instead.

Unfortunately, there isn't (yet!) a directly applicable equivalent. I think there are a few different CC licenses that would be okay. But honestly, if you're going with the Anti-Capitalist License, I'd probably just say "screw it, applying it to my art assets as well as my code leaves my intent as clear as possible, even if it still leaves more legal ambiguity".

Just more food for thought, because of course nothing's simple 😂

from a-little-game-called-mario.

i'm not too concerned with legal issues - it seems so low stakes to me at this point that i'm inclined to just go anti-capitalist and not worry about the assets separately

unless there are any other major objections (@lazerwalker can close the issue if she is also satisfied 💖), i'm all for the anti-capitalist option

from a-little-game-called-mario.

Sounds 👍🏻 to me! You'll just need to drop a copy of the license as a LICENSE file in the root of the repo at some point.

from a-little-game-called-mario.

Please can this project switch to a libre software license?
The current license would not hold up in court and does not respect the freedom of the users of the program.

from a-little-game-called-mario.

Regardless of whether this is something we would philosophically want to do, changing the license is relatively infeasible at this point in time. Because we have not required contributors to sign a CLA, re-licensing the project would require explicit approval from all 86 people who have currently contributed, which would be a massive undertaking for our volunteer team.

That said, because your account literally has "throwaway" in the name and has a history consisting almost entirely of yelling at maintainers of open-source game projects that their code isn't using a libre license with no offers to help or assist with that transition in any way, I can't imagine this request is in good faith.

from a-little-game-called-mario.