Re: source for artwork
Hi,
On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 10:08:37PM -0600, David Bate wrote:
> On Friday 21 February 2014 23:22:47 Markus Koschany wrote:
> > On 20.02.2014 17:04, Simon McVittie wrote:
> > [...]
> >
> > > 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?
>
> I think that this may actually be the case. Of course, it mostly
> depends upon why the comments in the original debian/copyright were put
> there, but the data in the upstream svn seems to be the same as in the
> debian source.
The reason I put those comments there is indeed that I do not believe
the content in redeclipse-data nor in the upstream SVN is the "preferred
for for modification" for many things.
I know for example that the music is created by different samples in
some likely (non-free) sequencer, and the preferred form of modification
would then be the samples and the sequencing metadata.
Some skyboxes are likewise created by modelling a landscape in some
(probably non-free) tool and then taking snapshots of this, so the
preferred form would be the landscape file and camera coordinates.
Some of the models (to my knowledge) only comes as a secondary exported
format, which is not as useful as the raw original files if you do
actually want to go in and modify them from the ground up.
Etc. etc...
>
> [...]
>
> > Another reason is my understanding of the current situation. I believe
> > this is not an ftpmaster issue because they have already accepted a
> > lot of similar packages in main, data that is mostly licensed under
> > CC-BY-SA. If a package like FreeOrion is accepted in main, Red
> > Eclipse should be there, too. As you have already acknowledged
> > yourself in this thread, it is nearly impossible to know whether data
> > files such as images are the preferred form of modification. I also
> > think this term is rather well understood in the case of software but
> > is often the subject of interpretation issues when it comes to
> > artwork.
> >
> > The ftpmasters seem to be aware of this controversy and grant us a
> > margin of discretion in regard to artwork and the preferred form of
> > modification question.
>
> I am not sure if a "margin of discretion" is even required here.
> Indeed, as far as I can tell, for both Red Eclipse and FreeOrion, the
> .pngs (for example) are exactly the preferred form that upstream chooses
> to make modifications to and so are the source. (Of course, please
> correct me if there are some other files around from which the .pngs etc
> are generated.)
>
> > I allege that the developers of Red Eclipse don't retain higher
> > quality artwork deliberately and that they share everything according
> > to their license agreement.
>
> I agree.
>
> [...]
>
> > I therefore ask all team members to voice their opinion and to support
> > my proposal to move Red Eclipse to the main section of the Debian
> > archive, since it consists of DFSG free software and artwork.
>
> I agree, but (just to be clear) not because I believe that debian should
> allow the non-preferred form of modification (I certainly do not believe
> this) but rather because, as far as I can tell, this is the preferred
> form of modification.
The Red Eclipse project itself does treat these "secondary sources" as
the preferred form, partly due to the fact that it might have been the
only format that they could get hold of, partly due to the inconvenient
size of carrying around the original sources for them, and partly due to
the fact that for much of the content, it is quite often the case that
it will never need to be modified at that level, it will either be
tweaked within the limits of the generated format, or completely
replaced.
I know that for some of this content, it would be possible to go around
asking the original contributors for original sources, but I also
strongly suspect that much of this content is just
lost/deleted/inaccessible, so such a process would (I think) result in
and extensive search, having to bother a large number of people, for a
goal which the Red Eclipse project community considers kind of
pointless, and the result of which few would likely use. And in the end,
since I do not believe it would yield a full source coverage, would
still not allow redeclipse-data in Debian main (given a need of "full
source" for artwork).
There are several packages currently in Debian main which has the exact
issues of "secondary sources" described above, and my impression is that
the attention to this has been raised lately, and that new packages fall
under much more heavy scrutiny (at least withing the Games Team, I can't
really make guesses for the ftpmasters) than some packages that are
already accepted in Debian.
But I also know that several game packages in Debian does a very nice
job of keeping proper sources, and hence, it's not an unpractical goal to
strive for. (It's just something that I have not felt being worthwhile
doing for Red Eclipse in particular.)
That is hopefully a more complete description of the reasons I have not
tried to push for redeclipse-data in main.
I myself is somewhat torn about the whole thing, since I can both see
the "noble goal" and "limited usefulness" sides of the whole thing. But
looking at it from a Debian perspective, I feel that maybe Debian should
rather be taking the "noble goal" standpoint here?
--
Martin Erik Werner <martinerikwerner@gmail.com>
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