On Sat, 10 Jul 2010 03:36:35 pm David White wrote: > Unlike the GNU Go release on the app store, which was not endorsed by the > maintainers of GNU Go, Wesnoth on the app store has been developed with the > endorsement of myself and the active Wesnoth development community. > > We believed at the time that development began -- and still believe today -- > that we are acting within the GPL given the following factors: > > - The full source code is released and available. > - It is entirely permissible for anyone to compile the game from source and > distribute it using their own distribution mechanism to people with an > iPhone device. There may be some barriers to distribution but these barriers > are entirely technical due to the "walled garden" nature of the iPhone.
I want recipients of my software to receive all the benefits that I have received. I want them to be able to mod, share and experiment with the software, and this is reflected in my preference for the GPL. It's not really relevant *how* people are prevented from doing so, except to the questions "Does it matter?" and "Can I do anything to prevent it?". So, does it matter? As a software developer, a machine on which the owner cannot choose what software to create and run is anathema. As a free software developer, a machine which restricts free software is particularly disturbing. > It should be noted that release of Wesnoth on the app store has had some > significant benefits both for the Wesnoth community and for FLOSS gaming as > a whole: > > - Wesnoth has obtained significant revenue streams which have been used to > fund the development of art and other content in areas in which Wesnoth > needs improvement to compete with commercial offerings. I honestly didn't realize you needed money. There's no donate button on wesnoth.org that I could find, for example :( > - FLOSS gaming has been exposed to a significant audience which might be > otherwise unaware of it. I browsed the page on the Apple website. People think it's a great game for $5. I don't see any exposure to "floss gaming". Can you back your statement up? > - Other FLOSS games are now also interested in distribution on the same > platorm. Strengthening this platform seems self-defeating to me. There are other platforms which don't have this restriction; is there a convenient way to distribute apps for jailbroken iPhones for example? But so far you've convinced me that this is a violation that matters. It's not going to take you that long to rewrite any code I have in-tree (see the SVN logs). I suggest you should also make your licensing exception clear in the tree, and try to contact developers to see if they agree. Rusty. _______________________________________________ Wesnoth-dev mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev
