Licensing of original content

[giantspider52]

I have a few addon personal projects that I've been playing with, and I've been thinking of publishing them to the addon server. The addons are entirely my own work or derivative of official Wesnoth content published under the GNU GPL. I have read the community policy for publishing UMC onto the addons server, and accordingly thought about publishing everything under a GNU GPL, except for my art which may be published under a CC license permissible for the addon server. While I have read parts of the GNU GPL and the various CC licenses, admittedly, I'm having trouble understanding their implications to my own work

Aside from programming, I also have a background in art, and publish my own illustrations to social media and a personal website. While the policy for original content published on social media are unclear to me, my biggest inspirations have helped introduce me to the world of indie games, 'free' games, and the open source movement. Like those inspirations, I do not care if people derive their own work from mine or republish it elsewhere. However, I do have a desire to profit from some of my original work or ideas, or in the absence of that, earn money providing a service (such as commissions). So there are just a few things that I'd like to know before I try publishing things related to what I might want to "sell" in the future...

Does licensing characters, storylines, and settings (including places, races, etc.) under the GNU GPL prohibit me from being able to profit from those for non-Wesnoth content? For example: if a character named Alice appears in a campaign that I publish to the addon server under the GNU GPL, am I forbidden from selling a completely different game with the same Alice under the license terms or Wesnoth community policy? Would it be necessary for me to publish the unrelated game under the GNU GPL because it includes a character that was published under the GNU GPL? Should I rename characters, races, and other content that was published under GNU GPL originally for Wesnoth, if I want to include them in media that would be sold?

Admittedly, I'm fairly new to the art world, and I am also pretty new to interacting with other programmers and game developers. I am not totally familiar with copyright law. I'm also still pretty new to the Wesnoth forum community, and have been playing Wesnoth for 6 years, developing my own content for it since then. I've been playing addons from others, and would love to contribute to the community, but I am not sure if some of my interests are compatible with my intentions to share my work But, I think once it is clarified what I can and cannot do, I'll know better whether or not to publish my work. I would like to make it clear that once my work has been published to the addon server under the GNU GPL and a CC license, it is never my intention to remove it from the server, revoke any licenses (assuming it is possible), or infringe upon other people's rights to modify it, republish it, or take ownership of it (or any of its contents)--regardless of whether or not I am credited for it. I want other people, if they so desire, to use things like my characters, sprites, and other assets in their own work--so long as I am still able to use those assets for non-Wesnoth work that is not published under GNU GPL and earn money from it.

Edit: Uh oh, I belatedly realized that I may have posted this on the wrong subforum oh well!

[Pentarctagon]

Moved over to the Users' Forum.

To answer your questions though:

• Anything that is a derivative of something from mainline Wesnoth must retain its original copyright, whether it's under the GNU GPL or CC BY-SA.
• Anything that is wholly your own work can be placed under any other additional license you want - it's not an uncommon thing for software companies to have a freely available version of their software licensed under the GPL, along with a paid, non-GPL licensed version of the same software available for those who want (or need) to be able to contact the company for support (as an example).
• It is usually inherently more difficult to sell things licensed under the GPL, since it requires the "source" to be made available free of charge upon request, but there is no restriction on selling things licensed under the GPL anyway.
• The GPL does not, to my understanding (and I'm not a lawyer), apply to all instances of a character regardless of where they are used. A particular story that contains Alice may be under the GPL, but that doesn't necessarily mean all stories in which Alice appears must be under the GPL as well.

[giantspider52]

Ah, got it. That makes me feel considerably better about publishing my work here then. Thank you for the knowledgeable response! I've got a lot of work to do, but I hope I can soon give back to the vibrant and talented addon community that has given me a lot of toys to play with! Thanks again!