license questions

Hi all,

It's a bit ironic that I'm asking this question, given that the deadline of the music contest is coming soon, and I'm actually the one who started the contest.

I have contributed to the open source world for a while, but have almost always retained most rights of my musical works. Very few of my colleagues put open license on their music, either, so this is very new to me. I'm learning to be more sharing in music, and it's not easy for me, so please bear with me and my baggage.

I've read the legal notes on audio. Here are my questions:

1. GPL for music is quite strange to me; Creative Commons looks more familiar to me, so I'm thinking using CC-BY-SA and/or CC-BY. Are they compatible with Xonotic?

2. As far as I know, CC-BY means that if somebody, say Mary, creates another work based on my work, she has to credit me. Later, if Tom creates another work based on Mary's work, will I still be credited?

3. Are there people out there changing a note of somebody else's work, and claim the new authorship? Does changing the volume of a track count as a derivative work?


Now, about the two pieces I'm hoping to submit:

Some of my tracks will be performed by live performers, from whom I can acquire full rights. However, other tracks will have to be virtual instruments, for which I use commercial libraries, or sometimes hardware sound modules. The quality of open libraries is just not good enough to mix with real acoustic instruments.

I can share the orchestral scores, which is completely composed by me. However, I may not be able to share the individual tracks, since many of them will be recorded/engineered by people I work with, and it's unrealistic for me get their project files. For the virtual instruments, obviously I can't share the commercial libraries; nor is it practical for me to document every hardware module setup. In addition to all that, I usually outsource the mixing/mastering to other studios, so I won't get their process either.

4. I usually don't get too involved in the engineering side of things (recording, mixing, mastering, etc.). Since there will be scores/parts prepared for a live orchestra, and traditionally scores are what we get from composers, is it OK, for Xonotic, to have just the produced tracks, the score, and the MIDI data that comes with it?

5. Is it OK to grant Xonotic the necessary licenses only if they are included in the release? That is, if my pieces don't get picked, can I retain their rights so I can use them somewhere else? The projects are costly so please pardon my reservation here. I'm trying to embrace the sharing heart, but it'll take time.

Thanks, all!

After conversing with Melanosuchu and Mr. Bougo on IRC, I got some answers to some of my questions:

I've read the legal notes on audio. Here are my questions:

Here is another doc to read.

1. GPL for music is quite strange to me; Creative Commons looks more familiar to me, so I'm thinking using CC-BY-SA and/or CC-BY. Are they compatible with Xonotic?

• GPL is primarily for code. How we apply GPL or its concept to art works is still something unclear. However, it is in Xonotic's spirit to encourage sharing, collaboration, re-create, re-mix, etc.
  
• CC-BY should be compatible to GPL, but it doesn't require source sharing, which Xonotic wants to do.
  
• SA (share-alike) is copyleft, SA is a copyleft license as the GPL is, but they are not compatible (It's pretty hard to make copyleft licenses GPL compatible without explicit wording for it).
  

So what we want is some kind of CC-BY (or CC-BY-SA) but requires source sharing. Thoughts?

2. As far as I know, CC-BY means that if somebody, say Mary, creates another work based on my work, she has to credit me. Later, if Tom creates another work based on Mary's work, will I still be credited?
3. Are there people out there changing a note of somebody else's work, and claim the new authorship? Does changing the volume of a track count as a derivative work?

• In principle, authors of derivative works need to credit all upstream sources when it makes sense to do so.
  
• The CC licenses explicitly state that trivial changes (like changing the volume) do not qualify as derivative work.
  

Some of my tracks will be performed by live performers, from whom I can acquire full rights. However, other tracks will have to be virtual instruments, for which I use commercial libraries, or sometimes hardware sound modules. The quality of open libraries is just not good enough to mix with real acoustic instruments.

I can share the orchestral scores, which is completely composed by me. However, I may not be able to share the individual tracks, since many of them will be recorded/engineered by people I work with, and it's unrealistic for me get their project files. For the virtual instruments, obviously I can't share the commercial libraries; nor is it practical for me to document every hardware module setup. In addition to all that, I usually outsource the mixing/mastering to other studios, so I won't get their process either.

4. I usually don't get too involved in the engineering side of things (recording, mixing, mastering, etc.). Since there will be scores/parts prepared for a live orchestra, and traditionally scores are what we get from composers, is it OK, for Xonotic, to have just the produced tracks, the score, and the MIDI data that comes with it?

• For the piece source, a musical score is sufficient.
  
• For the recordings, I hold the copyright of the works that I hire whoever to produce (in my case, live players and engineers), so I can distribute those tracks.
  

The commercial sample libraries are unclear, though. Do they count as assets?

In my opinion, since almost all modern sound libraries come in the form of plugins (they not only have raw samples, but all sorts of intelligent real-time processing), using these libraries should be compatible.

I know very little about graphic tools, but I assume this is similar to using a commercial plugin in Photoshop to add some pattern to a surface; in this case, there's no way to extract that pattern from the plugin.

What do you think?

5. Is it OK to grant Xonotic the necessary licenses only if they are included in the release? That is, if my pieces don't get picked, can I retain their rights so I can use them somewhere else? The projects are costly so please pardon my reservation here. I'm trying to embrace the sharing heart, but it'll take time.

As the organizer of this competition, in the spirit of encouraging submissions (including mine), I'm going to say as long as Xonotic won't have problems with copyright/licensing by the time it includes the work, it's OK. A submission can be competition-specific, not just a generic sharing.

I'm open for discussion though.