Simpsons Hit and Run Public Mod License (SHAR-PML)

Version 1.1, 19/05/2024
The purpose of this license is to enable the community to freely modify, distribute, and share their modifications of the game.

1. Permission and Conditions

1.1. Grant of License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this mod and associated documentation files, to deal in the mod without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the mod, and to permit persons to whom the mod is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

1.2. Inclusion of Notices

This license shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of this mod.

1.3. Disclaimer of Warranty

This mod is provided "as is". In no event shall the authors or copyright holders be liable for any claim, damages, or other liability, whether in an action of contract, tort, or otherwise, arising from, out of, or in connection with this mod or the use or other dealings in this mod.

1.4. Attribution

Attribution is appreciated but not required. If you modify this mod, we kindly ask that you acknowledge the original work, but it is not mandatory.

1.5. Decompilability and Accessibility

This mod must be decompilable, and/or the original files must be easily accessible to allow others to modify and learn from this mod. This ensures that the modding community can benefit from and build upon these contributions.

1.6. Use of Assets

You are free to use any assets, including but not limited to scripts, music, sound, art, and video from this mod. This openness encourages creativity and the sharing of resources within the community.

2. Copyleft

2.1 Forks

Any forks, copies or derivatives you create of this mod must also be licensed under this same license. This ensures that all modifications and derivative works remain free and open for the community.

2.2 Assets

Any insubstantial assets, such as scripts, art, music and video, may be extracted for use in other projects without the requirement to apply this license to those projects. However attribution to the original creator must be provided.

3. Compatibility

3.1 Compatibility

If this mod includes components under different licenses, those components must be used in accordance with their respective licenses and/or terms. This license applies only to the original content of the mod.

4. Acceptance and Termination

4.1. Acceptance

By using, modifying, or distributing this mod, you indicate your acceptance of this license. If you do not agree to the terms of this license, do not use, modify, or distribute this mod.

4.2. Termination

Your rights under this license will terminate automatically if you fail to comply with any of its terms. Upon termination, you must cease all use, modification, and distribution of this mod and destroy all copies of it in your possession.

Thank you for following this license, and happy modding!

What exactly are your compelling reasons for using this over established and definitely legally sound licenses like GPL or MIT? I really do not get it.

This license has been created by the Stoner Team to further encourage sharing and creativity in the community. While are previous campaigns have guided the community to be more open, we unfortunately still see protective and covetous actions, due to either greed or ignorance.

We have noticed, especially in recent times, a decrease in innovative mods and believe this is linked (but not fully responsible) to a tendency for creators to protect their mods, which wrongly influences new and existing creators to do the same which stifles the community. This dilemma is further complicated with older creators becoming inactive and leaving their non decompilable mods as a digital relics and losing any potential they had to improve the quality of future mods.

To give credit where it is due, since the beginning of our campaign we have noticed creators who have not only made more of their mods decompilable but also encourage other creators to use their assets. We have even seen some creators/teams return to previously non decompilable mods and re-release them as decompilable. These accomplishments not only bring more and more assets and resources for the community to improve the quality and marvel of their own mods but encourages new creators to also make their mods decompilable. We would like to thank all creators who have done this (including your own team Loren).

We hope other creators who share our beliefs endorse this license into their mods or at the very least adopt the core shar-pml principles when releasing their mods.

We understand that not everyone will agree with this statement, and thats ok, but if you do disagree with us, then you are missing the point.

Thank you for your support.

After researching a bit, I don't fully understand why this new license exists instead of just using GPL.

GPL is widely recognized and legally robust, ensuring all derivatives are also GPL, promoting open source. It provides strong copyleft protections, guaranteeing that all modifications remain freely available. SHAR-PML seems to largely overlap with the GPL, making it unnecessary and confusing. While SHAR-PML includes provisions specific to modding, GPL can also cover these needs effectively. Using an established license like the GPL offers greater clarity and consistency, benefiting both creators and users.

Moreover, video game mods are often released without a formal license, relying on community norms and agreements. Many modders prioritize ease of sharing and collaboration over formal legal structures, which is why explicit licenses are frequently absent.

