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Re: long list of give away or orphaned packages



>On a related note, games.  Games are important.  Please please please dont
>reject someone who wants to package up a game.  Thats one of the things I
>like about debian, it has so many games.  I first got mirrormagic working
>under debian...  And I hope to see abuse.svga working again too now that
>he sources are available.  Games are the best and easiest way to have your
>first "real" package, and its the most exciting (for a new developer
>anyways ;))

And, right on cue...

Hi!  I subscribed a few days ago, (and have been somewhat overwhelmed
by the quantity of mail on this list; is there a digestified version?)
and would like to propose that I package up Inform, Frotz, and some of
the associated games.

Some background:  In the '80s, Infocom produced a lot of excellent
adventure games, and they published them all in portable, completely
architecture-independant 'story files'.  When you bought the game, you
got an interpreter and a story file, (although you normally didn't know
that).  Since then, various people have decyphered the story file
format and produced a compiler (Inform) to generate these files, and
interpreters (Frotz being one) to play them.

If we had Frotz, it would be simple to package up a large(ish) number
of the games available.

I suspect a lot of the games would have to go in contrib, as they don't
have their Inform source with them, and Inform itself would have to be
non-free, 'cause it has restrictions on profit-making.  I think Frotz
could go in the main distribution, but I'll have to check on that...

Oops, no: "Frotz is freeware: It may be used and distributed freely
provided no commercial profit is involved. (c) 1995, 1996 Stefan
Jokisch."

So, is anyone else working on any of this already?  Good/bad idea?

How should I go about approaching the authors to ask them to change the
licences for these programs (if I should, if fact, do that)?

Thanks,

--Charles Briscoe-Smith
PGP key fingerprint: 74 68 AB 2E 1C 60 22 94  B8 21 2D 01 DE 66 13 E2
White pages entry, including PGP key: <URL:http://alethea.ukc.ac.uk/wp?95cpb4>


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