Hi all, Daniel:
As the person who wrote said license, I spent a long time ensuring it met the OSG and DFSG, in consultation with various people on Debian-legal at the time (2003). If you have issue with a specific part of the license, please let me know which section. As Francesco said, the license is sub-optimal, and actually pretty ugly. However, it was the best available at the time. I suspect your concern is with the license Preamble. It does _imply_ restrictions on distribution which could be considered a breach of the DFSG. These restrictions, however, are not enforced by the license itself - they are more intended as a discouragement or request. The preamble was a compromise, and deliberately written with knowledge that the actual license cannot not enforce these 'requests'. Hence the 'get-out-of-jail' clause in the Preamble itself: "This preamble is not legally binding, but is to clarify the intent of the following license." Francesco: > Moreover, an interesting discussion about another beneath-a-steel-sky > DFSG-freeness issue is currently ongoing on debian-legal: > http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2008/05/msg00001.html Mmm. The trademark problem has been around for ages - I guess the Firefox/Iceweasel thing has brought it to the front again. This issue has been debated a billion times in Debian - Although the logo image is 'technically' free under the terms of the license, it is not 'functionally' free under various countries trademark laws. I can say Revolution wouldn't hold anyone actionable, but cannot extend that to cover any companies in the Virgin group. There are many many instances in main where a 'TM' somewhere in a image or logo will override any included license terms on a product, although I guess generally the onus is on the user to be aware of his/her local trademark restrictions. Trademarks trump Copyright :( Someone let me know how this turns out - if it comes down to removal, I would prefer to ask Revolution for a 'free' logo to redistribute. The ScummVM team has a great relationship with these game studios, and want to maintain that where possible :) > On the other hand, my doubts about the DFSG-freeness of > beneath-a-steel-sky are not due to its license, but instead to the > actual availability of its source code. I raised these doubts in > http://bugs.debian.org/322620#67 BASS, Lure and Flight of the Amazon Queen are an interesting application of the source code (aka 'Preferred source of modification') issue. There are several points with regards to BASS: * Most of the 'source data' and original tools are long lost, thus the included datafiles have become the preferable source of modification. It is the sole material the ScummVM team has, and we ourselves use it as a base. * Although its an extreme case of the 'Desert Island' scenario, I don't think a lack of tools allowing modification means it should fail our of principle - some tools do exist, but have not been released or are single-purpose only (eg, compressors in scummvm-tools). * Trivia: THe _original_ game was written in AMOS for the Amiga, and thus the original source files were AMOS resource banks with IFF images and AMAL animation. The PC datafiles are a ugly ugly conversion of the original files. The irony is if the source material was released, they might be editable, but nothing could recompile them into a _playable_ form :) - Ender ScummVM, Co-Lead [http://www.scummvm.org/] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
