Bug#383316: FretsOnFire
Hi Miriam,
The various parts of fretsonfire have various licensing issues, as
explained below. (Unfortunately my explanation is pretty long.) Is
it ok if I discuss relicensing with upstream (I will CC the Debian
BTS) or do you prefer to do it? Cheers, --Jason
== The current licensing situation ==
The fretsonfire licensing info is included in the fretsonfire tarball.
There is also a copy on the web.[0] There are three categories of
data in fretsonfire: songs, fonts, and miscellaneous data.
The songs are non-Free: "Distribution, modification or commercial
usage of the songs is not allowed."
The font international.ttf is Debian-free. But title.ttf is
non-Free[1] And default.ttf is non-Free too[2].
I am not sure about the miscellaneous data. I assume the authors
wanted to license it under the full Creative Commons Attribution 2.5
license legal code[3] which does not seem to be Debian-free[4].
== What to do about the non-free fonts ==
I don't know anything about fonts and Free Software, so I don't know
what to propose. Can we get title.ttf relicensed under a Free
license? Can we convert the title text into image format? And will
things work OK if we substitute another font for default.ttf?
== What to do about the rest ==
I propose we politely ask upstream if they could get the license for
the songs and miscellaneous data changed to the GPL. This would make
things very simple.
If not, perhaps they could GPL the tutorial and miscellaneous data,
and allow the songs to be freely used and noncommercially distributed
by anyone. AFAIK this would allow the main game to get into main, and
the songs to get into Debian non-free. It would also allow many other
free Unixes to redistribute the game and the songs.
I sincerely hope Debian, Fedora, and others will be able to
redistribute the songs, as they are an important part of the game.
(Many of the songs on the fansites are very difficult, so it is much
easier to learn to play fretsonfire if the official songs are
included.)
== Footnotes ==
[0] at http://louhi.kempele.fi/~skyostil/uv/fretsonfire/dist/latest-src/copying.txt
[1] Based on text inside the font file itself:
/tmp/FretsOnFire/data $ strings title.ttf | grep -C3 created
name
post7(6V
prep
created by Astigmatic One Eye
1997 a div. of CAV OP Studios
http://www.astigmatic.com/ mailto:astigma@astigmatic.com
mSeaweed Fire AOE
[2] Based on text inside the font file itself:
tmp/FretsOnFire/data $ strings default.ttf | grep copyright
Typeface and data copyright 1996 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights
Reserved.Seriffic GrungeBoldMicrosoft Georgia BoldSeriffic
GrungeVersion 2.05Georgia-BoldGeorgia is a trademark of Microsoft
Corporation.
registered copyright trademark
[3] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/legalcode
[4] http://evan.prodromou.name/Debian_Creative_Commons_Workgroup_report
--
Jason Spiro: computer consulting with a smile.
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