# Licensing

Licensing is tracked in four separate layers. Do not merge them; each has different obligations.

| Layer | What it covers | Status |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Project code | Project-owned code in `Game/Source`, `Tools/`, and `Geo/` scripts | [CC0 1.0](../LICENSE), chosen by the project owner. |
| Project art | Blender sources, baked textures, exported meshes | Project-owned art is [CC0 1.0](../LICENSE); third-party contributions retain their own terms. See the asset notices. |
| Engine | Unreal Engine | Proprietary / source-available. Not redistributable as engine source. Distribution follows Epic's terms. |
| Geographic data | OSM extract, elevation data | ODbL and the elevation provider's own licence. Attribution and share-alike review required before distributing a derived database. |

Project-owned documentation is also dedicated under [CC0 1.0](../LICENSE). Third-party material retains its own terms.

## Rules

1. An asset whose licence cannot be verified does not get committed. Record it as unresolved in [THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md](../THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md) and replace it with a redistributable asset before the release it would ship in.
2. Reference photography is dev-only material and is **never committed**. It lives in the gitignored `Art/reference/` tree, is used for internal, private development only, and is not shipped or baked into shipped textures. Local reference notes are also excluded from version control.
3. OSM is layout data only. Do not treat it as authoritative for façades, heights, or pavement detail, and do not import it as a texture or panorama source.
4. Never use extracted Google imagery, Street View, or geometry. No exception.
5. Attribution: "© OpenStreetMap contributors" with a link to <https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright> appears in the shipped build's UI (a `0.1.0` release check) and in the notices.
6. Credentials, licence keys, and account tokens never enter the repository. Engine licence acceptance is recorded by date and account email only.

## Open decisions

- **ODbL posture.** Decide whether distributed builds contain a derived geographic database (a modified OSM extract) or only rendered geometry. The answer changes the share-alike obligations for the shipped product. Record the decision here and in the release notes.
- **Reference photography retention.** Decided 2026-11-06: reference images are **not** committed. Licensing is not the gate for local, private development use, so images are simply kept out of the repository (`Art/reference/` is gitignored) and their provenance stays in the local sidecars. The gate moves to the shipped output: if a shipped asset would derive from a reference photograph, that is a release-time licensing decision, recorded in `THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md` before the asset ships.

## Provenance sources

Primary record: [THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md](../THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md) for anything committed or shipped. Evidence notes and per-file provenance for local reference images remain private and untracked.