Mod licensing question

[Heirloom]

This is more related to addons, but at the same time is to the moderators and about the forum. Are custom licenses for addons allowed? As in, can we just come up with our own set of rules? I’m making a mod but I don’t want it to be uploaded onto other sites nor the assets being used for other mods (without my permission).

 

I could do all rights reserved, but since there are modified versions of some SQUAD assets (planet maps), I obviously don’t want to do that. I was thinking of something like a CC-BY-NC-ND license, but that allows reuploads and reuse of assets (unless modified).

[Snark]

13 hours ago, Heirloom said:

Are custom licenses for addons allowed? As in, can we just come up with our own set of rules?

Technically, yes you can.  A license is simply an explicit, legally binding statement from the author of a work, saying what rules apply to anyone who chooses to use that work.  So in principle you can put whatever you like.

That said, though, I'd strongly recommend that you not do so, unless you really have some especially unusual use case such that none of the "standard" licenses will work for you.  Here are the reasons why:

• For your sake.  Assuming you're not a lawyer... composing a license is tricky.  There's a reason lawyers have to go to school.    Since it's a legal document, making sure that you've dotted all your i's and crossed all your t's, legally speaking, is tricky.  I've been modding for years and moderating other people's mod threads for years, and still I would be very hesitant to craft my own custom license.  It's hard to get right.  If you use a "standard" license, then all the bugs have already been worked out of it and you're on pretty safe ground.
• For the users' sake.  Your users, by and large, aren't lawyers either.  Do you really want every user to have to wade through a verbose license to figure out what exactly is or isn't allowed?  When you use a "standard" license, it's something all your users have seen a zillion times before, so it's easy for them to know the do's and don'ts without actually having to read all the fine print.
• For the moderators' sake.  There aren't many of us, and we're part-time unpaid volunteers who do this as a hobby, and we aren't lawyers, either.  If you post your mod, sooner or later someone is going to use it in a potentially questionable fashion, and then we're the ones who are gonna have to step in, try to get everything figured out, and scratch our heads over whether something is allowed or not.  And without going on a multi-paragraph rant about it, suffice to say that that only scratches the surface, and would actually be a pain in various other ways, as well.  So by using a custom license, you're making our jobs a whole lot harder and taking up a lot more of our time.  Whereas if you use a "standard" license, you make everything easy-peasy for us, because it's something we've dealt with a zillion times before and we know exactly where we stand.  It turns half-hour decisions into five-second decisions.
• You probably don't need it.  Seriously, there are a lot of different "standard" license out there, so there's one to fit just about any combination of desires on the author's part.  We see hundreds of mods flowing through here, of many different types, with many different kinds of authors who have many different motivations and attitudes... and pretty much all of them use some standard license or other, anywhere from "totally locked down All Rights Reserved" to "wide open, anyone can do just about anything MIT".  Unless you're planning on doing something with seriously bizarre requirements, the chances are very high that there's a license that suits your needs.

So yes, you can do it... but I'd suggest that your interests would be better served not to.  Just figure out which standard license meets your needs-- there probably is one.

13 hours ago, Heirloom said:

I’m making a mod but I don’t want it to be uploaded onto other sites nor the assets being used for other mods

That's pretty much the definition of "All Rights Reserved" right there.  Sounds like that's the one you want.

13 hours ago, Heirloom said:

I could do all rights reserved, but since there are modified versions of some SQUAD assets (planet maps), I obviously don’t want to do that.

Why?  Sounds like it's perfect for your needs.  You're merely saying nobody is allowed to host your work elsewhere, or include your work in anything else.

13 hours ago, Heirloom said:

I was thinking of something like a CC-BY-NC-ND license, but that allows reuploads and reuse of assets (unless modified).

It allows re-uploads, yes.  I use that myself for quite a few of my mods, where I don't want other folk to be using/modifying my stuff, but I'm fine with someone taking my zip file as-is and simply uploading it somewhere on the Internet, because (for me) there's no reason why I'd care about that.

But it wouldn't allow re-use of assets, because of the "ND" clause ("no derivative works").  If you go with CC-BY-NC-ND, people are allowed to take your zip file exactly as-is and uploaded it to other websites... but they're not allowed to take stuff out of it and use it in anything else, because that would be a derivative work and therefore prohibited.

Basically, CC-BY-NC-ND is really close to All Rights Reserved.  The only significant difference is that the former allows people to re-host the same identical work elsewhere, whereas the latter one does not.

But since it sounds like you specifically want to forbid re-uploads, sounds like All Rights Reserved would be the one to fit your needs.

[Heirloom]

@Snark wait so All Rights Reserved means that nobody can reupload it or use its assets? I had assumed All Rights Reserved was akin to copyright and meant that you claimed it as your own and own full rights to it. But since they are modified planet maps for the stock planets, I wasn’t really sure. But if it’s the former, then that’d be great.

 

Only reason I don’t want it uploaded on other sites is that it could end up on some dodgy foreign site, and could be a potential risk for other users. And thanks for the clarification about CC-BY-NC-ND, I thought it was for the assets and not the whole mod.

[linuxgurugamer]

11 minutes ago, Heirloom said:

Only reason I don’t want it uploaded on other sites is that it could end up on some dodgy foreign site, and could be a potential risk for other users. And thanks for the clarification about CC-BY-NC-ND, I thought it was for the assets and not the whole mod.

  Unfortunately, it will end up on dodgy, foreign sites regardless of whatever license you put on it.  

Making it ARR is a problem in my view, because it means that if you ever go away, the mod will die

[Heirloom]

3 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

  Unfortunately, it will end up on dodgy, foreign sites regardless of whatever license you put on it.  

Making it ARR is a problem in my view, because it means that if you ever go away, the mod will die

Well I plan to also include a message saying that if I’m away for a while and the mod needs an update (i.e. syntax for dependencies changes), then anyone can continue the mod and stuff.

Edited May 10, 2019 by Heirloom

[linuxgurugamer]

Just now, Heirloom said:

Well I plan to also include a message saying that if I’m for a while and the mod needs an update (i.e. syntax for dependencies changes), then anyone can continue the mod and stuff.

Look at the license for RealChute, it already has such a clause