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Blades of Exile Merchandise


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Hello.

 

Today I designed three advertisements for Blades of Exile, and this evening I'll make a fourth. They're for sale on a number of products in my shop on CafePress.

 

I set the markup for all BoE products to $0.00 so I won't be profiting off the sale of these products, except to the extent that if someone sees one of the designs somewhere and makes a scenario or helps code or beta-test (I like beta-testing but it'd be cool if I weren't the only one doing it), then that would be my pay.

 

Is it OK to link to the shop and/or the specific BoE sections here? I just want to ask so I don't do a no-no.

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Is it OK to link to the shop and/or the specific BoE sections here? I just want to ask so I don't do a no-no.

Because it's forum-related, I think it's fine. We do frown on for-profit advertising of unrelated activities, but this is neither of those. Better to link to the specific BoE stuff than to the general shop if possible.

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OK then, here are the links to the four designs:

 

(SNIP)

 

EDIT 2: I've gone ahead and created a specialized, separate shop, eliminating the conflict of interest: http://www.cafepress.com/bladesofexile

 

They're for sale on a variety of products, some more legible than others.

 

EDIT: I still have no idea what's up with these random numbers. It might be a browser add-on or something...

33

171

Edited by The Almighty Doer of Stuff
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It might be polite, but BoE is GPL-licensed, so it's by no means necessary to ask him.

Does the GPL, as a software license, actually govern use of images and logos in a non-code work that's being sold?

 

At the risk of missing the point, CafePress does make money off of those items, even if ADoS doesn't.

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Does the GPL, as a software license, actually govern use of images and logos in a non-code work that's being sold?

Don't quote me on this (I'm not a lawyer or anything), but it was my impression that images and logos can be counted as part of the source. Some projects release assets under a different license, but I don't think Jeff did that.
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"Always"? He's said that for a long time to be sure, but I'm not sure it surfaced till well after BoE. At that point SW had only put out one game where no other company was involved on the business end. He might well have had the same mantra then, but I don't think we know that for sure.

 

Given that

1. We don't know the image rights for sure,

2. Logos and branding are probably governed by trademark law here, not the GPL,

3. It's not 100% clear what the license would cover here anyway,

4. The shop doesn't technically follow the GPL terms anyway since (at least) they don't mention the GPL license

5. CafePress is making money off these, and

6. As Lilith said, it would be polite to ask anyway...

 

Maybe asking's not such a bad idea. I mean, there's no harm in being polite, right?

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"As long as you aren't profiting on the images, I think this should be fine." -Anonymous Spiderweb Software Employee, in response to my desire to post the shop on the forum

 

Also, http://www.spiderweb...opensource.html

 

All graphics and resources, it says. It says Common Public License, granted, but he's since changed it to GNU GPL 2.0 and just hasn't updated the page. It also states that he hopes to host a version of it once we've got something usable. That will happen sooner if some more people beta test for us. It's not even a commitment like we usually do with BoX scenarios, let alone an actual new Spidweb game. It's just show up in chat, ask CM what he wants you to do, download the latest version, poke around for a few minutes whenever you have the time, until something screws up, then let him and/or Paul Erdos know what happened. Even if you spot one bug it's better than spotting no bugs. Please? Pretty please?

 

Also, my shop header does, in fact, mention GNU GPL 2.0, as well as all four designs. Do I need to specifically mention that the designs themselves are GNU GPL 2.0? I did mention that on my website's BoE section, at least.

49

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The GPL (as well as the CPL the original code is dual-licensed under) definitely allows commercial resale (including for-profit) of derivative works, so long as a way to download the source (in this case, probably the images) is provided. This could be as simple as a...link to the forums to download BoE.

 

As Slarty said, the only hurdle here is the "Blades of Exile" branding. I would argue that Jeff has abandoned the trademark as it is no longer for sale and the product has been thrown to the open-source wolves. As others have said, even if legally you seem to be in the clear, asking for Jeff's blessing here might be wise.

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  • 2 months later...

https://shop.spreadshirt.com/BladesOfExile/

 

Seven designs, all reworked, much cheaper prices, quality printing! The other developers tell me it's a little pointless to buy these shirts before we have a stable, official-releasable version of the software, but it's up to you all, I guess. I have an older version of one of these and I like it. The designs will probably still be there when we've got everything settled, if you prefer.

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