Creative Commons license paranoia. Created 9 years ago2015-07-20 08:49:20 UTC by JORGETECH

I'm looking forward on making a map (and distribute it) and I found an awesome prefab pack for Half-Life but when I look on it's license I read this: "NoDerivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.". Does this mean that I can't distribute my map if I put these prefabs?

I'm not sure how much it applies, but I'd guess it means you can't modify the prefabs, rather than not being able to use them. Otherwise it wouldn't make sense they were posted online as prefabs.

Yes, you can use it. The Creative Commons licenses will always allow you to use content for a mod as long as you provide credit to the original author! The basic CC license is call Attribution (BY) which means you must provide the name (and website if appropriate) of the original author in your mod's readme.

There's three modifiers you need to know about:
NC Non-Commercial - You can't use the content in a commercial product (you can't sell or otherwise make profit from it).
SA Share-Alike - If you modify the content, you must release your changes under the same (or compatible) license.
ND No-Derivatives - You can't modify or alter the content.

These three properties are always listed in the license name. For example, CC-BY-NC-SA means you have to credit the author (BY), not use it in a commercial product (NC), and share any changed versions under the same license (SA).

Creative commons provide a human-readable version of all of their licenses. Here's the one for CC-BY-NC-ND, the most restrictive CC license, which says:

You are free to:

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Under the following terms:

Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
NoDerivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.

The key here being "You are free to share - copy and redistribute the material" - so you are allowed to distribute the mod if you use the prefabs. (But you wouldn't be allowed to make changes to the prefabs and publish your own version of the prefab pack.)

Thanks for replying, now I understand these things better.