Files
gig-line/Docs/licensing.md
T
zwitschi 7a1eb0be66 chore: keep reference photography local and out of the repository
Reference images are development-only material: licensing is not a gate for
local private use, so they are simply never committed. Art/reference/ is now
gitignored; the licensed status of anything shipped is still recorded in
THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

Adds Tools/commons_fetch.py, which fetches Wikimedia Commons imagery by search
or exact title and writes a provenance sidecar, plus Docs/reference-notes-hollywood.md
recording what each local set is evidence for.
2026-11-06 22:04:37 +01:00

3.3 KiB

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 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; 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 for anything committed or shipped, and 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.