bg3wiki:Licensing: Difference between revisions

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 {{hatnote|This is an informal guide about copyright and licensing on bg3.wiki. For an exact explanation, see [[bg3wiki:Copyrights]].}}
-When you create a new page, add some stand-alone blocks of text to an existing page, or upload a file to bg3.wiki, and the content you submit is your own work (e.g. text of your own writing, not copied from elsewhere), you '''license''' your contribution to bg3.wiki (and the rest of the world) the moment you submit it. You are still the copyright holder of the work, and can do whatever you want with it outside of bg3.wiki, but the public receives an '''irrevocable''' license to copy and use that content under certain terms.
+When you create a new page, add some stand-alone blocks of text to an existing page, or upload a file to bg3.wiki, and the content you submit is your own work (e.g. text of your own writing, not copied from elsewhere), you '''license''' your contribution to bg3.wiki (and the rest of the world) the moment you submit it. You are still the copyright holder of the work, and can do whatever you want with it outside of bg3.wiki (like making it available under additional licenses to other people), but the public receives an '''irrevocable''' license to copy and use that content under certain terms (explained in the next section).
-If you edit a page, you create a ''derivative work'' of it. This must be done in alignment with the license of the original work. If the edits you made are purely modifications to existing text (fixing typos, rewording sentences, etc.) then it's purely a derivative work. If you added some stand-alone blocks of text, then the new total contents of the page are a derivative work (it might be considered a ''collage'' of text) but your stand-alone text blocks might also be considered independent works on their own if they are significant enough and make sense in isolation.
+If you edit a page, you create a ''derivative work'' of it. This happens in alignment with the existing license(s) of the page. If the edits you made are purely modifications to existing text (fixing typos, rewording or reordering sentences, etc.) then it's purely a derivative work, and so the existing licensing is directly adopted. (You can't provide it to others under a different license.) If you added some stand-alone blocks of text to the page, then the new total contents of the page are a derivative work, but your stand-alone text blocks might also be considered independent works on their own if they are significant enough and make sense in isolation, so you could publish those text blocks somewhere else under any license of your choice, since they are your copyrighted work.
 == Licenses used by bg3.wiki ==
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 == New content mixed into old content ==
-A page may be under the new dual-license terms, but then part of it is copied and inserted into an older page that's still only under BY-NC-SA. This is not a problem, since the new content was dual-licensed. That being said, the new version of the old page is now still only under BY-NC-SA. Essentially, you've decided to use the new dual-licensed content under the rules of BY-NC-SA (since you can pick one of the two licenses it's available under) to merge it into another BY-NC-SA text.
+A page may be under the new dual-license terms, but then part of it is copied and inserted into an older page that's still only under BY-NC-SA. This is not a problem, since the new content was dual-licensed. That being said, the new version of the old page is now still only under BY-NC-SA. Essentially, you've decided to use the new dual-licensed content under the rules of BY-NC-SA (since you can pick one of the two licenses it's available under) to merge it into another BY-NC-SA text in a license-compatible way.
-This is part of the reason why even entirely new content is always dual-licensed. If entirely new content was licensed exclusively under BY-SA and not dual-licensed as BY-NC-SA + BY-SA, then it wouldn't be legal to copy parts of it into a BY-NC-SA page. You cannot create combinations of exclusively BY-NC-SA content and exclusively BY-SA content.
+This is part of the reason why even entirely new content is always dual-licensed. If entirely new content was licensed exclusively under BY-SA and not dual-licensed as BY-NC-SA + BY-SA, then it wouldn't be legal to copy parts of it into a BY-NC-SA page. You cannot create combinations of exclusively BY-NC-SA content and exclusively BY-SA content since those two licenses aren't compatible that way.
 Once again, reading the [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Multi-licensing Wikimedia Commons multi-licensing essay] is recommended if you want to fully grasp this concept.
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 == Content copied from elsewhere under a specific license ==
-If you submit text that you've copied from elsewhere, you must ensure it has a compatible license. It's best if the text you copy is itself dual-licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 and CC BY-SA 4.0, in which case there won't be any issues.
+If you submit text that you've copied from elsewhere, you must ensure it has a compatible license. It's best if the text you copy is itself dual-licensed under BY-NC-SA and BY-SA, in which case there won't be any issues.
 If it's only available under one of the two licenses, then you will have to make sure that whatever page you paste the text into is compatible. For example, if it's a page that's still only licensed under BY-NC-SA (created before July 20, 2024, and the past contributors didn't agree to update to the newer dual-license), then you have to make sure the copied text isn't only licensed under BY-SA, since those two licenses are incompatible.
-Generally, it's not recommended to add text only available under one of the two licenses, since this restricts all future versions of the page to be compatible with that license. If you absolutely must add such content, make sure to mark the page with [[Template:License]] to indicate what license the page is now under.
+Generally, it's not recommended to add text only available under one of the two licenses, since this restricts all future versions of the page to be limited to that license and can't be changed to the dual-licensing otherwise used by the wiki. If you absolutely must add such content, make sure to mark the page with [[Template:License]] to indicate what license the page is now under.
-For example, some pages in the Template or Module namespaces are copied from Wikipedia, which offers content only under BY-SA. Those templates and modules are marked as such, and remain under BY-SA. Note that ''using'' those templates/modules from another page doesn't make that target page a "derivative work" so the licenses don't need to be compatible between the template/module itself, and the page it's used from. An exception to this would be if the template/module contains a lot of text that's copied ''verbatim'' into the use-site of the template/module.
+For example, some pages in the Template or Module namespaces are copied from Wikipedia, which offers content only under BY-SA. Those templates and modules are marked as such, and remain under BY-SA. Note that ''using'' those templates/modules from another page doesn't make that target page a "derivative work" so the licenses don't need to be compatible between the template/module itself, and the page it's used from. An exception to this would be if the template/module contains a lot of text that's copied ''verbatim'' into the use-site of the template/module, in which case using it may constitute creating a derivative work.
 == File uploads ==
 Files uploaded to bg3.wiki may fall under different licenses, which must be indicated (via selection from a drop-down menu) when uploading the file and will then be noted on the page of that file. If you don't select which license the file falls under, no license will be indicated on the file's page, which may lead to the file being removed. If the file is an image or video recording from the game, it will be assumed to fall under [[bg3wiki:Copyrights|Larian Studios' Fan Content Policy]].