Permissions to use IP?

[Boldek_but_Old]

Hello all,
I haven't been on these forums since Skyrim came out, so it feels so surreal to be yet again pestering the ones in the know with silly questions. But here I am. It is one of my dreams to make a live action adaptation of the Heir to the Throne campaign. I have been writing a script and commissioning concept art in the hopes of putting together a sort of portfolio to generate interest as I get established. (I am a broke college grad) For now this is little more than a pipe dream, but I intend to add to it whenever I can in the hopes of making something bigger in the years to come.

If I am interpreting the Project Constitution correctly, the Intellectual Property is controlled by the Board of Directors, so I am addressing this next question to them:
How would I be able to request for permission to use the Wesnoth IP in a film project?

I see that I can email David White using the Credits page. I intend to reach out to him and ask for his permission and blessing if I can clear the Board the Directors.


While I do not have a finished script, and only a few images, I am reaching the point where I plan to set up an instagram page to put out content using the Wesnoth IP, and so I need to know if that's okay before I begin investing significant time and money (see broke college grad).

Thank you all for your time and responses! If you have read this far, please enjoy this concept art of a swordsman made by a talented friend of mine. (Or maybe he's a pikeman who knows)

[Pentarctagon]

The only IP that the Wesnoth project has is the trademark, all the rest of it is under either the GNU GPL v2+ or the CC BY-SA 4.0 (see https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/blob ... rights.csv for details) for art and the GNU GPL v2+ for written elements. As long as you follow the license of the respective content, you can do whatever you want with it without needing to ask anyone for permission.

[demario]

The only IP that the Wesnoth project has is the trademark

This is wrong.
For example author rights exist for stories in wesnoth (which is covered in the request by OP) without any need to claim it in the license.
See for example here for details. In particular:

There are no formalities required to obtain author’s rights.

"The author's right is based upon the act of creation itself".

As long as you follow the license of the respective content, you can do whatever you want with it without needing to ask anyone for permission.

It is strange that, as a PM, you imply that all UMC authors who have agreed to the GPL license when uploading their add-on to the server have no author rights left.

[Arent11]

The only IP that the Wesnoth project has is the trademark, all the rest of it is under either the GNU GPL v2+ or the CC BY-SA 4.0 (see https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/blob ... rights.csv for details) for art and the GNU GPL v2+ for written elements. As long as you follow the license of the respective content, you can do whatever you want with it without needing to ask anyone for permission.

Just for clarification, if I use some SfX/music from Wesnoth (Swords clash, arrow hit etc.) in my own Visual Novel/RPG game (commercial):

(1) Should I just credit Wesnoth as a whole or the individual artists (If I can find them)?
(2) Would a small donation of 100$ to Wesnoth be polite/appropriate?
(3) Are there any other considerations, copyright or non-copyright related that might come up?

[Pentarctagon]

The only IP that the Wesnoth project has is the trademark

This is wrong.
For example author rights exist for stories in wesnoth (which is covered in the request by OP) without any need to claim it in the license.
See for example here for details. In particular:

There are no formalities required to obtain author’s rights.

"The author's right is based upon the act of creation itself".

As long as you follow the license of the respective content, you can do whatever you want with it without needing to ask anyone for permission.

It is strange that, as a PM, you imply that all UMC authors who have agreed to the GPL license when uploading their add-on to the server have no author rights left.

Any content may be used as the license it's under allows. All content in Wesnoth is licensed as either GNU GPL v2+ or CC BY-SA 4.0, neither of which require seeking permission from the author of that content in order to reuse it. They may dual license their work if they want, but they may not insist upon placing additional restrictions on content they've already released under a particular license.

The only IP that the Wesnoth project has is the trademark, all the rest of it is under either the GNU GPL v2+ or the CC BY-SA 4.0 (see https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/blob ... rights.csv for details) for art and the GNU GPL v2+ for written elements. As long as you follow the license of the respective content, you can do whatever you want with it without needing to ask anyone for permission.

Just for clarification, if I use some SfX/music from Wesnoth (Swords clash, arrow hit etc.) in my own Visual Novel/RPG game (commercial):

(1) Should I just credit Wesnoth as a whole or the individual artists (If I can find them)?
(2) Would a small donation of 100$ to Wesnoth be polite/appropriate?
(3) Are there any other considerations, copyright or non-copyright related that might come up?

(1) The content's copyright is owned by the people who created it, not by Wesnoth, so you should credit the individual artists.
(2) It's up to you. We'd definitely appreciate the donation though
(3) The authorship of some of the art/music is unknown at this point - I put together the copyrights.csv list as best I could, but after almost two decades of it not being tracked sometimes there's just nothing left to find. The authorship of written content is also not tracked, given the difficulty of figuring out who made edits to any text used by any particular campaign.

[Arent11]

(1) The content's copyright is owned by the people who created it, not by Wesnoth, so you should credit the individual artists.
(2) It's up to you. We'd definitely appreciate the donation though
(3) The authorship of some of the art/music is unknown at this point - I put together the copyrights.csv list as best I could, but after almost two decades of it not being tracked sometimes there's just nothing left to find. The authorship of written content is also not tracked, given the difficulty of figuring out who made edits to any text used by any particular campaign.

Ok, donation made. I'll try to find out the individual artists names, but I guess that won't be easy.

[Pentarctagon]

Thanks! The copyrights.csv will have the artist's name if it's known (some people, myself included, intentionally don't use our real name though), but if it's not there and it wasn't added at least somewhat recently, then getting a real name for the artist may not be possible.

[demario]

Any content may be used as the license it's under allows. All content in Wesnoth is licensed as either GNU GPL v2+ or CC BY-SA 4.0, neither of which require seeking permission from the author of that content in order to reuse it. They may dual license their work if they want, but they may not insist upon placing additional restrictions on content they've already released under a particular license.

I think you're wrong, the GPL doesn't supersede existing laws and it cannot be used in isolation.

If one sales a free software under the GPL, they still have to follow consumer protection laws. They should also respect patents and such. As you point out, trademarks still need to be considered, and, that's my point, author rights must be considered too.

Software license, EULA are just a layer on top of existing laws to cover specifics of software that are not handled by existing laws.
GPL in particular only focusses on what can be done with the source code that is shared together with the software

[Pentarctagon]

The authors themselves gave permission for their work to be used according to the respective license. Certainly if a country's laws say something contrary to the license then the laws take priority, but otherwise the authors can't come back after the fact and say "here are some new restrictions on how you can use this". The license they agreed to use for their work is what governs how others can use their work.

[demario]

The authors themselves gave permission for their work to be used according to the respective license. Certainly if a country's laws say something contrary to the license then the laws take priority, but otherwise the authors can't come back after the fact and say "here are some new restrictions on how you can use this". The license they agreed to use for their work is what governs how others can use their work.

Nothing wrong there, but completely beside the point.

People don't "come back later and add new restrictions" but rather, at the exact moment they release their work by the terms of GPL, they already enjoy other rights (including author rights) that keeps applying.

It is quite sad that as a PM of a major historic free software, you are promoting FUD about the GPL license.
I really hope some people in your team understand the issue better than you, that they will have a say to defend the terms of the GPL when needed, and that you might ultimately be interested enough to talk to them and educate yourself.

[Pentarctagon]

I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make then. The author still owns the copyright to the work that they created, so they can continue to do whatever they want with it. But using the copy of the content that's part of Wesnoth is governed by either the GPL or the CC BY-SA, depending on what it is and when it was contributed, and anyone who follows the rules and restrictions in the respective license as applicable based on the laws in their jurisdiction can use the content. The basic concept of a copyright license would be worthless if that weren't the case.