[Dev] Parabola stance on game assets

bill-auger bill-auger at peers.community
Thu Sep 27 01:42:21 GMT 2018


On Wed, 26 Sep 2018 23:05:46 +0100 Adam wrote:
> It is my understanding that if packages do not support free culture
> then they should be removed from Parabola too, regardless of FSDG.

that is correct - the FSDG only requires non-executable binaries to be
freely distributable


On Wed, 26 Sep 2018 23:05:46 +0100 Adam wrote:
> The fact that Warsow is permitted seems to suggest distributing
> nonfree assets doesn't matter. 

i would not say that program was ever "permitted" - the issue on the
bug tracker that you quoted from, exists to evaluate that program and
remove if it does in fact include non-free files - these things
sneak in from arch often and they take time to evaluate - a little
non-copyleft artwork is understandably not at the highest priority


On Wed, 26 Sep 2018 23:05:46 +0100 Adam wrote:
> These inconsistent and seemingly contradictory viewpoints makes it 
> difficult to report bugs correctly and use the OS as intended. What
> is the Parabola stance on this?

the definitive answer to that question is what is written on parabola's
mission statement https://wiki.parabola.nu/Parabola_Social_Contract

  "Parabola is Free Culture: All documentation and cultural works
  included in products of the Parabola project are Free Culture, with
  the exceptions of: works stating a viewpoint, invariant sections and
  cover texts. All documentation and cultural works created by or for
  Parabola are Free Culture, with no exceptions."

the strict reading of this hinges on the word "included" - the idea is
to avoid distributing anything that is not "free software" or "free
culture"; but not to prevent anyone from doing anything - the
blacklisting of that one game was probably not to satisfy of the above
"promise" but one of the devs wanted to do it anyways

in my opinion, i would draw the line between programs that actively
index and/or lead you directly to non-free software or media and those
that merely allow them to be used if users acquires them on their own -
the dev who blacklisted that one game obviously drew that line a bit
more broadly - 

for one thing, the FSDG explicitly forbids leading users directly to
non-free software - to me, that includes most third-party package
managers, AUR helpers, docker/appimage/flatpack/snaps, and so on; but
parabola has those, and there is an open issue about removing or
filtering them - i would say that whatever the decision is regarding
those should be carried over to media files as well; but that is still
up in the air



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