[Dev] Confusion about game data

[Fabio Pesari]

On 03/07/2015 03:41 PM, Nicolás Reynolds wrote:
> i thought the wiki said it (or we lost it on one of the many
> migrations...) but parabola is also commited to free culture, 

That's good to know, as I too support it.

But I looked around and I could not find it in the Wiki, I only found
the rule in
https://wiki.parabola.nu/Package_freedom_verification_problems but if
Parabola is explicitly committed to Free Culture, I think it should be
in the homepage or in the social contract.

> and that's
> why we don't include artwork with non-commercial (also disallowed by the
> fsdg) or non-derivative (allowed by the fsdg) terms.

That's fine, but I never proposed that...I was talking about binaries
only, not data. Most distros already do it, to some extent - for
example, all those games which require proprietary assets (such as
Chocolate Doom and CorsixTH) are always distributed without any data.

> in cases like these, and it's always about game data, the solution is to
> approach the developers and ask them for relicensing.  we've barely done
> that in five years.
>
> blacklisting is the only method we have so far... it sounds awful but
> i'd better not make it a newspeak term.
>
> blacklisting is freedom! :P

Over the years, I asked the developers of many such projects to liberate
their assets.

The most common answers I've received are:

1. If they did that, the mobile market would be flooded with poor
versions of their games and their brand would be tarnished

2. They would like to sell the game, and they don't like the idea that
somebody else could be their competitor

3. Their game is a clone of a commercial game and they need to keep the
assets NC to avoid lawsuits (UQM falls under this category)

4. They don't have the authority to do so

Now, we can contact the developers, but it's very unlikely they will
change their minds.

My hope is that some people will make free assets from scratch for those
games, but for games like UQM I'm afraid it will just not happen. People
are still selling Zork, a game written in 1977, in 2015; people get very
upset when you try to profit off their IP but can be kinder toward
non-commercial efforts.