Wongery:Licensing
Currently, the Wongery's content is released under a Creative Commons License. We intend to also create a custom license that makes it easier to use Wongery content commercially for some purposes, and will update this page when that occurs.
Creative Commons License
All content in the articles of Wongery is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License. This means that anyone is free to copy anything from the articles, or create derivative works, so long as they meet the following two criteria:
- They include a notice attributing the work to the Wongery.
- They release their copy or their derivative works under the same (or a similar or compatible) license.
The following is a sample license and attribution notice that can be used in a derivative work:
- This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License. It uses material from the Wongery, http://www.wongery.com, which is the property of the Wongery's contributors.
Open Game License
Prior to March 26, 2022, this page stated that the content of all articles on the Wongery wiki mainspace was also released under an Open Game License, and was considered Open Game Content. This is no longer the case. The text of certain pages in the Gaming namespace is explicitly released under the Open Game License (or will be, once the Gaming namespace exists), but this is not true of the mainspace articles.
However, since the Open Game License is irrevocable, that means that technically the original text of any mainspace articles created before March 26, 2022 is Open Game Content, as are any edits to those articles made before March 26, 2022. But articles posted after this date, and any edits after this date, are not Open Game Content, though they are still released under the CC-BY-SA license.
Custom Licensing
If you want to use Wongery material for a commercial product and don't want to be bound by the "share-alike" terms of the CC-BY-SA license, we can work with you to come up with a license that suits your needs. Please contact us to work something out. We may, of course, ask for some sort of licensing fee, but we'll work to adapt it to the individual licensee and come up with something within their means—we may simply ask for a percent of the profits rather than an up-front fee, for example, if that seems to better fit the licensee's circumstances. (Or, if we really like the project, we may not ask for any licensing fee at all... but we're not making any promises about that.)
We want this material to be used, and if you ask us for a custom license we're much more likely to say yes than no, as long as there's nothing objectionable about your proposed project. However, the following are objectionable practices that may prevent you from getting a license, and if we do grant a license it may be contingent on the condition that these are not present:
- Offensive content. This by no means signifies that anything created with Wongery assets has to be G-rated, that there's no place for gore or nudity or adult content, but we're not interested in projects that go out of their way to be edgy or offensive.
- Copyright violations. If you're using other IP from sources besides the Wongery, please make sure you have all necessary permissions for that as well.
- Anything involving NFTs, cryptocurrency, or blockchains.
- Exploitative business practices. If you want permission to make a commercial product based on Wongery intellectual property, you must pay everyone working for you, commensurate with the time they put in. This includes (but is not limited to) actors, artists, and programmers. "Exposure" does not count as payment. No exceptions. Nor does a share in hypothetical future revenues.
- This doesn't necessarily mean you have to pay much, but you do have to pay professional wages, though the payment can be on the low end of professional wages. Actors, for instance, should be paid at least the SAG-AFTRA minimum rate (even if your project is not done under a SAG-AFTRA contract... though frankly we recommend you do get a contract; it's not hard); programmers should be paid a rate commensurate with the typical rate in your area.
- This is absolutely not negotiable, and we don't want to hear excuses about this. If you can't afford to pay your artists, you can't afford to make a commercial game, with or without the Wongery material. Artists are people. They have bills to pay.
As long as your project does not violate any of these conditions, contact us and we'll work out a contract.