Re: Choosing a license for Frets on Fire songs

[Don Armstrong <don@debian.org>]

First off, thanks to all involved for working through this; legal
stuff is annoying, but getting it right early makes it all worthwhile
in the end.

On Tue, 27 Mar 2007, Jason Spiro wrote:
> We have a question about the default songs for the guitar-simulation
> game Frets On Fire.  (We would like to get the songs into main if
> possible; otherwise, into contrib or non-free.  But we need to satisfy
> the Finnish music licensing organization Teosto. 

> I wonder if we could draft a license that would fulfill this
> condition?

There's really no point to drafting such a license, because it would
not be acceptable for main, and more to the point, Teosto would have
to vet it. Teosto's lawyers should really be the ones spending time
and money to do so. (After all, that's what they're paid to do.)

What needs to happen for the work to go in main is that Teosto needs
to grant for whatever works that they own the copyright for the
ability to distribute them under MIT/Expat (or similar) in addition to
whatever license they'd use for uses of the work which are not in
compliance with MIT/Expat.

If it's decided that Teosto cannot be convinced to be slightly less
antiquated in their copyright doctrine, then the alternative is to use
whatever standard "game only" redistribution license Teosto uses (or
will write) and then distribute them in non-free with game itself in
contrib or main, depending on whether it depends upon the songs or has
enough songs included to work without them.


Don Armstrong

[You'll notice that I didn't mention the CC; there is still some
debate about its freeness, and if possible, I'd strongly suggest using
a less problematic license like MIT/Expat or the GPL.]
-- 
NASCAR is a Yankee conspiracy to keep you all placated so the South
won't rise again.
 -- http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=327

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