In terms of recourse, enforcing a license violation can be challenging. Most individual modders lack the resources to pursue legal action, making community enforcement through social pressure more common. Established licenses like the GPL provide clearer legal pathways and greater support, which can be beneficial if recourse is necessary.

This license has been created by the Stoner Team to further encourage sharing and creativity in the community. While are previous campaigns have guided the community to be more open, we unfortunately still see protective and covetous actions, due to either greed or ignorance.

I do not agree with the assertion that protective actions are made due to greed or ignorance. Modders may have legitimate reasons for wanting to protect their work, such as concerns about exploitation, misrepresentation, or attempting to protect from unauthorized use. While openness and sharing are important values in the modding community, creators should have the right to choose how their work is used and distributed.

We have noticed, especially in recent times, a decrease in innovative mods and believe this is linked (but not fully responsible) to a tendency for creators to protect their mods.

That is corellation, not causation. The modding community has largely been stagnant due to a variety of factors, such as shifting interests, lack of updates and many community veterans moving on from the SHAR modding community. I would argue that licensing only works to confuse and discourage new modders, as they may not fully understand the implications of different licenses and may be hesitant or discouraged from creating mods due to a lack of understanding.

This dilemma is further complicated with older creators becoming inactive and leaving their non decompilable mods as a digital relics and losing any potential they had to improve the quality of future mods.

While it is unfortunate that older creators may become inactive, this is a natural part of any community. It is important to respect the work of these creators and their choices regarding their mods. If a modder chooses not to release their source code or make their mod decompilable, that is their prerogative. It is not fair to pressure or guilt creators into releasing their work in a way that they are uncomfortable with.

To give credit where it is due, since the beginning of our campaign we have noticed creators who have not only made more of their mods decompilable but also encourage other creators to use their assets.

While I do think promoting openness and sharing is positive within the community, I don't believe your campaign has had a significant impact on the overall modding landscape. If anything, it alienated the community further which contributed to many creators asking for encrypted mod support. It is important to respect the choices of individual creators and not impose a one-size-fits-all approach to modding.

Donut Team moved its assets to a more open and decompilable format to encourage creators to learn from our work and improve upon it. After this was done, we did see a number of creators opt to open their own work a bit more. I do not believe your campaign pressured us into doing this in the slightest, I believe it was through internal discourse and a desire to be more community centric.

After doing this, we've observed practically no uptick in the number of mods being created, and we have not observed any lessons we've learned being applied to the majority of released mods.

Finally, you give the implication that mods have stagnated because there is a lack of open-source/decompilable mods. I do not believe this to this to true. While Mod Bakery is a small sample of the overall modding community, the stats don't lie. Only 30% of the mods on Mod Bakery are non-decompilable, with that number likely to go down over time for various reasons, such as creators making their mods non-decompilable by mistake (which during my audit, I found a few to be the case). Additionally, as Mod Bakery rolls out to more creators, we will see more mods on the platform, which will likely increase the number of decompilable mods.


This number does not include mods in other sections of Mod Bakery, such as Payday 2, where mods are inherently open source due to being exposed an unsandboxed Lua environment. This number is relatively impressive when you remember that setting a mod as decompilable requires opt-in, not opt-out.

I know that - I'm asking what benefit does this provide over GPL and what problem does this solve? If this can benefit a creator over a standard license, I'm interested in knowing more.

Sorry for slow reply, was actually working on my mod, which will be posted with the shar-pml license ))

I believe I already said, this is specific to hit and run modding and this community. GPL is long and covers a lot of aspects we don't believe are necessary in the context of hit and run mods. This is short and easy to follow. I really don't understand the controversy being caused by this.

If you would like we can discuss this is DMs but I believe that you're over analysing the situation.

For full transparency to readers, the previous comments are referring to 1.0, 1.1 addresses some concerns raised

While I am all for decompilable mods, I can appreciate as a mod creator donut team gives me the autonomy to make my mods decompilable, not decompilable, or even encrypted. I really don’t think these guidelines are necessary, especially since we do this for fun.

Shouldn't this be marked coming soon?