ITP: moria and questions about third party documentation
I announced a preliminary ITP for moria/umoria in debian-mentors in May
(it was originally ITP'ed by someone else a very long time ago, but they
agreed to cede the package to me). This is the "official" mention in
debian-devel, as well as a request for input on some issues that I've been
unable to resolve.
Downloaded from: ftp://ftp.greyhelm.com/pub/Games/Moria/source/
Umoria home page: http://www-math.bgsu.edu/~grabine/moria.html
Umoria is a roguelike game that has remained essentially unchanged since
1994. It is derived from "Moria", which is the source of the first question
I have. Although what I am packaging is properly called "umoria", the
binary is called "moria", and just about everyone refers to it as "moria".
So, should I call the package and the library directories "umoria", while
calling the binary "moria"? This seems inconsistent to me and likely to
cause confusion ("why is there no /usr/share/doc/moria?"). I also
considered renaming the binary (but then people used to calling the binary
"moria" might not be able to find it), and putting symlinks everywhere (but
that is definitely messy). It was suggested to me that perhaps I could just
change the package name to "moria", which doesn't seem unreasonable to me,
as long as I make the first line in the description field announce that this
is "actually" Umoria 5.5.2. Does anyone have a better suggestion?
Secondly, I have been toying with the possibility of including a spoiler
file with the game (Mike Marcelais' "The Moria Spoilers" revision 1.20 from
1994), since I referred to it a lot when first playing the game, and it's
becoming scarce now. I don't see any mention of third-party documentation
in the Debian docs, so I assume that's ok, and the current maintainer of
umoria has no problems with it. Unfortunately, I can't contact the author
of the spoiler file (since the published e-mail address has inexplicably
died within the last 6 years), but the copyright explicitly permits "that
this file may be included in the distribution for any version of Moria for
which this document would apply." (see below for the copyright files)
The problem is that this spoiler file is not DFSG-free (unless the rules
for documentation are different). While umoria is also going to have to go
into non-free (it forbids for-profit distribution), the current maintainer
has said he has no problems with changing the licence as long as the
copyright holders agree (he is currently trying to get me contact addresses
for the copyright holders/original authors). Thus, there is a possibility
(albeit a small one) that umoria will be able to move into main, but my
understanding is that it won't be able to do so without discarding the
spoiler file. In this case, is it preferable at the moment to package the
spoiler file (a mere 45k gzipped) separately, or to package it together and
remove it if umoria can be made DFSG-free, or should I just leave it out and
avoid the trouble since it really isn't critical anyways?
I should probably also mention that I'm not a developer (not even in the
queue yet -- I'm waiting for potato so that I can get a real gnupg and a
real key), although I have a sponsor. We were unable to come to a decision
on the spoiler issue so I thought I'd post here for a consensus (or rather,
suggestions!) I *am* subscribed to this list, so replies here or personally
if you prefer are welcome.
Rene, making a mountain out of ... well you know
---------------------------- C U T H E R E ----------------------------
Copyrights:
(from moria source files:)
Copyright (c) 1989-94 James E. Wilson, Robert A. Koeneke
This software may be copied and distributed for educational, research,
and not for profit purposes provided that this copyright and statement
are included in all such copies.
(from moria man page:)
Moria may be copied and modified freely, but may
not be sold or marketed IN ANY FORM without the permis-
sion and written consent of the authors Robert Alan
Koeneke and James E. Wilson. We retain all copyrights
to this program, in either the original or modified
forms, and no violation, deletion, or change of the
copyright notice is allowed. Furthermore, we will have
no liability or responsibility to any user with respect
to loss or damage caused directly or indirectly by this
program.
June 25, 1994
(from spoiler file:)
Copyright Mike Marcelais, 1993, 1994. All rights reserved.
This document (hereafter referred to as the "public" version of the Moria
Spoiler File, or just "the spoilers") is copyrighted material and is *not*
in the public domain. Permission is hereby granted to you (the user) to
distribute copies of this document, subject to the following conditions:
1) The spoilers may be electronically distributed only in unmodified form.
Any such distribution must contian the complete document, including the
title page, copyright notices, and this section.
2) The spoilers may be distributed in other than electronic form,
(specifically, in the form of a printout) only as a direct dump of the
complete file. However, the addition of multiple fonts, line drawings,
graphics, margins, column formats, etc is allowed as long as the
complete document is provided.
3) No fee may be charged for the copying or distribution of the spoilers
other than compensation which shall match the cost of materials for that
distribution (i.e., you cannot charge for the time/labor), not to exceed
$5 US. (Examples: If you were to print the spoilers out for a friend
and the paper cost you $0.25, you could ask your friend for $0.25 - not
a penny more.)
4) The spoilers may not be distributed free in conjunction with any other
product without the written consent of the author. The only exception
is that this file may be included in the distribution for any version of
Moria for which this document would apply.
---------------------------- C U T H E R E ----------------------------
Rene
--
+ -//- (Rene Weber is rene_autoreply@elvenlord.com) -//- +
| "If we were a society of cats, a trashcan might symbolize 'lunch' rather |
| than 'discard files'" - Wayne Greenwood |
+ -//- WWW page: http://satori.home.dhs.org/~rweber/ -//- +
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