Hello, (Since this mail ended up a bit lengthy; the main gist is that I will likely stop working on the AssaultCube package.) I recently sat down starting to convert the copyright file of assaultcube-data to machine readable... And ended up questioning if I really wanted to work on this package. (The new format has a great (though annoying) way of highlighting things...) First of all, ac-data is non-free and will remain so (due to NonCommercial, mostly), no illusions there, what I'm questioning is if it is even suitable for non-free... What holds it together at the moment is that: 1. Anyone can redistribute AC as-is, or: ### You may re-compress the AssaultCube package(s) using different archival formats (i.e. zip/tgz/rpm/deb/dmg). ### 2. The Debian Project has received a revocable permission to make changes provided: ### Any changes made to the AssaultCube package(s), must only be made for the intention of making it easier to package AssaultCube for Debian in what you deem to be the most appropriate way. ### These above are only snippets which I feel are somewhat representative, see the original http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/pkg-games/non-free/packages/trunk/assaultcube-data/debian/copyright-orig?view=co and my half-finished conversion (starting from the end) http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/pkg-games/non-free/packages/trunk/assaultcube-data/debian/copyright?view=co for the whole ordeal. I do think that just this does manage to hold it together enough to be fit for non-free, though barely. What I see as the issue is that a lot of the content included in AssaultCube does not contain a valid license, or the license is questionable. The fallback of this would be to trust the developers of AssaultCube to have checked the content and confirmed that it is possible to at least distribute it under the main AC license, as noted above. Only, if I think about it, I don't..: ### This texture was lifted from flickr by drunkenM and then modified. It had the below license assigned to it: . You are free to use this texture in your own works, as a texture for 3D artwork, for derivative works, for all purposes including commercial. ### ^ No original permission to redistribute. ### Recorded by makkE and/or partially reprocessed from various royalty free or free to modify samples (thanks to MitaMAN for gathering resources). . Note: Shame on me I didn't keep track of my exact sources here. If you recognize any sound or components of a sound that has copyright issues, please contact me so I can solve it. Thanks, makkE. ### ^ Best intentions, but is that enough for the ftp-masters? And there are many many more where no license is given, I've noted this with ### License: No individual license. Comment: See main AssaultCube package license. ### in my converted d/copyright. So, my thinking at this point is that yes, it might be possible to hunt down all the relevant people (inside and outside of AC) and ask for a license clarification and make the package non-free-fit. But having already done that for redeclipse-data, this is something I do not want to do again. In particular since I do not play AC, nor have much interest in it apart from it being part of the cubeverse (i.e. sharing the same origins as Red Eclipse). So, just to give you a heads up, I'm quite likely to abaindon working on this package in the near future. If anyone would be interested in picking it up, I'd be very happy to help out with some of this work, but I don't intend to drive it. -- Martin Erik Werner <martinerikwerner@gmail.com>
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