On Sep 27, 2006, at 02:16, Evan Prodromou wrote:
I know that there are some Free Software games that use CC data elements(interstitial images, music, etc.) I wonder if any also use a game engine that has been ported to e.g. the PS/2? That's an interesting thought.
But is it good for Free Software to be ported to platforms that have been designed to deprive both developers and end users of freedom?
If a gaming platform requires FooBigCo to sign software before it runs, exercising freedom as in Free Software on that platform is de facto prevented on a desert island. However, if an iSuck player only played TPM files but anyone could convert non-TPM files to TPM files privately, requiring distribution to happen in a non-TPM format and requiring iSuck owners to apply TPM themselves wouldn't be any more onerous than the GPL allowing certain action only in private.
I find it strange that Debian is so vigorously defending this fringe use case. The anti-TPM language is designed to limit the freedom of a middle man so that the middle-man isn't allowed to limit downstream freedom. GPL is precedent that it can be free in the DFSG sense to limit the freedom of middle-men so that they aren't allowed to limit downstream freedom.
Since the CC licenses don't require distribution of the preferred form for making modification aka. source code, it is essential that downstream recipient can extract works for modification and redistribution without violating any law that protects TPM. I think that it makes sense for CC licenses to have anti-TPM language and I don't think that anti-TPM language should make a license non-free.
(More on this: http://hsivonen.iki.fi/free-anti-drm/ ) -- Henri Sivonen hsivonen@iki.fi http://hsivonen.iki.fi/