Licensing is a complex matter, particularly for software and data intended to be free and widely reusable, such as is the case with MakeHuman©. Most Copyright law is oriented heavily towards protecting commercial interests, so using this law to give you rights while protecting you from rights acquired by others is a delicate balancing act. The intention of the MakeHuman team is to license the reuse of its Copyright materials, free or charge, both commercially and non-commercially. Standard time-tested licenses have been used to attempt to bring clarity to this complex legal issue.

The MakeHuman Mesh licensing paragraph below has been particularly delicately worded so as to try to afford you extensive and wide ranging authority over creative works that you produce while attempting to avoid that the use of MakeHuman by others places unnecessary restrictions upon you. MakeHuman uses a standardized mesh topology which is deformed using standard deformation algorithms (morph targets). Files exported by different artists therefore often bear a great many similarities. It is the intention of the MakeHuman team that you should be able to copyright your own, sufficiently unique or distinct artistic works, without overly constraining other MakeHuman users who will be using very similar meshes.

MakeHuman© is an Open Source application that you can use and redistribute in original or modified form under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation.

Copyright© 2001-2009 is retained by the MakeHuman Team (makehuman.org) who grant you permissions to use released code under the conditions and terms of the GNU General Public License 3.0 or (at your option) any later version of the GNU GPL.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

Source code for both released versions of the MakeHuman application and for versions currently under development is also governed by the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. These source files are made available in the hope that they will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

From time to time the MakeHuman Team may release other application code in various forms. Unless otherwise explicitly stated this application code is also covered by the GNU GPL. For example, the MakeTarget scripts for use with the Blender Modeling application are distributed under the GNU GPL and the MakeHuman morph target files that they generate are covered by this license. Meshes generated or converted using any such tools are covered by the Mesh licensing statements below. Such application code is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

The MakeHuman© application uses a 3D mesh to represent human figures. This mesh was developed in a number of successive iterations (see The Humanoid Mesh) over a number of years to support a diverse range of physiological variants and pose-based deformations. The application uses a mesh with a standard topology (how the vertices, edges and faces relate to one another), which is manipulated by applying standard morph targets (mesh deformations).

The specific data files used to define and deform the mesh, distributed with the MakeHuman application are covered by the terms of the GNU General Public License 3.0 and you are granted permission to use and redistribute those files in original or modified form under those terms. These data files can also be manipulated using the Blender MakeTarget script, but they, and derivative works remain under the terms of the GNU GPL.

When you export, save, or in any way convert a MakeHuman data file, you may store any deformations that you have applied/created, along with the topology of the base mesh and any positional information that you have not materially changed. You are the Copyright holder of changes that you have made. The MakeHuman Team retains Copyright over the topology and the base mesh, but grants you permission to copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the generated materials over which they hold Copyright (except the case of using the exports to create commercial software mimicking MakeHuman’s features), including the topology and positional information constituting the base mesh provided that this does not prevent others from doing the same.

You do not acquire exclusive Copyright over the topology or positional information constituting the base mesh, so others can, in perpetuity also create works derived from the topology and positional information constituting the base mesh and the morph target data used to deform the base MakeHuman mesh. Note that you may be able to establish copyright over works that you produce using the MakeHuman application if your work is sufficiently unique or distinct. The definition of how unique and distinct a work needs to be to be copyrightable is jurisdiction dependent and can vary over time as legal systems evolve and adapt to new legal challenges.

You own any 2D images that you create using exported MakeHuman mesh data and any copyright that applicable law affords you over those materials. Note that the definition of how unique and distinct a work needs to be to be copyrightable is jurisdiction dependent and can vary over time as legal systems evolve and adapt to new legal challenges.

THE MESH IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. 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 THE MESH OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE MESH.

In general the documentation (including the text on this Wiki) produced by the MakeHuman© Team is Copyright© 2001-2009 by the MakeHuman Team (makehuman.org) who grant you permission to use and redistribute in original or modified form. Note that certain names and terms are individually copyrighted or are trademarks, so separate restrictions on the use of those names or terms may exist. For example, this authorization does not entitle you to produce documents claiming to be the MakeHuman Team or claiming to produce an application called MakeHuman.

The Documentation Archive on this Wiki may also contain documents or links to documents that were or were not produced by the MakeHuman Team and/or may contain their own separate Copyright© notices, which may differ from this generic documentation licensing statement. Any licensing statements within individual documents take precedence over this licensing statement.

The essentials of the MakeHuman license for content creators.

The text below describes a way to setup a commercial usage scenario for Artwork created with MakeHuman or based on MakeHuman assets.
The text shall help you to understand without doubts the implications of the MakeHuman license. So here is what you as content creator can/should do and what you will need to tell your customers what they can do with the purchased content. Feel free to reuse parts or the whole text for your particular usage scenario:

The content creator

• can use content made with and exported from MakeHuman as a base for further processing with other tools (e.g. with blender).
• can freely sell content based on MakeHuman for any price and as often as he/she wants.
• is free (but not obliged) to publish the sources of his/her creations. (the export files generated by MakeHuman, .obj, etc...)
• is obliged to include a copy of the MakeHuman License with the export files generated by MakeHuman.
• is obliged to state "this content is based on the MakeHuman mesh" at a clearly visible place to address the MakeHuman copyright.
• is free to add his/her own copyright to the creation regarding all changes from the makeHuman base mesh which can not be done within MakeHuman.
• is free to restrict the usage of his/her content regarding reproduction and reselling of the content that was purchased from him/her.
• may not use the exports to create commercial software mimicking MakeHuman’s features.
  

Purchased content may not be reproduced/further processed/resold without prior permission from the content creator.
Purchasers of any content based on MakeHuman are still allowed to use MakeHuman itself to create/sell their own content.
Purchased content may not be used to create commercial software mimicking makehuman’s features.