Pixelation

General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Lendrick on March 29, 2009, 07:12:12 am

Title: Donate your old pixels to a worthy cause. :)
Post by: Lendrick on March 29, 2009, 07:12:12 am

Greets!

I've recently put together a web site that's intended to eventually be a repository of freely-licensed art for use in open source game development.  Anyway, if you're inclined to help out and you have some old art from a defunct project sitting around on your hard drive gathering dust, donating it be a great way to let it see the light of day and help a community in need (if you've ever seen "programmer art", you know what I'm talking about... ;D ).

The site is located at this link:
http://opengameart.org (http://opengameart.org)

Even if you're not inclined to donate art, I'd appreciate any comments or criticisms on the usability of the site.  It's not *quite* at 100% yet, but I figure it's at least presentable enough to show to people now.

Peace,
Bart

Title: Re: Donate your old pixels to a worthy cause. :)
Post by: NaCl on March 29, 2009, 08:03:06 am

I like this idea! I think it would be best if there was some mechanism to allow an artist to put their art up on the site, but it can only be used if the person asks for permission first. I think some artists would be loathe to upload their art and never get to see what it is being used for.

Title: Re: Donate your old pixels to a worthy cause. :)
Post by: Lendrick on March 29, 2009, 08:23:07 am

I get where you're coming from there, but unfortunately there are some legal implications with licensing.  I'm don't know how familiar you are with the concept of free (as in speech) and open source software, but the most common way they license their code is under what's called the GPL, or GNU General Public License.  It essentially says three things:

* You're giving the source code of your program away for free.
* Anyone can take that source code and modify it, use it, or distribute it in whatever way they wish.
* If anyone distributes a program based on your source code, they have to license the changes they made to your code under the same license.

The trouble is that given the requirements of the GPL, putting a restriction on how the art can be redistributed comes into conflict with the way the actual program is licensed, which can cause all kinds of hairy licensing issues that I can't even begin to wrap my tiny brain around. :)

So, self-defeating though it may seem, I have to have a limited selection of open licenses, because requiring the artists permission on a project by project basis essentially precludes that art from being usable in open source software.  Mind you, I'm not suggesting that what you're getting at is a bad idea; in fact, I think it'd be really cool.  It's just that for my particular purposes, it can't work, as much as I wish it could.

Title: Re: Donate your old pixels to a worthy cause. :)
Post by: NaCl on March 29, 2009, 08:34:46 am

I wasn't talking about liscensing, I was just proposing a system where the artist would know who was using his art, and could make sure he was getting credit. Perhaps instead of showing the entire image and allowing people to just right click download it, make it so they have to click a link to get the full file, and it only shows them a preview. Then, when a user clicks that link then it will notify the artist. This also has the benefit of appealing to the artists ego (someone downloaded my art!).

Title: Re: Donate your old pixels to a worthy cause. :)
Post by: Lendrick on March 29, 2009, 09:26:03 am

Yes, that would definitely be workable.  I suspect I could set up some kind of notification system that would do just that.  One way people could be forced to not just make off with the preview image is by converting the preview to a medium-quality jpg, which would be sufficient to see what the art looks like, but utterly useless in production.  The artist could conceivably even get a list of people who downloaded their art, check out what projects they're working on, etc.  I'll have to consider how to go about this, but I think it'll make the site more lively.

Title: Re: Donate your old pixels to a worthy cause. :)
Post by: Ai on March 29, 2009, 10:05:52 am

Quote from: Lendrick on March 29, 2009, 08:23:07 am

The trouble is that given the requirements of the GPL, putting a restriction on how the art can be redistributed comes into conflict with the way the actual program is licensed, which can cause all kinds of hairy licensing issues that I can't even begin to wrap my tiny brain around. :)

I'd like to point out that the GPL (and the LGPL) is not art-compatible (per http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLOtherThanSoftware ) -- it's not clear what would be meant by  'source code'.
Therefore there are actually only 3 meaningful licensing options of the ones you provide; I've seen all of those licenses used in conjunction with GPL software. I've also seen GPL/LGPL-licensed artwork, but that is silly -- since the license is unenforcable when the definition of 'source code' is unclear, it amounts to 'public domain plus pointless confusion'

see http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/index_html#OtherLicenses for more info. They recommend CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, DSL, and FAL licenses.

Title: Re: Donate your old pixels to a worthy cause. :)
Post by: Lendrick on March 29, 2009, 03:34:47 pm

Agreed... the GPL and LGPL are terrible licenses for art, but I want to make sure that art that's already licensed under those licenses can be submitted to the site.  The default license when you add new art is CC-BY-SA, which is the one I hope people will use.

Title: Re: Donate your old pixels to a worthy cause. :)
Post by: Lendrick on April 02, 2009, 10:49:36 pm

Just a note to anyone who would like to submit a large pack of art without messing with individual files:  I now accept archive formats, such as .rar and .zip, which I'll sort out myself.

Peace,
Bart

Title: Re: Donate your old pixels to a worthy cause. :)
Post by: fil_razorback on April 05, 2009, 01:52:42 pm

I totally support this website's concept. I think it's a shame how game makers pillage professionnal games to get some sprites and tiles, and you're offering a good alternative.

I run a French website about game making, and I will put a news about this site over there. Also, do you have a small 88*31 button I could put among our partners' ?

Title: Re: Donate your old pixels to a worthy cause. :)
Post by: Lendrick on April 05, 2009, 06:56:25 pm

Sure thing.  I'll put one together really quick and put it up.  Send me the link of your site and I'll link back to you.  :)

Thanks,
Bart

Title: Re: Donate your old pixels to a worthy cause. :)
Post by: Lendrick on April 05, 2009, 07:25:13 pm

Okay, I put together a link image.  You can find it on this page here:

http://opengameart.org/content/buttonpng (http://opengameart.org/content/buttonpng)

...or on the front page.  Thanks for the link!

Bart

Title: Re: Donate your old pixels to a worthy cause. :)
Post by: willfaulds on April 06, 2009, 11:06:26 am

I don't know if you know of http://lostgarden.com/2007/05/dancs-miraculously-flexible-game.html

but your site reminded me of it - might be worth getting in touch?

Title: Re: Donate your old pixels to a worthy cause. :)
Post by: Lendrick on April 06, 2009, 02:38:22 pm

It so happens that I do know of Lost Garden, because someone pointed it out to me the other day.  I've already archived some of their content (which is conveniently licensed under CC-BY 3.0) and I'm going to drop Danc a line today the near future and see what he thinks of my site. :)

Should anyone happen to know of any other sites that distribute content under a similar license, I'd love to know about the,

Bart

Title: Re: Donate your old pixels to a worthy cause. :)
Post by: Lendrick on April 12, 2009, 06:50:45 am

I just created a new theme for the site, and I'd appreciate any comments or critiques anyone could provide.

opengameart.org (http://opengameart.org)

Thanks,
Bart