Xonotic needs a more liberal art license

Most quality artists have proprietary background. You simply can't get enough skills in you free time to create assets that even remotely approach the quality standards of modern games. Sure, when you already have the skills, free time is sometimes enough to contribute to free games. But, to get those skills, you have to go to an art university, and then practice much, much more than the amount of free time people get in the modern world would allow.

GPL with its copyleft and requirement to publish sources is extremely offensive to artists, because it's a direct antithesis to the copyright restrictions that put their food on the table. Piracy is on rampage, DRM schemes keeps getting circumvented despite all publishers' efforts, the only really effective online DRM schemes face huge backlashes.

Look at the games such as Warsow, Alien Arena, Sauerbraten, Unvanquished. All of them are free, but are in much better state than Xonotic, especially Unvanquished, despite that is started as an attempt to resurrect the game that essentially DIED, while Nexuiz was much more alive than Tremulous when Xonotic started. The rate of Unvanquished's art development is truly impressive.

What Xonotic needs is a art license that has less spirit of freedom to it not to offend and drive away potential artists. Restrictive licenses like in Warsow and Sauebraten will get Xonotic removed from freedom-adhering GNU/Linux distributions, a major source of new players, but CC-BY or CC-BY-SA seem like a good option, because AFAIK Unvanquished uses them, and is doing very good.

I know that the same thing can be said about programmers, but there are important differences. Free software is much more developed than free culture, and you have a much greater change of getting a job in free software than in free culture. Also, writing quality software doesn't have the same entry barriers: to make quality assets, you need Photoshop (GIMP won't cut it), 3ds Max or Maya, ZBrush, a good GPU for high-poly 3D work, and a good graphics tablet with pressure sensitivity, while coding only requires a standard-issue keyboard, mouse and a compiler (free software compilers are among best in class, which can't be said about graphics and sound programs, proprietary IDEs are still better, but IDEs aren't as crucial to programming as art tools are to art). In programming, many problems already have widely known and documented solutions that you only need to express in code and adapt to your situation, while artists have to create their work from scratch. And, novice artists have nothing to contribute, because, unlike programming, artistic process is usually destructive and bad assets can't be brought to shape in a way bad code can. I know Xonotic struggles with programmers too, but even the current engine has a lot of potential that isn't used to its full because of lack of artists. A game is 99% art and 1% code.

That is.... a well made trolling attempt

GPL is fine, the problem is that no artists wants to contribute to a game in which most players turn off all graphic features and enable full bright skins etc.

I recon its another spam bot, advertising property software. Of to WW!

Seems like you are trolling around with this shit in other forums:
http://unvanquished.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1288
http://unvanquished.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=1098
http://unvanquished.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=567
http://unvanquished.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=608

Where´s the ban hammer?

I think this opinion is legit to be expressed here and fail to see the trolling. I don't agree with calling proprietary assets evil and its propagation blasphemy that has to be acted upon by act of moderation :o)

Whereas I highly value Xonotic being entirely GPL, the GPL undoubtedly also has drawbacks, especially for artists. But I personally value a free game much higher than a polished one. The decision for keeping Xonotic under GPL has already been made and confirmed numerous times as far as I recall, and I strongly support it. If you are an artist, you can always release non-GPL content as a mod package if you can't agree to GPL. I think for example the Overkill player models are not released under GPL? No problem there, the mod gets played a lot.

Exactly that's the problem with non GPL things, because it can't be included into an official release.

Imho you nailed it - the problem is things being non GPL, not Xonotic being GPL ;o)

It is impossible due to the reason that Mirio named. But overall OP has a valid point, so what is up with the ignorance here? Calling him a troll, asking to ban him or punishing him with a -? It is a fact that mappers are not allowed to include CC* assets for example. Which was a problem during the mapping contest. Same with music and sound effects, there is so much free to use and awesome content which does not fulfil the GPL standards. GPL is perfect for code imo, but for art it is awful.

Could not agree more with asyyy. I personally even find "proprietary" artwork acceptable even in a free game.

If we are gonna take this thread seriously here are my thoughts.

GPL with its copyleft and requirement to publish sources is extremely offensive to artists, because it's a direct antithesis to the copyright restrictions that put their food on the table. Piracy is on rampage, DRM schemes keeps getting circumvented despite all publishers' efforts, the only really effective online DRM schemes face huge backlashes.

