Hello! I think that the Freeciv project should do a full review of copyrights, trademarks and patents that it might infringe from the various Civilization versions released by Firaxis/Microprose. I don't think that the project violates any of there rights, but it would be better to review these issues thoroughly just to be sure.
The Freeciv FAQ mentions this issue: http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ "There have been debates on this and the honest answer seems to be: we don't know. The link to the debates on this issue is broken. Perhaps other people know more about these issues than me, but here are some things that might be worth checking further. * Trademarks: "Sid Meier's Civilization IV, Civ, Civilization, 2K Games, the 2K logo, Firaxis Games, the Firaxis Games logo, and Take-Two Interactive Software are all trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc." from http://www.civilization.com/ Does Freeciv violate the Civ trademark there? * Copyrights: The FAQ states that "Freeciv doesn't contain any actual material from the commercial Civilization games." However, it would still be a good idea to check that Freeciv's technology trees, unit lists, buildings and game rules aren't too similar to the Civilization ones that they violate any copyrights. It is obvious that Freeciv has "borrowed" a lot of ideas from Civ, but are these ideas intellectual properties that someone owns, and that are restricted from re-use? * Patents: I haven't found any relevant patents, but haven't looked much yet. Does any company have any relevant patents in this area? I would suggest that these issues are checked, and that other potential intellectual property rights are investigated. If there are any areas where Freeciv is in a grey-area with regards to using ideas from Civ, then I would suggest that these are replaced with new content. What do you think about looking closer at these issues? Looking over these issues can give the Freeciv project, and potential Freeciv contributors the confidence to know that they are not violating any copyright laws and will not recieve any cease and desist letters from Sid. Regards, Andreas R. _______________________________________________ Freeciv-dev mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/freeciv-dev
