Hello everyone,
I've recently noticed what has been happening around these parts and I've decided to chip in my brief experience with modding for OXC in hopes it will at least benefit others.
I must start by saying that it's never easy being a modder. I've only done minimal mods myself for OXC, but I've modded extensively for other games, and I can understand it is tough not having your work recognized and appreciated as often as it should be. If your mod gets popular to the point of becoming a foundation for other mods, you even risk having others taking credit for your work. Modding communities have been founded on the principle of sharing knowledge and giving credit to original authors, but growing communities often find their initial code of etiquette forgotten amid ever increasing numbers of content being produced by new people joining in.
From my experience as a modder one valuable lesson that I've learned, is that in order to keep your work under control, and other people to be respectful of it, clear and concise licensing must be a responsibility of every modder from the start. Establishing clear limits of what can and cannot be done with your art, where you derivative work begins and where someone else's work you modified ends is absolutely crucial.
Now, I'm the author of a fairly popular, if relatively simple mod used in a bunch of other modifications, notably the Amiga/PSX fonts mod. This mod was conceived from an original font found in the Amiga version of X-COM and it was extensively modified by me to support triple the amount of characters it originally did, along with modifying the original characters too for improved readability, What I determined from that point was the following:
a) the fontset was not actually an original part of x-com as it was present in some versions of the Amiga OS before the game existed.
b) tried as I might (and I searched a lot, and sent emails to forgotten Amiga devs) I could find no hint on who created the font or if any company had the rights for it, from which I presumed the content to be abandoned.
c) the extent of my work made upon the original font was enough that I could consider it to become a derivative piece of its own right, as two thirds of the characters in the fontset were my own artistic view on how such a font style would behave with extended latin, Cyrillic, Greek characters, and some new symbols.
From this point I released my mod and I licensed it specifically under CC-BY-SA, but was still careful enough to acknowledge the original author was unknown and to thank him/her in the readme. Under these conditions people are allowed to use my mod for both commercial and non-commercial ends, but they are always obliged to 1) credit me 2) share any modifications of the file under the same terms. This means any people improving upon my work would have to be nice and share their creations while acknowledging all the authors they derived their work from. It also avoids any confusion, and forces authors to print a notice containing the license name under which the original mod was made, effectively maintaining the etiquette, even if profiting from my work, which to be honest, I think it should always be allowed.
A few months later I had the idea of creating a set of HD backgrounds and replacement BigObs for special alien weapons, and proposed SupSuper to commission them to well-known X-Com fan artist Android Arts. Only the latter got made, but during the process I warned SupSuper these also had to be specifically licensed as part of the OXC project. The CC-BY-SA license was once again chosen, as it is directly compatible with the GPL, used in OXC code, and would allow the OpenXcom package to be distributed without any copyright terms associated. People can freely use these bigobs in their mods, but they always have to credit Android Arts for that.
The conclusion here is that licensing your works accordingly from the start will avoid a lot of trouble in the future, and will make the resolution of any conflicts that arise with other modders a simple matter of enforcing the license terms originally set. I hope you all manage to find a solution for this issue, and if I have one request for Hobbes is to please not distrust other modders who have also put a fair share of work on their own creations, even if using yours as part of it. We're all in this boat together trying to make modding X-Com a wonderful experience for everyone. Let's all work out a solution that benefits all.
