Inquiry about payment of copyright fees

[이한규]

Hello.

Over the past few days, I have made the following inquiry to https://opencollective.com/stellarium, and the reply said that I can do so here, so I am asking the question here.

 'Inquiry about payment of copyright fees for approximately 170 captured images and 13 videos of 30 seconds each.'

(content of inquiry)

Hello.

On April 18th, I contacted sup...@opencollective.com to inquire about payment of Stellarium copyright royalties.

On April 19th, I received a response email from sup...@opencollective.com ‘Stellarium ‘Contact’ page’. They said I could get an answer if I contacted them here.

Let me ask you the same question again.

I live in Korea and am a retiree who has been working for about 4-5 years. Other than that, I have a personal hobby of astronomical observation, and I am developing an app for the Messier 110 list.

After running Stellarium on the PC, it searches the Messier list of 110 items, including M1 and M2, captures about 170 images to illustrate the visual observation positions of the 110 items, and then moves through the night sky at normal speed. Move to . After a slightly faster rotation, we produced approximately 13 videos recorded over approximately 30 seconds (approximately 170 captured images and approximately 13 videos recorded over approximately 30 seconds) to guide Messier's visual observations. I want to create an Android app and sell it for a small fee.

In this case, I think you will have to pay copyright fees and get permission to use it. What should I do?


Anyway, I hope I get an answer this time.

(Email: lhg...@gmail.com)

[Georg Zotti]

I still cannot give a definite answer on that. See old discussion from 2010 linked in https://github.com/Stellarium/stellarium/wiki/FAQ#can-i-use-stellarium-screenshots-or-videos-in-my-bookwebsiteblogvlogcalendaralmanac-etc.

You are creating "canned" videos with a free open-source application that has many contributions (deep-sky images) from the community and that shows the same things in "live" mode (with all possible settings from the program). It is definitely more "program output" than creating a text with an open-source word processor, but less "program only" than recording an automatic Mandelbrot fractal generator, so there is some own creativity involved.

I *think* you can do that under the terms of GPL2. When showing close-ups of Deep-sky objects, you probably need to insert the respective image attributions ("M13 image by ...") to be found in the program documentation. Especially check for flavours of the respective CC licenses for images.  Good manners further include adding some statement like "Videos created with Stellarium 23.4". Depending on your app's success, consider a donation.

If nobody here objects within a week, I'd say, try it.

Kind regards,

Georg

[Alexandros Kosiaris]

On Tue, Apr 30, 2024 at 11:05 AM Georg Zotti <georg...@univie.ac.at> wrote:

I still cannot give a definite answer on that. See old discussion from 2010 linked in https://github.com/Stellarium/stellarium/wiki/FAQ#can-i-use-stellarium-screenshots-or-videos-in-my-bookwebsiteblogvlogcalendaralmanac-etc.

You are creating "canned" videos with a free open-source application that has many contributions (deep-sky images) from the community and that shows the same things in "live" mode (with all possible settings from the program). It is definitely more "program output" than creating a text with an open-source word processor, but less "program only" than recording an automatic Mandelbrot fractal generator, so there is some own creativity involved.

I *think* you can do that under the terms of GPL2.

Yes, you can and there is even a FAQ in https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatCaseIsOutputGPL regarding the output of a GPL program. In fact, if the video is created with Stellarium in full screen mode, it's easy to argue it's what's described in that entry of the FAQ. Which would imply that the video needs to be released under the GPLv2 as well (which doesn't mean that you can't charge for it, just that if someone asks, you have to provide it to them, in the original format)

The mention of an Android app is a bit confusing, I don't understand what the role of the app will be. Will it be just a video player (+ perhaps some explanatory text)?  Where will the videos themselves be stored? In the app? Or will the app stream them from somewhere? Depending on some of these answers, you might end up finding yourself to need to open source the app as well. Which, again, doesn't mean that you can't charge for it, just that if someone asks, you have to provide the source code of the app to them.

When showing close-ups of Deep-sky objects, you probably need to insert the respective image attributions ("M13 image by ...") to be found in the program documentation. Especially check for flavours of the respective CC licenses for images.

 

This is key and the biggest time consuming endeavor. Every single image of those 170 ones needs to be checked for the license and act accordingly to that license.

 

If nobody here objects within a week, I'd say, try it.

Just to be clear, my comments above are not an objection. In the OPs shoes, I 'd just try it as well, with the caveat that I would go through the 170 images and discard any with licenses that make it too burdensome to care for them.

 

Kind regards,

Georg

lhg...@gmail.com schrieb am Dienstag, 30. April 2024 um 08:57:40 UTC+2:

Hello.

Over the past few days, I have made the following inquiry to https://opencollective.com/stellarium, and the reply said that I can do so here, so I am asking the question here.

 'Inquiry about payment of copyright fees for approximately 170 captured images and 13 videos of 30 seconds each.'

(content of inquiry)

Hello.

On April 18th, I contacted sup...@opencollective.com to inquire about payment of Stellarium copyright royalties.

On April 19th, I received a response email from sup...@opencollective.com ‘Stellarium ‘Contact’ page’. They said I could get an answer if I contacted them here.

Let me ask you the same question again.

I live in Korea and am a retiree who has been working for about 4-5 years. Other than that, I have a personal hobby of astronomical observation, and I am developing an app for the Messier 110 list.

After running Stellarium on the PC, it searches the Messier list of 110 items, including M1 and M2, captures about 170 images to illustrate the visual observation positions of the 110 items, and then moves through the night sky at normal speed. Move to . After a slightly faster rotation, we produced approximately 13 videos recorded over approximately 30 seconds (approximately 170 captured images and approximately 13 videos recorded over approximately 30 seconds) to guide Messier's visual observations. I want to create an Android app and sell it for a small fee.

In this case, I think you will have to pay copyright fees and get permission to use it. What should I do?


Anyway, I hope I get an answer this time.

(Email: lhg...@gmail.com)

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[Greg Miller]

"Stellarium" as an entity does not necessarily own the copyright to everything in the app, rather the original authors have granted everyone (including Stellarium) a license to use/distribute their work under the GPL.  Stellarium cannot give you permission to redistribute other people's work under a different license, you have to track down the original authors and get permission from them.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/stellarium/CAPdhNkWHLOuvHcnZtL0ZdCpa%3D2rW%3DrevmHfLeqPcufdK%2BB8RvA%40mail.gmail.com.

[이한규]

Well sir.

Thank you for your kind reply.

2024년 4월 30일 화요일 오후 9시 38분 55초 UTC+9에 Greg Miller님이 작성: