Hi all,
I would like to ask a question about the use of music tracks for the GPL game Freeciv. I've been in contact with a musician and he has agreed to give permission to allow some his of tracks to be used for Freeciv as long as he's given credit.
"All tracks performed by Chris Abbott and Alistair "Boz" Bowness (c)1986 High Technology Publishing Ltd., (p) 2001 High Technology Publishing Ltd. taken from the CD "Back in Time 3", used with permission. More info at http://www.c64audio.com.
Does a licence like that cause any problems? If you give permission to use your music (a datafile) for a project would that automatically place it under the GPL or do the full copyrights for the song itself still remain with the original author?
I don't believe there are problems with this. But I would like to verify with someone in the know before i give the final go ahead.
Thanks in advance,
Thomas van Kooten
Hello,
I'm not a spokesman of the FSFE or any other institution, so please see the following as a personal opinion.
On Sun, Feb 16, 2003 at 11:40:40PM +0100, T.J.T van Kooten wrote:
I would like to ask a question about the use of music tracks for the GPL game Freeciv. I've been in contact with a musician and he has agreed to give permission to allow some his of tracks to be used for Freeciv as long as he's given credit.
"All tracks performed by Chris Abbott and Alistair "Boz" Bowness (c)1986 High Technology Publishing Ltd., (p) 2001 High Technology Publishing Ltd. taken from the CD "Back in Time 3", used with permission. More info at http://www.c64audio.com.
Does a licence like that cause any problems? If you give permission to use your music (a datafile) for a project would that automatically place it under the GPL
It depends on how you use the data. If you merge the data directly into your program, then both parts become one and have one license.
But if you just put both on one disk, and your program just plays these data and can also live without them, then it is something different.
The GPL sais: | In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program | with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of | a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under | the scope of this License. (at the end of section 2)
or do the full copyrights for the song itself still remain with the original author?
Here you confuse something. With the GPL you don't give up your copyright. When you put something under the GPL it MUST be copyrighted. (You only give up your copyright, when you put it in the "public domain")
I think the license is okay.
If you are interested in licensing Music, have a look at these links:
Free Art License: http://artlibre.org/licence/lalgb.html
Free Music: http://www.ram.org/ramblings/philosophy/fmp.html
OpenMusic Licenses: http://openmusic.linuxtag.org/