# Licensing

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

| Layer | What it covers | Status |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Project code | `Game/Source`, `Tools/`, `Geo/` scripts | **Open decision** — proposal: MIT. Choose before the first public commit. |
| Project art | Blender sources, baked textures, exported meshes | Project-owned, shipped under the same terms as the code unless a texture says otherwise. |
| 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. |

## 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. What the images are evidence for is recorded in [reference-notes-hollywood.md](reference-notes-hollywood.md); the images stay outside 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

- **Code licence.** MIT is proposed: short, compatible with the assets' separate terms, and no copyleft spill onto art. Decide before publishing the repository.
- **Documentation licence.** Default to the code licence unless a reason appears to separate them.
- **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, and [reference-notes-hollywood.md](reference-notes-hollywood.md) for what the local-only reference images are evidence of. Per-file provenance for the local sets lives in `Art/reference/hollywood/SIDECAR.md` and in each folder's `sidecar.json` — local files, not committed.