Ruth2 and Kitely

[Okie Meow]

Hello,

From reading some threads here I get the impression that Ruth2 is incompatible license wise with Kitely because of the AGPL that most mesh parts fall under. I'd like to know to what extend this impacts merchants as this is not entirely clear?

- Starter avatars provided by Kitely - This is a no, I understand.
- Ruth2 bodies and derivations (AGPL) provided by inworld merchants - ?
- Ruth2 bodies and derivations (AGPL) provided by marketplace merchants - ?
- Clothes rigged for Ruth2 and derived bodies (usually NOT AGPL) offered inworld/marketplace - ?
- Any AGPL licensed product inworld/marketplace is a non-go I assume - ?

Are there, besides AGPL, any other open licenses that are particularly problematic for Kitely merchants?

I hope to find some clear answers. I made a (heavily modified) Ruth2-derived body, and want to put it out, along with some clothes I rigged. If offering the body (for 10KC or free) is not legally possible on Kitely, I guess I'll have to include a notecard with the clothes I made, with a slurl to get the body in another grid.

[Okie Meow]

Hi Okie,

AGPL is an aggressively viral license, anything it is used with needs to be licensed as AGPL for the AGPL license to be complied with (including the source code of the servers used to distribute that content). This is a big problem for anyone that distributes non AGPL content combined with AGPL content unless they can also legally relicense the non AGPL content as AGPL. As only the creator of the non AGPL content has the legal right to relicense their content under AGPL and as all grids also have non-AGPL content from multiple sources, neither Kitely not any other grid owner who respects the law can host AGPL content on their servers. To be clear, what makes this illegal is that you can't comply with the AGPL license terms without relicensing the other content and you can't host the AGPL content without doing so.

AGPL was a horrible license choice for Ruth as it makes it impossible for a law abiding OpenSim provider to knowingly host such content on their system. If they become aware of it existing on their system they need to act to remove that content from their system like they are legally required to do for any other unlicensed content that is reported to them.

I had tried to explain this huge problem to the creators of Ruth years ago but they refused to use a more legally viable license. That is very unfortunate as they have made it legally impossible to comply with their chosen license.

As for content that is built to work with AGPL licensed content, there is no problem using it in Kitely as long as it doesn't include any parts that can only be legally distributed using the AGPL license. Whether or not content that is built to work with Ruth can have a non AGPL license is something that I can't give any general advise for. You'll have to check the licenses of all the source files you used to create it and the licenses of everything it was combined with inworld.

To be clear, none of this is legal advice and you should consult with a lawyer if you intend to use AGPL licensed content for anything you create or host on your own systems.

[Okie Meow]

Thank you for the clear explanation, that helped.

I also agree it is a rather unfortunate license they've chosen
I will weigh off whether I will offer my clothing only then or not at all.

This license is definitely difficult to work with if we want to do it by the books.

Some people are working on a new body that is more reasonably licensed, Max(ine).
That could be a more solid foundation for creators. I am following with interest.

Cheers and thanks again,
Okie.

[Chris Namaste]

And 'fitted mesh' fits Ruth, and some other bodies as well,
5 classic rigged mesh sizes work fine for Ruth too,
i hope this helps as well, we can use a lot for Ruth