This is totally missing the point of free culture. Other than that, if the game is goint to be free as in free beer anyway, the artists won't be payed anyway so I don't see how it's offensive for them to publish the sources. Availability of the sources will also allow to make further adjustments to the work after the original author has lost interest in the project.
DRM are totally pointless in a game that is free to play, not that I see the point of having them at all but thery are especially useless for free stuff.

Most quality artists have proprietary background. You simply can't get enough skills in you free time to create assets that even remotely approach the quality standards of modern games. Sure, when you already have the skills, free time is sometimes enough to contribute to free games. But, to get those skills, you have to go to an art university, and then practice much, much more than the amount of free time people get in the modern world would allow.
[...]
I know that the same thing can be said about programmers, but there are important differences. Free software is much more developed than free culture, and you have a much greater change of getting a job in free software than in free culture. Also, writing quality software doesn't have the same entry barriers: to make quality assets, you need Photoshop (GIMP won't cut it), 3ds Max or Maya, ZBrush, a good GPU for high-poly 3D work, and a good graphics tablet with pressure sensitivity, while coding only requires a standard-issue keyboard, mouse and a compiler (free software compilers are among best in class, which can't be said about graphics and sound programs, proprietary IDEs are still better, but IDEs aren't as crucial to programming as art tools are to art). In programming, many problems already have widely known and documented solutions that you only need to express in code and adapt to your situation, while artists have to create their work from scratch. And, novice artists have nothing to contribute, because, unlike programming, artistic process is usually destructive and bad assets can't be brought to shape in a way bad code can.

Whether you have a job in programming or art doesn't have any effect on your ability contribute to free software. If you are not getting paid for it you are still not getting paid for it. If you are getting paid for it you don't have any other cost if you release the sources.

I know Xonotic struggles with programmers too, but even the current engine has a lot of potential that isn't used to its full because of lack of artists. A game is 99% art and 1% code.

I totally disagree. An unplayable game with a lot of fancy graphics is still unplayable. An ugly but fun game is still fun.

This is totally missing the point of free culture.

Show me some high-quality free culture games or movies that haven't been created by people who got their skills from working in proprietary game or movie companies.

...the artists won't be payed anyway so I don't see how it's offensive for them to publish the sources.

In today's society artists want control over what they've created, even after they've released it. Not releasing sources allows them to retain at least some control. It's a cultural thing and won't go away any time soon.

It doesn't help that GPL was written by GNU, who fight for what would ruin the proprietary artists' way of life, and actually manage to make progress. Computers that are fully controlled by their users and surveillance-free communications are good for civil liberties but they will make licenses that restrict copying almost totally unenforceable.

Availability of the sources will also allow to make further adjustments to the work after the original author has lost interest in the project.

This works in programming, but rarely in art, creating game art is usually a destructive process, art assets usually have to be scrapped and re-made from scratch (no matter how simmilar the end result is) anyway, so having sources doesn't provide that much of a benefit.

DRM are totally pointless in a game that is free to play, not that I see the point of having them at all but thery are especially useless for free stuff.

You've missed the point, I don't propose including DRM into Xonotic, just to allow assets under permissive licenses to be included in the main game.

Whether you have a job in programming or art doesn't have any effect on your ability contribute to free software.

It does. "An art contributor with a job in art vs an art contributor without" is roughly equal to "skilled art contributor vs a mediocre art contributor". A full-time job in art allows one to practice their artistic skills.

An unplayable game with a lot of fancy graphics is still unplayable. An ugly but fun game is still fun.

I agree, but Xonotic will have more players if it's fun AND looks good.

I think Melanosuchus' point here was that if you're a good artist with a job that doesn't prevent you from contributing to Xonotic in your spare time, as all the other contributors do. If you take your spare time to make something for the game, what hindrance is there to release it under GPL - no matter if you're a good artist or not? Of course artists develop their skills in doing something for money (creating proprietary assets), but that doesn't really prevent them to create something for their own pleasure and to release it under GPL. It's just that you have to sacrifice time of your life doing something for free that you'd otherwise get paid for, but after all that's the same for programmers, isn't it.

Artists that release stuff under GPL and for free will not destroy the culture of proprietary assets. I am absolutely convinved people will continue to be willing to pay for good content, even if other good content is available for free.

I also don't agree with your statement that creating art is a destructive process, think of 3D modelling. Creating game art CAN be destructive, but in most cases I'd say it's not and providing sources allows for further modification of the same asset by different people.

As long as xonotic is dominated by one developer it will continue to flounder. People don't like their contributions being rejected.

I agree. TarxKran/MikeeUSE is right. Nobody wants to contribute to Xonotic because of... GPL is not the reason.