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Since creating the new license will take much time I've decided to go and switch back to LGPL license till it's gonna be ready. Time told that switching the GPL was not as much a good idea as I thought it first. The different interpretations that are around the media<-> code relation made me change my mind. In jClassicRPG there are already such media that might be dubious to use with GPL in such circumstances. For example the new music by Jasper is CC-BY-SA-NC which is not compatible. Anyway, SVN now contains LGPL source code again. So you can use jClassicRPG as a separate library again if you manage to do that. ;) BTW, I'm back to coding again after pushing the license thing to a lower priority level. New music theme by Jasper is intergrated to game and committed to SVN!
Saturday, 8 November 2008
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5 comments:
I'm neither a lawyer nor a Debian developer but from what I know any kind of license that restricts the use of media/code (non-commercial restriction in this case) would not be allowed into Debian and possibly other Linux distros as it's against clauses #1 (Free Redistribution) and #6 (No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor) of both Debian Free Software Guidelines [1] and Open Source Definition [2]. If you want to keep jCRPG a truly free software you might want to negotiate license change for all its non-free components.
Cheers,
Max
[1] http://www.debian.org/social_contract
[2] http://opensource.org/docs/osd
Agreed. Please don't use NC music. That will keep your game from being put in any major gnu/linux distribution.
Till the time jcrpg will get such content that are "debian friendly" i see little or no wrong to have some NC in the game. The sounds from freesound.org are already non-compliant to the 'freedom defined' dedinition. For later inclusion to such distros it can be reconsidered to replace, or remove those - by the packagers. I'm not against the idealism, but for the time being I plan to give green light for the practical point of view. Till project grows into something stronger that can supply multiple content packages I find it good enough to be available on the sf.net for download.
But I hear your worries, hope we will be able to fix it later.
I don't understand why some people like dabbling in creating their own open-source licenses. It's really not a smart thing to do.
First, the open source license space is pretty saturated already, and there should be a license or combination of licenses out there that suits pretty much everyone's needs. Second, people will be vary of and confused by a new license they are not familiar with. Third, said license will be effectively untested until it goes to court. Fourth, you will need to spend money on a lawyer to go over and possibly rewrite your license if you want to be taken seriously, but good IP lawyers don't exactly grow on trees (neither does money, for that matter).
Putting it on the back burner is a good step, but I'd abandon the idea of a separate license altogether.
As for the whole Debian debate, most distros offer appropriate repositories (contrib and non-free for Debian, restricted and multiverse for Ubuntu). There really is no such thing as "not allowed into Debian and possibly other Linux distros". So there is very little cause for concern.
hello, stani!
Thanks for sharing your points. I agree mostly with you in these things, though I think I will still bother with the new license on a lower priority. If the community at fgd.net or other persons find interest in it, it would serve the good of more people. If there's a lack that can be repaired, it's not a worthless effort. Otherwise if it serve no real purpose then I would hibernate it for a longer while.
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