 Tech Talk, Creative Commons, and GPL. Recently I did a video on software licenses, and I talked about different types of licenses, whether it's an end-user license agreement or a distribution license, and a lot of you are probably familiar with the more common licenses, such as the GPL-2, GPL-3, the SD, Apache, and MIT license. And then you may also be familiar with the Creative Commons license, which usually applies more to artistic things, music, video, photos, paintings, that sort of thing. So how do these correspond when it comes to GPL? Let's say you're creating a piece of software, a video game, and you want to use some art in your video game, and your video game, you want to release some of the GPL. Does the license match up? How do you use the Creative Commons license with the GPL? Well, there's different versions of the Creative Commons license, and some are compatible with GPL, and others are not. Now, does your art have to be compatible with the GPL license if your software is on the GPL license? This is a very gray area in some aspect. The way it's pretty much worded, which is unclear to me when I read it, I wish I should have brought up the exact wording of it. Basically, if your software depends on that art to run properly, then it needs to be released under the GPL or a compatible license. And the example they give is your program has a button, and that button is a picture, and so the program will work without that picture, then the picture needs to be released, again, under the GPL or a GPL compatible license if you're releasing your software under the GPL license. But to me, that's kind of confusing because, well, what if the image I'm using is not, but it can easily be replaced with any image? Any image can be put in there. I don't know. That's where it's unclear to me, and maybe one of my viewers knows better than I do. Now, just about a year ago, I was at the FOSICON, the Free and Open Source software conference here in Florida in Orlando back in 2014, and I talked to some people who knew a little bit more about this. They told me to contact the Free Software Foundation, so I did, and after a while I got a response back, which is very unclear still. And they're big concern when you're asking people questions like this. They're concerns that you're trying to circumvent the license, which was not what I was trying to do at all. I was trying to understand it better. My example was a game-like Doom. Now, the original Doom by idSoftware has been released under the GPL code, so you have the game program under the GPL, but the level design, the music, and the imagery, all the art portions of that game are still under a proprietary license, meaning that you can download the game and you can get the demo files for the game and play it, but you still have to pay if you want to play the full game. Now, there are projects out there like Free Doom, which has spent years redoing all the arts and levels and music to make the game completely free both in the software aspect and the media aspect. But my question is, how can the original Doom game be released under the GPL if the game media files are still under a proprietary license? That seems like a conflict, because I can't play the game that softwares no good to me about the levels, music, and sound. Yes, nowadays we have replacement with Free Doom, but originally we didn't, and I never really got an answer for that. But going back to the Creative Commons license, and as I said, there's different versions of Creative Commons license. Some are compatible with the GPL and some are not. And if you go to the GPL website, the Free Software Foundation, and read about that, they suggest other licenses when it comes to artwork. They really say they don't take a stance when it comes to media, artwork, and freedom, except for when it's incorporated with software. And basically, when it comes to the Creative Commons license, you can't say it's not for commercial use or that you're not allowed to modify it. So basically, you need to use a Creative Commons license that allows for both commercial and non-commercial use, and it needs to be a share alike, meaning that you're allowing other people to make modifications to the artwork. And at that point, it's now compatible with the GPL. So there's a lot of gray area there as far as I'm concerned from what I've heard. Again, maybe some of you know a little bit more than I do. You can comment in the comments below. Let me know what you think. I love the Creative Commons license. I usually release most of my stuff under a Creative Commons share alike for commercial and non-commercial use. So it's not really affecting me, but there are times where I like making little video games and I'm not the best for making art for video games. So I go out there and I find something under Creative Commons license that says I can share it, and it says non-commercial use, and I'm not using it for commercial use, but technically, according to the Free Software Foundation, it sounds like I'm not supposed to use that because it conflicts with the GPL because with the GPL, you can use the software for commercial use. So it's a very gray area. I thought I'd talk about it a little bit. I don't know if I've confused you guys or if I clarified some things. Basically, I hopefully it's clear on what they said, but exactly what that means. I wish there was more clarification at least for me. Again, if you know of something that explains it better, please share or comment below. And if you enjoy this video, let me know. Give it a thumbs up, like it, share it, comment. And as always, visit my website, filmsmychrist.com. That's Chris the K. There should be a link in the description. And as always, I hope that you have a great day.