Makehuman license

[neginfinity]

I’d like to know if anyone looked deeply into makehuman license.

http://www.makehuman.org/license.php

There’s an interesting part in it.
Basically, makehuman itself is under AGPL, but it grants permission to use “official export” output under CC0. The permission is granted in a very awkward way, however:

C. MakeHuman output GPL exception

==================================

As a special and limited exception, the copyright holders of the MakeHuman assets grants the option to use CC0 1.0 Universal as published by the Creative Commons, either version 1.0 of the License, or (at your option) any later version, as a license for the MakeHuman characters exported under the conditions that a) The assets were bundled in an export that was made using the file export functionality inside an OFFICIAL and UNMODIFIED version of MakeHuman and/or b) the asset solely consists of a 2D binary image in PNG, BMP or JPG format.

The wording is odd, because they first mention “official export” which implies “3d models”, but then suddenly introduce extra clause with “and/or it must be a 2d image!”.

Either way, aside from that part.

Makehuman also has page with explanations of their license,
http://www.makehuman.org/license_explanation.php

Here’s the thing… via CC0 exception, it is possible to “deduce” morph targets used to make original humans, BUT, on explanations page they cover that,

Basically I could deduce a part of the target database (which is AGPL) by comparing two exports (which are CC0). Since the exports are CC0, I now have a CC0 licensed part of the target database instead of exactly the same but AGPL licensed part in the original database. Or?

Our interpretation is that the target is still AGPL. What you did was essentially figure out a way to copy the target although via a different procedure than a simple copy/paste. It does not matter through which practical steps you got your hands on the target: you still copied an AGPL licensed resource, and it remains AGPL licensed. When we mention “reverse engineering”, the above is what we mean.

And claim that doing that would result in content that is somehow placed under AGPL, and not under CC0, even though it was created via CC0 exceptions.

That may sound silly, but I have impression this text is either a lie or a result of misunderstanding of both CC0 and AGPL licenses by makehuman devs.

Has anyone else looked into this? I’m not looking to start an anti-make-human flamewar, but I want to know how the heck a content produced via CC0 license can become AGPL in this scenario (have impression that I might encounter something like this in future).

[Martin_H]

@neginfinity

That may sound silly, but I have impression this text is either a lie or a result of misunderstanding of both CC0 and AGPL licenses by makehuman devs.

Has anyone else looked into this? I’m not looking to start an anti-make-human flamewar, but I want to know how the heck a content produced via CC0 license can become AGPL in this scenario (have impression that I might encounter something like this in future).

I share your point of view. My best guess is that many people (I’d include myself in that group) have trouble grasping all the implications that come with using certain licenses. I find the idea that content created with content creation software under Open Source licenses automatically falls under the same license quite ludicrous. Imagine writing a book with an Open Source editor and the book automatically was under the same license, crazy…
The problem with makehuman is that, from my understanding, all it does on export basically is “share a modified part of the data that already comes with the tool”. So giving that CC0 exception is necessary to make the program usable for “real work”. [Edit: just read a bit on their site and they give the same examples apparently.]
But I think they can’t have it both ways. Either exported data is CC0 or it isn’t. If it is you should be able to do with it as you please, which includes reverse engineering their tech. If they don’t want that, they need to make a custom license instead, which would severely limit the usefulness of the tool again.

This one is worth quoting (I still haven’t read the whole thing and don’t plan to):

AGPL is a viral license. If a certain kind of output is covered by AGPL (rather than CC0), any combination/derivate/aggregate with it is also AGPL. This is completely unusable for, say, a 2D image or a youtube video. Is there a limit to how long the virality extends?
AGPL applies to anything which is a combination, derivate or aggregate. However, there is also limit to this. Once there is no trace whatsoever of any AGPL:ed original data in an asset, it can no longer be counted as a derivate. When exactly this happens is something of a philosophical question[…]

Imho when your “human readable” version of your license text contains the term “philosophical question”, your license is shit. There should be no philosophical edge cases imho, it should be clear and answer all the questions. To be honest I’d just avoid using makehuman alltogether based on this. They copied the whole concept from other tools anyway, check if those fill your licensing needs any better.

