Hello,
Please CC myself and [EMAIL PROTECTED] when replying to this email.
There's an issue with the new upstream version of warsow that I think
will make it undistributable, even in the non-free category of Debian.
I've attached the entire license file for the new version of warsow.
I want to know if it will still be possible to distribute the old
version of warsow. The old license states,
"Warsow license information:
The game engine is based on the QFusion engine and licensed under the GNU
General Public license. A copy of the GPL license should come with this
package, in file named gnu.txt, if not look at
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt
Game data files are copyrighted by their respective authors. You may only
redistribute the game data in unmodified form unless you have written
permission from the copyright owner."
--
Regards,
Andres Mejia
Brief Explanation of the licenses
Read this paragraph if you want to have a quick overview of the licensing used
by Warsow.
For players:
The first goal of our team is to make a free game for players. This means you
will not have to pay for the game, nor pay a monthly cost. You can install our
software on many PC as you like, play it as much as you want.
You cannot sell the client/server or gain any profit from it.
For developers:
Code is under GPL license, this means you can get all our source code, study it
and reuse it as soon as you keep it open and give back to us your changes.
All artwork, musics, dialogues, stories, names, 3d models, etc... are under a
proprietary license. This means you cannot reuse those in any way. If you plan
to create another game based on our source code, remember you will have to redo
all art,music,models,stories,etc...
A detailed explanation of the licenses follows.
Background and Purpose
In the Warsow Project we have two different licenses:
1. The first one is GPL. This license is applied to all our source files.
You learn more about that license here.
2. The second one is Warsow Content License. This license is applied to all
artwork and texts in this web site and is applied to all
art/models/music/texts/names/setting/... present in the game.
It is very important that new developers and the community understand why we
have decided to split our efforts among these two licenses, so we encourage you
to read it all. If you just want to have a brief explanation jump here.
Chasseur de bots is the name of the Non-Profit Association that holds all
copyrights of Warsow assets and is used to run the development team.
Warsow Purpose
The commercial industry does not care too much about Open Source because in
most cases the projects are not organized and strong enough to reach their goal
and to compete with them. The only way for any of these small OSS projects to
succeed is to sacrifice a little of their pride and to join a large and
well-organized team. In this way, all talented people can bring their ideas and
skills into one project. These talented people will be less responsible for
overall project progress, but they can concentrate more on what they really
want to do, have more fun and have a much greater chance of success.
Our vision is to convince talented and dedicated people that this is the right
path to follow, by focusing on two key objectives: gathering and keeping
resources, and maximizing chances of success.
Objective 1: Gathering resources under a single common project is very
important to build a strong team. We should try to avoid our project forking
into other similar projects, because that means splitting resources and thus,
lowering our chances of success. Those other forked projects will repeat
efforts already spent on discussion of rules, building new races, writing new
code and we will end up again with a lot of resources wasted and no goal
reached.
Objective 2: Ensuring success is another key point of our organization. We are
trying to preserve the work done by our members as much as we possibly can,
with licenses and by adding only talented members to our team. For the project
to be successful, it needs to be unique in architecture, rules, music and
ideas; it must attract good players and RPG ers and create a fun, stimulating,
friendly community. Most importantly, it must be playable and complete.
Why Warsow Is Licensed the Way It Is
To try best to achieve these two goals we have made some tough decisions about
licenses. However, in order to explain our conclusion, first it is necessary to
examine the alternatives:
Option 1:
Release absolutely everything under the GPL license. This option sounds
great in theory but in practice has the following problems:
* Anyone can get all of the code and art, music and setting information
and start building a similar game with a part of our team. This is sub-optimal
because the forked project will split our forces and will lower our chance of
success, which is contrary to Objective 1. We need to protect against internal
division on the team to keep momentum and stay productive.
* Anyone can get all of the code and art, music and setting information
and start building a similar game with a completely new team. The new project
would be similar to Warsow and would destroy much of the uniqueness we are
trying to put into the game to make it special.
*Most artists do not want to release their work to the general public.
They fear it will be used in projects or in ways they do not like, so we would
lose out on potential artistic contributors joining the project this way, which
is against Objective 1.
Option 2:
Leave the copyrights in the names of the authors of the material. Again,
this approach sounds very fair to everyone, but on closer examination has the
following problems:
* A member could decide to leave the team and deny the continued usage
of material they had already contributed to Warsow team. This will be a major
blow to our progress if he removes many models. We would have to rebuild those
from scratch. This scenario would only have to play out several times before
our progress and momentum would be slowed measurably and our chances of success
reduced, which detracts from Objective 2.
