GPL Question about music in Freeciv

[Andreas K. Foerster]

Hello,

I'm not a spokesman of the FSFE or any other institution, so please see
the following as a personal opinion.


On Sun, Feb 16, 2003 at 11:40:40PM +0100, T.J.T van Kooten wrote:

> I would like to ask a question about the use of music 
> tracks for the GPL game Freeciv. I've been in contact 
> with a musician and he has agreed to give permission to 
> allow some his of tracks to be used for Freeciv as long 
> as he's given credit. 
> 
> "All tracks performed by Chris Abbott and Alistair "Boz" 
> Bowness 
> (c)1986 High Technology Publishing Ltd., (p) 2001 High 
> Technology Publishing Ltd.
> taken from the CD "Back in Time 3", used with 
> permission. More info at http://www.c64audio.com.
> 
> Does a licence like that cause any problems?  If you give 
> permission to use your music (a datafile) for a project 
> would that automatically place it under the GPL 

It depends on how you use the data. If you merge the data directly into
your program, then both parts become one and have one license.

But if you just put both on one disk, and your program just plays these
data and can also live without them, then it is something different.

The GPL sais:
| In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program
| with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of
| a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under
| the scope of this License.
(at the end of section 2)

> or do the full copyrights for the song itself still remain with the 
> original author? 

Here you confuse something. With the GPL you don't give up your
copyright. When you put something under the GPL it MUST be copyrighted.
(You only give up your copyright, when you put it in the "public
domain")

I think the license is okay.


If you are interested in licensing Music, have a look at these links:

Free Art License:
http://artlibre.org/licence/lalgb.html

Free Music:
http://www.ram.org/ramblings/philosophy/fmp.html

OpenMusic Licenses:
http://openmusic.linuxtag.org/

-- 
Tschuess
	Andreas