Now what I wonder is, does AGPL even allow the author to make exceptions like the CC0 export exception? I have no idea.

[Dustin-Horne]

@neginfinity

The wording is odd, because they first mention “official export” which implies “3d models”, but then suddenly introduce extra clause with “and/or it must be a 2d image!”.

I think you missed the part where it says “…and/or b)…”. Which means that it can be the exported 3D Model, or 2D images.

[neginfinity]

@Dustin-Horne

I think you missed the part where it says “…and/or b)…”. Which means that it can be the exported 3D Model, or 2D images.

I haven’t missed that part, which is why I said the wording is odd.
It is as if the wording was intentionally left ambiguous at this point in regards of 3d content. 2D output is explicitly permitted, which is not the case with 3d output.

@Martin_H

Now what I wonder is, does AGPL even allow the author to make exceptions like the CC0 export exception? I have no idea.

Author of a project is not bound by the terms of license of his own project, because he owns copyright.
For example author is allowed to dual-license a project as both GPL (not LGPL, but GPL) and proprietary.
Someone else who is not the author can’t do that, because they do not own the copyright.
So, they can put license clauses, exceptions, permit CC0, etc.

The trouble is that usally software does not virally infect its own output (for example, emacs does not apply GPL to files it modifies), although in case of makehuman output is derivative of model data which is under AGPL, which is why there’s CC0 exception.

The problem here is the part about CC0 output suddenly turning into AGPL, which is the part I don’t get. As I understand it, it simply can’t happen. CC0 content remains CC0 content, which means it is public domain.

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Honestly, I wish someone with time/money to spare made CC0 versions of makehuman morphs and replaced makehuman target data with those. That would allow people to rid of AGPL nonsense. The project in general has unpleasant vibe about it - with their crusade against perspective camera, the part where they removed mhx export from official repository, and stuff like that.

[Dustin-Horne]

@neginfinity

It is as if the wording was intentionally left ambiguous at this point

That’s possible. I ran into a similar issue once with the licensing around MySql’s .NET Connectors (back before Oracle bought MySQL). I contacted a regional sales rep and even emailed MySQL trying to clarify whether I needed to purchase licensing to use the connectors in a distributed product. Their answer to me was:

“We’re not attorneys and cannot interpret the licensing for you. You should contact an attorney.”.

They refused to interpret their own licensing which I believe was left intentionally vague to give them the liberty of re-interpreting it any any point in the future that they needed to.

[neginfinity]

@Dustin-Horne

That’s possible. I ran into a similar issue once with the licensing around MySql’s .NET Connectors (back before Oracle bought MySQL). I contacted a regional sales rep and even emailed MySQL trying to clarify whether I needed to purchase licensing to use the connectors in a distributed product. Their answer to me was:

“We’re not attorneys and cannot interpret the licensing for you. You should contact an attorney.”.

They refused to interpret their own licensing which I believe was left intentionally vague to give them the liberty of re-interpreting it any any point in the future that they needed to.

Sigh.

I hate when people do something like that. Instead of simply providing a good product, they plant eula landmines and do other nonsense. Not sure why, though…

[bart_the_13th]

@neginfinity

It is as if the wording was intentionally left ambiguous at this point in regards of 3d content. 2D output is explicitly permitted, which is not the case with 3d output.

I think 2D output here refers to the texture image too, not just 2D image of the model itself, that’s why they use word “and/or”.

[Kiwasi]

The license terms seem pretty clear to me. You export a model, by clicking the export button, and its public domain. You export a picture of your model, and its public domain. Exporting models with the specific intention of reverse engineering MakeHuman is forbidden.

Confusion aside, licensing exports under CC0 part is strange. CC0 is essentially public domain. So that means if you use any output from MakeHuman, another party can take that same model and use it however they like. For many game developers that would be enough to rule the tool out. I’m not overly keen on someone else being able to rip a model from my game and use it under CC0.

[Billy4184]

@Kiwasi

The license terms seem pretty clear to me. You export a model, by clicking the export button, and its public domain. You export a picture of your model, and its public domain. Exporting models with the specific intention of reverse engineering MakeHuman is forbidden.