* If we decide in the future to modify, change, or publish on a website
any contributed material, such as a screenshot or preview of the game in
action, we would have to get advance permission from all the various copyright
holders of each model and each reproduced piece. It is true that he may have
already agreed on many aspects, but we could easily face a new scenario (like
his art published on the cover of a book or on a press magazine). We already
have a list of more than 50 people that have contributed to Warsow so far and
it would be really complex or difficult to contact them again if they have left
the team. This will hinder our ability to expand or publicize the game and so
it is against Objective 2.
* The author of contributed material could reuse the material for
another similar game by simply allowing another project to also access his
copyrights, which would hurt the uniqueness of Warsow and increase the chances
of forking our team. This also detracts from Objective 2.
Option 3:
The final (and best) option is to have a proprietary license that will
assure past, present and future Warsow Team members that Objectives 1 and 2 are
met and that their work will be used for Warsow only.
* All new contributors (or their legal guardians) are required to
review, agree to and sign the Chasseur de bots Contribution License Agreement (
CCB LICENSE ). If the creator of a work wants to contribute that work for
inclusion in Warsow, but cannot be bound to the CCB LICENSE, the creator must
contact Atomic Blue at [EMAIL PROTECTED] With very limited exceptions, only
contributors that agree to the CCB LICENSE are eligible for full membership on
the Chasseur de bots team (the development team for Warsow) and only materials
submitted under the CCB LICENSE will be included in the Warsow game.
* The submission of materials under the CCB LICENSE gives both the
content developers and the Chasseur de bots team assurances that:
O The materials will only be used in the Warsow game (or its
successor games created by Chasseur de bots) and not in any other.
O The materials, once contributed, will be retained by Chasseur
de bots no matter what might happen with other projects, forks, mergers,
alliances, and Chasseur de bots will control how it is used.
Explanation of Chasseur de bots Contribution License Agreement
A contributor do not have to be a member of Chasseur de bots (a non-profit
association), to submit graphics, rules, code or any other contribution for use
in War§sow. However, he is required to agree to the CCB LICENSE, which creates
three categories into which submissions are divided, each of which is licensed
differently: source code, game rules and all other work.
* Source code, other than game rules, are treated as open source software
covered by the GNU General Public License, available here
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html with copyright explicitly assigned to
Chasseur de bots.
* Game rules can be scripts, documents, or any other expression in any
media. In any of these forms, Game rules are not open source they are the
property of Chasseur de bots. You should not submit any game rules unless you
agree that they belong to Chasseur de bots and that you will not have the right
to use them in any other application.
* Any other work (such as 2D graphics, 3D models, music and sounds,
character descriptions or fantasy world histories) will be the property of
Chasseur de bots once you submit it, but you will continue to have the right to
display the work as part of a personal portfolio. You are not allowed to
display or use the work in another game or application and you are not allowed
to use derivative works owned by Chasseur de bots.
Warsow Content License
Assets that are property of Chasseur de bots, use the following Warsow Content
License.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR USAGE, COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION
1. This License applies to any material or other work which contains a
notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the
terms of this Warsow Content License.
2. Terms defined in this Article, and parenthetically elsewhere, shall
throughout this License have the meanings here and there provided. Defined
terms may be used in the singular or plural. Definitions:
The "Material", below, refers to any such material or work, and a "work
based on the Material" means either the Material or any Derivative Work under
copyright law.
"Derivative Work" shall mean a work containing the Material or a
portion of it, such as a revision, modification, enhancement, adaptation,
translation (including compilation or recompilation by computer), abridgement,
condensation, expansion, or any other form in which such preexisting works may
be recast, transformed, or adapted, and that, if prepared without authorization
of the owner of the copyright in such preexisting work, would constitute a
copyright infringement.
Each licensee is addressed as "you".
3. You may not copy, modify, publish, transmit, sell, participate in the
transfer or sale or reproduce, create Derivative Works from, distribute,
perform, display or in any way exploit any of the Material released under this
License unless expressly permitted by the Warsow Team.
4. You may freely distribute the Warsow archive/installer unmodified on any
media. You may re-compress using different archival formats suitable for your
OS (i.e. zip/tgz/rpm/deb/dmg), any changes beyond that require explicit
permission of the Chasseur de bots association.
5. THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE MATERIAL PROVIDED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED
BY APPLICABLE LAW. THE MATERIAL IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY
KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE
RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE MATERIAL IS WITH YOU.
6. IN NO EVENT SHALL Chasseur de bots BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER,
INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT
OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE MATERIAL.
END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
