I was talking about the rights to the contributions, not the entirety of the project.

They're fighting (I guess you would call it that, it's just a preliminary discussion for now though) because they resent the idea of doing work for free, and then having someone else profit off of it.

Joint Ownership is the easiest way to do it now and the other parties are amicable to it assuming they were compensated for any work done either now (not likely) or when the project became profitable (if ever, again, very unlikely), but have pointed out (rightly) that it will be a nightmare later on if the project were to go commercial because there's no way to objectively determine "how hard was Bill working to finish that map in the last 3 weeks we set as a deadline". Maybe Bill worked 10 hours a day on this hobby project for two weeks, that's certainly worth more than two weeks of time from someone who had to tweak a couple of engine settings, or made a single low-complexity low-poly model in that time.

The other option that seems a little less messy to me (correct me if I'm wrong) is having one person (I guess myself) lead the project and others contribute to it. I initially wanted it to be "I own the project, you own the content, but I can publish the content you contribute without asking you." but that creates the loophole above where I can go commercial with the project and either not give the other parties what they think they're worth, or give them nothing at all. I don't see myself doing the latter, but the former is possible, since people generally tend to think their work is worth more than it actually is.

Basically I'm just wondering what the least messy way of doing this will be down the road.

Hello Aped, you wrote:

>I was talking about the rights to the contributions, not the entirety of the project.

If you still have a question in that regard, just state the question clearly and you'll get an answer - or multiple possible answers.

>They... resent the idea of doing work for free, and then having someone else profit off of it.

Of course! Anybody would. You said in the first post that you are, "are considering making a game or a mod as portfolio padding and just for the" [fun of it]. So the first draft of the collaboration agreement you're presently circulating among the team clearly states this, correct? And any mentions of possible future profits on the game refer to this as unlikely, correct?
So nobody is seriously thinking there might BE profit, are they?

>Joint Ownership is the easiest way to do it now and the other parties are amicable to it assuming they were compensated for any work done either now (not likely)

Unclear - you didn't mean to indicate that doing work now is unlikely, surely. You probably meant to talk about possible future profit-sharing.

>it will be a nightmare later on if the project were to go commercial because there's no way to objectively determine "how hard was Bill working to finish that map in the last 3 weeks we set as a deadline".

Yes, there is. It's called "recordkeeping." Have each team member keep a record of how many hours he works - in otherwords, use timesheets.

>Maybe Bill worked 10 hours a day on this hobby project for two weeks, that's certainly worth more than two weeks of time from someone who had to tweak a couple of engine settings, or made a single low-complexity low-poly model in that time.

Not if that someone worked 10 hours a day for an equal period of time. You're equating "weeks" even though unequal numbers of hours are worked during a week? Don't do that. Use actual hours worked instead.

>The other option ... is having one person (I guess myself) lead the project

I don't see how having a project leader differs from the foregoing. In my experience, a project without a leader is likely to fail. Of course there has to be someone leading the project.

>I initially wanted it to be "I own the project, you own the content, but I can publish the content you contribute without asking you."

I don't understand how this could be feasible. By their signing the collaboration agreement, there is no question of "asking" them - they've already given their permission in the agreement. I'm finding it difficult following your thinking in these posts, to be honest.

>Basically I'm just wondering what the least messy way of doing this [is]

Execute a collaboration agreement. Work out the details NOW. Not later.

Quote:

You said in the first post that you are, "are considering making a game or a mod as portfolio padding and just for the" [fun of it]. So the first draft of the collaboration agreement you're presently circulating among the team clearly states this, correct? And any mentions of possible future profits on the game refer to this as unlikely, correct? So nobody is seriously thinking there might BE profit, are they?

There is no agreement currently circulating, but no, we don't expect (rationally) that any profit will be had. This is purely a proactive measure to avoid problems in the extremely unlikely case that someone does decide to buy the project.

Quote:

It's called "recordkeeping." Have each team member keep a record of how many hours he works - in otherwords, use timesheets.