Confusion aside, licensing exports under CC0 part is strange. CC0 is essentially public domain. So that means if you use any output from MakeHuman, another party can take that same model and use it however they like. For many game developers that would be enough to rule the tool out. I’m not overly keen on someone else being able to rip a model from my game and use it under CC0.

Does it change anything if the model was part of a compiled game, i.e., is the illegality of the ripping part itself a way of protecting the model? If not, then does it make your whole game CC0?

Personally, I’ve never payed too much attention to licenses for anything except to make sure they’re CC0 or similar. The way I see it ambiguous legal terms such as this are generally just a scare tactic to stir the conscience of those who are intentionally doing something wrong (although in rare cases it’s not and the results can be pretty catastrophic) - so I just generally stay away from them. But I like to think that for most things I can find enough information in the public domain to learn how to do things myself.

That said, if I had to guess, the main reason the makehuman people are enforcing the AGPL license strongly is to protect themselves against legal issues arising from very similar (basically cloned) software popping up that are not under the same license. I can definitely understand that and I think sometimes people don’t realise how much trouble this can cause companies who otherwise want to pretty much open up the software to any kind of use.

Basically in this case, it’s not a case of a company chasing down everyone for fees and royalties, so I would be inclined to believe that it’s more of a passive defence to prevent problems of their own.

[Kiwasi]

@Billy4184

Does it change anything if the model was part of a compiled game, i.e., is the illegality of the ripping part itself a way of protecting the model? If not, then does it make your whole game CC0?

Any modifications you make to the model are covered by regular copyright protections. CC0 doesn’t have any derivative rules.

Ripping a model in and of itself isn’t illegal. However most EULA’s will have a line or two saying you can’t do it.

[iamthwee]

Are you planning to use these models in an actual game. I have a hard time believing you can make something unique even with its set of tools and pre made clothes. They don’t look too great either. If you went ahead and customised it by sculpting in 3d program you have thereby destroyed the topology and would need to retopologize and uvmap it, rendering it pretty much useless?

[Billy4184]

@iamthwee

Are you planning to use these models in an actual game. I have a hard time believing you can make something unique even with its set of tools and pre made clothes. They don’t look too great either. If you went ahead and customised it by sculpting in 3d program you have thereby destroyed the topology and would need to retopologize and uvmap it, rendering it pretty much useless?

I’ve used it for some freelance work (to make face sprites) and I managed to get some quite good differentiation. There are some things that change your impression of a character more than others, you just have to focus on those more. I agree that there’s a certain particular characteristic that the models share due to being derived from the same origin but it’s not as if you can’t make them look pretty unique.

[neginfinity]

@Kiwasi

The license terms seem pretty clear to me. You export a model, by clicking the export button, and its public domain. You export a picture of your model, and its public domain. Exporting models with the specific intention of reverse engineering MakeHuman is forbidden.

Confusion aside, licensing exports under CC0 part is strange. CC0 is essentially public domain. So that means if you use any output from MakeHuman, another party can take that same model and use it however they like. For many game developers that would be enough to rule the tool out. I’m not overly keen on someone else being able to rip a model from my game and use it under CC0.

While the license is clear, the problem is with their explanation page, which claims that if you create multiple outputs to “derive makehuman targets” (i.e. morphs), it somehow turns into AGPL.

The reason for CC0 exception is that without it nobody would use makehuman.

@iamthwee

Are you planning to use these models in an actual game. I have a hard time believing you can make something unique even with its set of tools and pre made clothes. They don’t look too great either.

If you are asking me specifically, then I picked them makehuman to look at its topology, then noticed nonsensical explanation on their site. The topology ain’t that great. My understanding is that a model usually works better when it has edge loops following groups of muscles, in case of makehuman there are multiple areas that could use more edge loops or seem to have bad topology. For example crease between thigh and pelvis, etc.

@iamthwee

If you went ahead and customised it by sculpting in 3d program you have thereby destroyed the topology and would need to retopologize and uvmap it, rendering it pretty much useless?

If you’re playing it smart, the topology would stay unchanged, and sculpted model could be used to make new normalmap. See MultiRes modifier in blender, it is specifically geared for this.

Oh, right, makehuman also can fit clothes to multiple characters. The process for doing this is arcane, but it can be done.