Re: source for artwork
[Changing the Subject, because we've really started two threads here.]
> How do you know that all artwork in OpenArena is accompanied by the
> preferred form of modification?
I don't. I put reasonable effort into finding corresponding sources,
and nobody has told me about any preferred forms for modification that
aren't present in the package. I think that's the best we can
realistically do in projects that don't routinely auto-build assets
from source.
In the case of OA, upstream has a "source" area in their svn
repository which contains source files for a subset of the textures,
models, etc.; and if we don't redistribute those, we're arguably
violating the GPL (not that OA's copyright holders seem to care much
about that interpretation - they don't accompany their releases with a
snapshot of the "source" textures etc.). In the absence of any
information to the contrary, I've assumed that the remaining textures,
models, etc. are their own preferred form for modification. If people
know otherwise, they should open bugs.
> The same rules that are deemed appropriate for Red Eclipse are not
> applied to all games in the archive. I can give you countless
> examples where upstream prefers lossless png or even bmp files as
> the preferred form of modification.
I had read redeclipse's debian/copyright as saying that its maintainer
knows (or at least strongly believes) that a preferred form for
modification exists, and that it is not included. If I'm wrong about
that, and we are in fact distributing the most modifiable form that
the project is aware of, it might well be OK for main. Ask the
maintainer and the ftpmasters?
If the maintainer does know about a preferred form for modification
that is not distributed in Debian, the fact that redeclipse is under
CC-BY-SA (as opposed to OA's GPL) means we are not required by the
copyright license to ship the *preferred* form for modification, only
*some* modifiable form. However, I'm under the impression that the
DFSG as interpreted by the ftpmasters (which is the interpretation
that matters when deciding what can go in main) does specifically
require the preferred form for modification.
If it had passed, https://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_004 would have
contradicted that interpretation, and validated yours. It says:
Recognizing [some stuff], the Debian Project:
[...]
B. Strongly recommends that all non-programmatic works distribute
the form that the copyright holder or upstream developer would
actually use for modification. Such forms need not be distributed
in the orig.tar.gz (unless required by license) but should be made
available on upstream websites and/or using Debian project
resources.
However, that GR failed (the proposed resolution was defeated by
Further Discussion). I'm sure there are interminable mailing list
threads from the time; I wasn't a DD back then, and I can't remember
whether I was involved in the project at all.
If you believe that modifiable but non-preferred-form files should be
allowed in main, then the proposers of that GR agreed with you, and
the people to convince are the ftpmasters and the project as a whole,
not me or the games team. However, I would suggest that unless
something has changed since that GR was discussed, the project is
unlikely to thank you for proposing another.
S
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