Revised version to go to the SFLC. I removed question 7 (inquiry by the FSF). Is that what you meant, Per?
------ Dear Sir or Madam, I am writing to you on behalf of the Warzone Resurrection Project (http://www.wz2100.net/, http://gna.org/projects/warzone/), since we have questions regarding the license under which the source and data to the game Warzone 2100 were released. (I'll repeat the most important ones at the end again.) The game Warzone 2100 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warzone_2100) was developed by Pumpkin Studios and published by Eidos in 1999. After ten patches to the game, Pumpkin Studios ceased development on Warzone 2100, and was disbanded by Eidos in early 2000. Pumpkin Studios then reformed into Pivotal Games (http://www.pivotalgames.com/). The fan community produced two further patches. Feeling that they could not realize their plans for the game without access to the source code, the community started petitioning Pumpkin Studios to release the source code. On December 6, 2004 Alex McLean, Lead Developer of the game, uploaded an archive file to a community member's FTP server. This archive, downloadable at http://www.3ddownloads.com/liberatedgames/Warzone2100.rar, contains the source code to the game and several utilities (as far as they could release it), and a copy of the game stripped of only the music (which were CD audio tracks in the commercial release) and most of the larger video sequences telling the story of the single player campaign. In addition to that, a gpl.txt (version 2) and a readme.txt were included. I'll quote the readme.txt in full here: ******************************************************************************* "Warzone 2100 Source & Data 1) These source and data files are provided as is with no guarantees. 2) No assistance or support will be offered or given. 3) Everything you will require to make a build of the game should be here. If it isn't, you'll have to improvise(*). 4) None of us here at Pivotal Games are in a position to be able to offer any help with making this work. 5) This source code is released under the terms of the GNU Public License. Please be sure to read the entirety of this license but the summary is that you're free to do what you want with the source subject to making the full source code freely available in the event of the distribution of new binaries. Finally, the primary motivation for this release is for entertainment and educational purposes. On the subject of the latter, don't be surprised to see some pretty gnarly old-school C code in here; the game was a classic but large areas of the code aren't pretty; OO design and C++ evangelists beware! We haven't spent any time cleaning the code or making if pretty - what you see is what you're getting, warts n' all. Thankyou to Jonathan Kemp of Eidos Europe for permitting the release. Thanks also to Frank Lamboy for assistance with the release and for campaigning along with many many others over the years for the source to be made available. The correspondence, online petitions and persistence made this possible. We were constantly amazed at the community support for Warzone even after all this time; it's nice to be able to give something back, assuming you can get it to compile...;-) 6th December 2004 Alex M - ex Pumpkin Studios (Eidos) (*) Except FMV and music..." ******************************************************************************* The archive was put together by Alex McLean (as far as I know) without spending a lot of time on it, since they were busy with their newer games (thus also the refusal of any help or support), they basically just put everything together and added the gpl.txt and the readme.txt files. Now this was a bit unlucky. The readme.txt states in 1) "These source and data files are provided as is with no guarantees", but 5) says "This source code is released under the terms of the GNU Public License." As the source archive contains both source code and data, this seems to indicate that only the source was released under the GPL. This leaves the question about the data. Is "as is with no guarantees" some kind of license itself (ie. can we just assume an implicit "... and any restrictions" after that)? Parts of the game are implemented in a scripting language. Is that source or data? The release was intended as a present to the fan community, so there was no intention of keeping anything closed (except for a few code parts like the movie codec, sound and networking which were licensed, and the music and movies themselves, probably just for size reasons). But to legally be able to distribute the whole game, the licensing situation has to be resolved in some way. Distributions (Debian as a prime example) are quite wary of those licensing issues, and need a legally unobjectionable license. A previous debian-legal discussion (http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-legal@lists.debian.org/msg30913.html) resulted in "probably everything is GPL, but you have to ask the author to be sure." Unfortunately, until now, none of our inquiries was answered. Some of those were done by Frank Lamboy (mentioned in the readme.txt, who had contact with Pumpkin Studios since the release of the game and was involved in the creation of the ten patches to the game, as well as being cruical to the petitions for the source), but even he received no answer. Now he has said (http://www.realtimestrategies.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=15347&highlight=#15347) that "the legal rights to the WZ Cam content were turned-over by Eidos to the ex-Pumpkins and they inturn have liberated it". Is this possible? So now we have to contact them for any clarifications on the license? Does it make sense to contact Eidos on that matter? (Not that they'd have answered any past inquiries; they have been bought by SCi, and at least Jonathan Kemp isn't employed there anymore, so it might be quite difficult to reach someone knowledgeable on this matter.) This is all quite frustrating, since several members of the fan community have stated that the intention of the release was to free the game, and it's probably just an unlucky wording of the readme.txt. I am quite sure there will be no legal action against us (there's no indication anyone will bother, and with the frequent inquiries, they must be quite aware of our project), we just need a legal clarification for Distributions to be able to include Warzone (and for hosting the game on gna.org, though they haven't complained yet). Questions: 1. Does the readme.txt give us any indication on what license the data was released under, ie. does "as is with no guarantees" give us any permissions (like an implicit "with no restrictions", since they don't mention any)? 2. Is there a way to distribute the game data without further word of the copyright holders? 3. Is it possible for Eidos to transfer the copyright of the game to the Ex-Pumpkin employees to do as they please? 4. If so, what proof of that is necessary and who has that? 5. Does it make sense to try to contact Eidos on this matter? 6. Any other possible solutions? How shall we proceed? I intend to post your replies to our mailing list (warzone-dev@gna.org) to keep the other members updated; if you do not want your answer publicised, please state so clearly. Thanks for your help, and if you have any further questions, don't hesitate to contact me. I, along with a very active Warzone 2100 community, await any response you are able to offer Yours faithfully, Dennis Schridde For the Warzone Resurrection Project
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