I'm not about to argue the difficulties here but I think I understand where Cyan is coming from on this. Actually, on re-reading this again there are two aspects here:Deledrius wrote:Non-commercial use is pretty standard and easy to specify. Unfortunately it's much harder to define during the actual usage what constitutes "commercial", as I'm sure they've deal with then it comes to the donation system for CavCon. I know I've read some articles denouncing the unintentionally damaging consequences of non-commercial provisions, but I can't seem to find them at the moment to share.Mac_Fife wrote: A proviso on that is that the assets will be made available for community development of MOUL, and things like porting to other engines, or commercial (for profit) use will not be allowed.
a) Restricting the usage to MOUL, and
b) Limitation to non-commercial use.
Personally, I'm more comfortable with how b) might work than I am with a).
On the subject of b) I think where Cyan is at is that it wants to give the fans the freedom to work with the assets to the benefit of MOUL and the community but at the same time is caught by a desire to not "give away" those assets in a manner that would allow some other entity to exploit them for commercial gain. It's maybe a subtle point, but its the difference between simply "licensing the content" and "licensing the content to MOUL fans" - trying to ensure that those who've supported Uru over the years benefit and not some other third party. That's also kind of where a) seems to come in, but I see a much greater difficulty in defining what is or is not "MOUL usage", e.g. does the creation of an Uru based artwork utilising MOUL textures qualify? I can also see a connection between b) and having a list of named licensees, but that's a different topic.
As regards that non-commercial clause there is a further question I see: Is it intended that all content (and derivative works) should be free of all charges? It is often the case that even "free" products can request a reasonable service charge to cover the costs of producing a copy on DVD and mailing it (and even online downloads can have some "cost"). I'm not sure what the overall size of the licensed assets is likely to be, but I have a sense that it could amount to several GB .