This adds a good deal of overhead to an already very lackadaisical project design. I'm concerned that it would prohibitively disrupt the project to the point of noncompletion, which is idiotic considering how small a chance there is of any of this actually taking place. For all practical purposes, it would be a constant upkeep for almost surely academic reasons.

Quote:

Not if that someone worked 10 hours a day for an equal period of time. You're equating "weeks" even though unequal numbers of hours are worked during a week? Don't do that. Use actual hours worked instead.

I'm saying that effort and hours are not the same thing. I wouldn't want to run a project that rewards people for spending time on it, rather than rewarding them for completing objectives, and that it's very difficult to assign arbitrary value to milestones, and even harder to quantify how much time was actually spent on a project fragment in an online collaboration. How can you possibly a) assign value to milestones fairly or b) quantify time spent working over the internet?

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Original post by a_pedestrian Thanks for the advice, I was actually considering writing it in the format given on the examples, so I'll steer clear of that. The real issue now is that some parties are not amicable to giving up rights (even duplication rights) to what they submit (I can't really blame them) - I'm not sure how to propose a division of value should (unlikely) the project become commercial at one time in the future. How do you quantify how hard it is to draw or model an asset vs how hard it is to code a jump script?

If it is unlikely that the project ever goes comercial you might aswell ask them to give you(or the project) a non-exclusive licence to use and redistribute their work non-commercially and save yourself alot of hassle.

Yeah that kind of seems like the right choice, but it goes against what everyone here seems to be saying, "Get it in writing now." - As a precaution I mean.

You're probably right, it just seems like a waste to forfeit any possibility of going commercial in the future.

Simon wrote:
>>ask them to give you(or the project) a non-exclusive licence to use and redistribute their work non-commercially and save yourself alot of hassle.

Aped wrote:
> You're probably right, it just seems like a waste to forfeit any possibility of going commercial in the future.
>it goes against what everyone here seems to be saying, "Get it in writing now."

It doesn't go against that at all. You still have to get that non-exclusive license in writing, before beginning any work. And if you want to make something with the possibility of going commercial in the future, you'll have to have an agreement in place, and maybe even pay the people up front. If you try to get something for nothing, you'll probably wind up getting nothing. You're entering the world of business now. You have to approach it in a businesslike manner.

My point is that if there's no chance of the project going commercial, it seems silly to bother with almost any form of agreement, because any amount of suing will be for no money at all.

How does one even go about enforcing a faxed agreement with an individual who can fake his or her signature since you only have their word that they are who they are claiming to be?

Quote:

Original post by a_pedestrian My point is that if there's no chance of the project going commercial....

There is always a chance and more so if the OP can get the necessary rights from people.

Quote:

How does one even go about enforcing a faxed agreement with an individual who can fake his or her signature since you only have their word that they are who they are claiming to be?

This is actually two questions...
1. How do you enforce a faxed agreement? - Firstly you ensure the agreement has a clause stating that all disputes will be settled under the jurisdiction of your local courts. Secondly you then go to court to enforce the agreement.

2. What if someone turns out not to be who they claimed? - You report them to the police. Falsely entering into a legal agreement is fraud and it a very serious offence.

[Edited by - Obscure on September 4, 2008 5:35:17 AM]

Quote:

Original post by aped My point is that if there's no chance of the project going commercial, it seems silly to bother with almost any form of agreement, because any amount of suing will be for no money at all.

But money isn't the only reason why the agreement is necessary. Read the umpteen other threads about collaborative projects that have gone bad, where we told the OP that he should've gotten an agreement in the first place.

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How does one even go about enforcing a faxed agreement

So you're saying you'd know how to go about enforcing an agreement that wasn't faxed? (^_^)

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Original post by Tom Sloper But money isn't the only reason why the agreement is necessary. Read the umpteen other threads about collaborative projects that have gone bad, where we told the OP that he should've gotten an agreement in the first place.

Case in point: the new one posted just now, entitled "In a bit of a problem...."