I thought that since the license about ENB was brought up, I'd copy and paste it as reference for all joining the conversation:
LICENSE AGREEMENT AND DISTRIBUTION RULES:
1 Copyrights of the ENBSeries (the SOFTWARE) exclusively belongs to AUTHOR - Vorontsov Boris (ENB developer).
2 ENBSeries is DonateWare application (freeware), which means you may or may not pay for this software to the author as donation.
3 Software provided "AS IS", without warranty of any kind, use it on your own risk.
4 You agree not to change or remove any parts of software (files in archive or installer) without author permission. Decompilation, reverse enginering, disassembling, debugging or changing resources of software is prohibited.
5 You may use and distribute software in commercial or non-commercial purposes. For commercial use it is required to warn about using this software (in credits, on the box or other places). Commercial distribution of software as part of the games without author permission prohibited.
6 Author reserve the right to change these license agreement.
7 All the rights, not described in this license agreement belongs to author.
8 You allowed to add new files to ENBSeries archive or installer.
9 You may sell presets, shaders, bitmaps, documentation and any other components for ENBSeries, except binary files (dll, exe) created by author of ENBSeries.
10 Custom presets, shaders, bitmaps, documentation and any other components for ENBSeries belongs to their authors and may have copyrights and license.
By executing the ENBSeries you accepting terms of use and this license agreement.
So, legally, it specifically says you CAN SELL PRESETS including DEFAULT SHADERS except for binary files. Custom presets and other components belong to their respective authors. Now, this is where it gets a little murky... someone like Aiyen, for example, or prod80 or others like them have created most or all of their shaders from scratch. They may use ideas and work that's been developed elsewhere (all work is building on the shoulders of others) but ultimately those shaders are theirs. They made them. It's their work. Others, like myself, who can read about 1/4th of the HLSL code in shader files at most and can't write a shader to save their lives (usually because of laziness, certainly in my case
), may own the preset they created as a whole, but the components within belong to the original authors. Therefore, if selling that preset, those original authors could request a share of proceeds or removal of those files because those files are theirs, not yours.
I'd like to comment for a moment on the most common objection I hear about the whole idea of paid mods, one which I believe Kontrapunkt brought up (sorry if you didn't, but I think you did). This is the idea of "you started modding because you love it" or some variation thereof. Initially, yeah, we do it because we want to. We release it for a variety of reasons. For some it's because they share screenshots and people want to make their game look like that. Some because they put in a ton of work and want to share what they've made. Some do it for the community, to give something of worth. Some don't really know why, they just release it. Whatever the reason in the beginning, the mod users can change that idea and fast. For a mod user to get some perspective, imagine what it's like to take the time to write out detailed instructions on how to install the mod, triple-checking it to make sure all the info is correct. Then users start commenting and complaining (not asking for help, but actually complaining) that the mod doesn't work. You know the answer to their problem from the brief description they said, they listen to what you said and go "oh... yeah, I didn't do that" WHICH IS CLEARLY WRITTEN in the description... Imagine this happening 20 times in a row... answering the same question... people requesting or even demanding some change or this or that. Managing a mod released for free on the Nexus, especially a popular one, can become as time-consuming as a part-time job (heck even full-time). After a little while of this you might go "I'm putting 20 (or 30 or 40 or 10 or whatever) hours a week into this... I really should get paid for this." And this is after the 10's or 100's or 1000's of hours we put into making the mod. We make the mod because we want to make the mod. We release the mod to share. We DON'T release the mod to be the idiot checker or become a tech support service. But that's what mod authors become... either that or the comment page starts getting filled with "This mod's abandoned... it's gonna be broken forever" and the like.
At this point, it's up to each author to make the choice to ask for donations, or sell, or not. And I don't begrudge them that choice. If you want to request donations or put it up for sale or whatever, feel free. You DO avoid a lot of the legal pitfalls if you make it a gift in exchange for donations. I can think of a number of organizations that I get solicited by for donations and, in return for my donation, are willing to give me something whether a book or dvd or subscription to something. Just be ready for community backlash... oh, and if it were me, I'd never go to reddit again if you do involve money... that place is... *shudders* Ravenous wolves...
