I’m more and more confused with the big amount of licenses that are growing out there. I feel that I’m choosing a different license every time I want to share my work and I’m not happy with that.
The main rules I would like to include to my license are:
You can use, modify, and make derivatives work from my artwork. You can even make money with your creations based on them but only if you add something from your own. It is not valid make money just selling my artwork.
Also there is the condition of mention the original creator of the work (me) in your derivative work.
Aside from the “only if you add something”, sounds like you could use the GPL. But why would you want that restriction at this point. And what would a change entail? going in and changing a character’s eye color?
I know where the intent is coming from, don’t get me wrong, it’s just hellish to put that in legal speak.
Another thing, I wouln’t be put off changing licenses often. This’ll help you learn more about them.
There’s also the Free Art license that came out of France. Not a lot of people know about it yet.
I wouldn’t use the GPL for animation, that would require people to distribute the source materials (.sif and images) and possibly prevent them from doing mashups of the video output from an animation.
I agree with ephigy, writing licenses is hard.
It is a good idea to pick an existing license to reduce license proliferation.
Even if the thread is a bit old, I guess other people would be interested in the same information.
The “Creative Commons” licenses have been designed for protecting artists (and art work). Read more about their “variants” at creativecommons.org/licenses/
A principle of the Creative Commons (CC in short) is that if the user of your art work wants to waive any of the restrictions you selected (amongst citing-using commercially-modifying) he should contact you and negotiate another licensing scheme (generally paying a fee).
One license I particularly like is the “Attribution-Share Alike 3.0” (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) that ensures further contribution to the “free content” world, ensures citing of the contributors, and allows for commercial uses under these conditions. You can use a nice logo to summarize the status of your work, such as:
