David Moreno Garza wrote: > Hello, > > I am now packaging a Tetris-like game, and I have some doubts about the > description. > > I have written the description like this: > Description: Free clone of Tetris, featuring a bastard level > > Bastet (stands for "bastard Tetris") is a free (GPL'd) clone of > Tetris(r) (built on the top of petris by Peter Seidler) which is > designed to be "as bastard as possible": it tries to compute how useful > blocks are and gives you the worst, the most bastard it can find. > Playing bastet can be a painful experience, especially if you usually > make "canyons" and wait for the long I-shaped block. > > As Tetris is a trademark, are the uses of this word proper? I mean, is > it legal to make use of this word as I have written it on the > description?
IANAL, but I believe it is just fine. But perhaps 'clone of Tetris' is not the best phrase to use. Putting it very roughly, you can't use a trademark to confuse people. "A Tetris-like game" is certainly fine. "A clone of Tetris" might possibly imply that it was behavior-identical to Tetris, which apparently it isn't. :-) How about "a free game very similar to Tetris"? > Now, the upstream author mentions his software is based on petris, a > Tetris-like game on MIT/X11 license. Is it all valid to bastet use GPL? Yes. > Bastet is licensed over GPL. Under the MIT/X11 license, the author of a derivative work (Bastet) can license his parts however he likes, such as the GPL. In some sense Bastet as a "whole" is licensed under GPL. The parts which come from petris are still copyright the petris authors, and are MIT/X11-licensed; the copyright file *must* reflect that. > I only need some orientation, in order to make bastet Debian > policy-compliant. > > Regards and thanks in advance, -- There are none so blind as those who will not see.
