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⚖️ License

Let's keep it simple, short and fair!

All projects have their own licenses. Most of the time, code is AGPLv3 and art CC BY-SA 4.0, but you must always look at the project's repository and website page for proper details!

  • I only ask to not abuse my years of work, ✅ let's grow together
  • For my integrity5, I may change this page at any time

Usage

🔴 Personal

There are no restrictions on private use of any Software. (personal projects, friends)

Note: Monetizing online content counts as commercial use.

🟡 Commercial

Here's the dilema: If I were against commercial use, I wouldn't use it myself as a user

  • My mission is to empower you, and make awesome tools to the world.
  • It is my desire and goal for you to use the tools commercially!

Fairness makes the difference

✨ If you valued my work, donate an amount that reflects how much it was essential to your success ✨

  • These tools took years to learn and develop; and always ongoing improvements and maintenance
  • Remember: I provide professional, high quality tools for free (1)
  1. You have locally run, free alternatives for:

🟢 Business

Interested in powering your current or future business, need support in anything?

  • ⭐️ Join Forces: I miss the infra and marketing, you now have the product
  • 🚀 Get in touch with me, let's shred the competition together!

Code license

The license of choice is the AGPLv3. It's a strong copyleft1 license that ensures the software remains free and open source for all users • commercial use is allowed.

You already have the rights of this license, no need to ask for permission!

This choice can be controversial, here's my thoughts:

  • The GPLv3 part is often well-accepted, even though both are nearly identical licenses.
  • ShaderFlow and derived projects can easily be hosted as a SaaS. The "Affero" clause ensures no bad actors can take advantage of the software without contributing back.
  • It can be a blocker for some businesses, for that,

I plan on relicensing to MIT in the future, the contributions terms are a step towards that.

  • Some of my projects like TurboPipe are under MIT, and I use many packages under it!
  • Support my work to achieve that faster, I believe the projects can be successful and sustainable in the future, just unsure on the amount of support in this early era 😅

Contributions

By contributing to any project within this organization, you grant all rights to your submissions, including permission to incorporate and use them as part of the projects under any applicable licenses. For agreeing, check the box when submitting pull requests that you have read and agree to this Contributor License Agreement.

I know CLAs are discouraging and can cause trust issues regarding being a maneuver tool for moving to a proprietary or source available models. Instead of writing a manifesto about how I'm not going to do that, you have seen my actions and can have my word on it.

Note: I can't guarantee integrity if one comes with an irrecusable offer to buy the work

There's some good reasons of why I want to do so:

  • No contribution will easily outweight the current work; by the time someone's submitting such contributions, they'll already be part of the team and receive monetary support.
  • The code base is very complex and took years to develop on my own. It doesn't feel fair to lock it to AGPLv3, making it hard2 to transition to MIT in the future.
  • Having full rights to the code-base gives me strong governance to prevent abuse from happening: choosing the right and/or well-minded partners for private use, while also getting funding to continue the work.

Call me out if I ever diverge, and I'll make it right.

User content

Most projects generates audiovisual content, either procedurally or based on user inputs, in the form of videos, images and/or audio. The user is responsible for all content generated by the software, local or remote, and must adhere to the following guidelines.

This includes, but is not limited to:

  • Rights: The user must ensure having the rights to use any third-party assets, including images, videos, audio, etc. External laws and licenses apply.
  • Attribution: If the software generates content based on third-party assets direct or indirectly, the user must ensure proper attribution is given if required.
    • Always read the author's license on source code files you're executing and/or the project's one for more information. By default, I use CC BY-SA 4.0 for the shaders3.
  • Illegal: The user must not use the software to generate illegal content defined by their jurisdiction, including but not limited to pirated content, general targeted violence.

Community content

Work in Progress

Community work retain their rights on Shaders and Scenes (no affiliation), but must follow the Community license if they are widely used or distributed; encourage them to incorporate as a official demo or on the Community scenes repository; amazing works to be qualified for a partnership program.

Third Party

Projects may bundle assets files or download them at runtime.

Most notably:

  1. It's the opposite of copyright! ba dum tss 😅 ↩

  2. Each contributor would need to agree re-licensing their contributions. ↩

  3. The generated content from projects like DepthFlow, Pianola, SpectroNote falls under this license. ↩

  4. Downloaded via PyTorch Hub, or HuggingFace's Transformers. ↩

  5. For protecting users and improving the model, so it's more sustainable for both sides. ↩