Maelstrom Copyright

[Christoph Baumann <cgb@debian.org>]

On Fri, Mar 24, 2000 at 02:16:44PM +0100, Richard Braakman wrote:
> > It states:
> > "The artwork and sounds used by Maelstrom are copyright Ambrosia Software
> > (http://www.ambrosiasw.com) and may not be redistributed separately from
> > the Maelstrom public GPL release."
> > 
> > As GPL says that anything derived from GPLed source has to be GPLed again
> > the sentence above complies with GPL, doesn't it?
> 
> Not really.  What is "The Maelstrom public GPL release"?  It hinges on
> the definition of that phrase.  If it means "The tarfile on our site",

The source and the binaries compiled from it are GPL, but all the stuff
ending up in /usr/lib/games/maelstrom seems to be under a different
copyright.

> then it's very non-free.  If it means "Anything derived from the
> Maelstrom package", then it's meaningless (which is okay for distribution,
> is confusing).

I'm confused about Ambrosia's policy. The copyright note in the maelstrom
source restricts the distribution of the game graphics so it may only be
distributed with the maelstrom source or binaries. But looking on
Ambrosia's web site there are lots of add-ons i.e. tampered graphics and
sounds, contributed by lots of different people. So on the one hand they
encourage the distribution of separate artworks, but restrict it on the
other. Ahhh, this sucks...


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* Christoph Baumann                                          *
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