Re: Fw: [tsc-devel] Signing-off commits on legal questions

Chris Jacobsen | Fri, 06 Feb 2015 06:06:36 UTC

Addendum: We should of course give a little time for ourselves to reach Johan and Bugsbane.  If we do not reach one of them, as mentioned in my last email, I'd lean toward going ahead and releasing version 2.0 even though we have assets marked with special licenses.
-datahead 

     On Friday, February 6, 2015 1:01 AM, Chris Jacobsen <…9@y…> wrote:
   

 > We could also split the project up (again). The code is clearly GPL,
there can be no doubt about this. Distributors will happily ship that
one. 
Is it possible to ship the game such that the TSC installer simply grabs another package from a website or mirror if the user selects an option?  I'm just trying to understand the options.  We would, however, be forced to include placeholder graphics in the distributed copy unless the game is programmed not to run without the full installation.
> We might consider
releasing an "partially FLOSS pre-release" so that people who care
less about purity can start playing before we get the licensing stuff
resolved. Though, I don't think we should make any full "non-alpha,
non-beta, non-pre" releases until we can, assuredly, account for the
licensing of all components of TSC as anything other than "special".
This is basically a dev snapshot.  Release 2.0 could be delayed by months with this plan.  I would lean towards going ahead and releasing it with Bugsbane's (and Johan's) assets.  If a Linux distribution (or other distributor) decides not to package it, so be it.  We will then continue to fix these items in subsequent releases, which will have less and less of a problem with being included in Linux distributions.  We should be cautious but not too cautious.
It turns out the Super Tux team didn't release milestone 2 last October.  They released a dev snapshot, and then the major contributors took a break from the project.  They haven't released a major milestone since 2006 or so.  I just talked with a developer, and he said he wasn't really sure what the future was for milestone 2 (though we decided they would email the project leaders and try to get this figured out).  Their standards for a milestone are different than ours for a release, but it still illustrates where things can get slowed down.  If we go down the path of delaying release 2.0, we need to think carefully about what is and isn't going into it and make sure it doesn't turn into a moving target.
> Urgh. Gotcha. You are right on this. If the circumstances wouldn’t be so
evidently clear it would even be the default “all rights reserved”, but
it would be nonsense to assume someone uploaded to the repository
without wanting it to be used. 

I'm guessing the GNU license can't just be applied to the project at all, since this is not source code, forcing us into this exclusive license, correct?  I figured it's worth double checking on this with you.

We desperately need to run our own git management so that we can make sure anyone who pushes to git has selected a checkbox that licenses their work properly to the project.

> Once you have the permission to create the adaption, you are free to license your adaption the way you want it.
Lucas Films ran fan contests for small Star Wars fan movies.  I would assume these fans were not free to profit off the material.  This, of course, was probably very clearly stated somewhere legally.  I'm just saying things like this tend to end up being more restrictive rather than less restrictive.  I'll be curious to hear of anything you find on this.  I'll be happy if you're correct :)
> I’m sorry if this was surprising to you. I just thought that the topic
is going in a direction where we really need clarification from him. I
didn’t know you have some more questions to ask. Sorry.
We've made repeated attempts to reach Bugsbane through github, and he has not replied (and I think he's still active there).  He also disappeared abruptly.  Thus any communication with him needs to be prioritized.  I don't doubt we needed to ask him on licensing, but I would have planned this versus any other questions about why he left the project or if he has any concerns with the project.
> The problem we get is that once we start with such a thing it is obvious
other artists will feel as second-class people.
I just want to keep the title song and credits.  They're going to eventually wind up eliminated if he doesn't give us a license, which will be a loss.  I had figured an unofficial transaction from individuals might be an alternative option if need be.  There is, however, a good chance he will grant us a license on these two songs without payment, though, given he told me he was going to give them to us in an email.  We probably need to decide how we want to word our question and then send him an email.
> I don’t want them back. But we have a dilemma in this regard. Either way
we go, the decision is wrong. I think the smaller issue is risking an
infringement of Bugsbane’s copyright; I just can’t imagine he didn’t
want us to use the graphics to the project’s benefit.
It sounds like we're in agreement not to use Nintendo style graphics (at least for mushrooms), if I understood you right.  To reiterate the severity, though, I think Mario graphics will kill our project, from a legal, originality, and even contributor engagement perspective.
-datahead












 On Thursday, February 5, 2015 9:10 PM, Luiji Maryo <…i@u…> wrote:
 

> (I
> looked into Debian packaging recently, doesn’t seem too difficult), and
> the big distributions don’t include new software into their running
> releases anyway. Thus we can postpone the problem until new releases of
> Ubuntu (LTS), Debian, or similar are planned.
I can create packages for RPM, Dpkg, Pacman, Slackpkg, and Macports
(though I don't have access to OS X anymore...). We might consider
releasing an "partially FLOSS pre-release" so that people who care
less about purity can start playing before we get the licensing stuff
resolved. Though, I don't think we should make any full "non-alpha,
non-beta, non-pre" releases until we can, assuredly, account for the
licensing of all components of TSC as anything other than "special".I also don't think we should ask distributors to release incomplete
versions of the package that require an external, specially-licensed
package to operate correctly. At that point we're just making things
convoluted.