[ Closed ] New license (Page 1 of 2)

Thanks for explanation! Now I'm happy, no need for .theprodukkt

It's mostly to communicate a point. If anyone earns money on the game, it should be us and not someone who just prints it on cds and sells them. Btw, that was a recommended sentence from some laywer guy

Well, but it's OK for websites, distributions and gaming magazines to make money from your game? If a magazine adds it to it's DVD, your game adds value to potential buyers, thats $. Same goes for distributions.

The most direct way money can be earned from your game is by offering it for download:

Example 1.
Example 2.

Don't underestimate how much money such sites can generate from you content just by advertisements. Probably a two-digit ammount of $ for each 1.000 Downloads.

Your current license does not prevent anyone from profiting from your product. Even if someone would put it on CD and sell it, he could add for example Wormux and it would be fine for the license.

What your license does prevent, though, is support from the Free Software Community (don't confuse it with the Open Source folks). For example, Debian won't add your game to it's distribution due to the license (it is a violation of the Debian Free Software guidelines). Since Debian is the base for a lot of other distributions, your missing a great chance just because you put that point 4 in your new license.

My advice: Remove point 4. Nothing bad will happen, you will get more support and appreciation, though.

Fire that guy and get a lawyer who is familiar with free software
And let him read the opinion of Source Mage games guru, ruskie posted by astsmtl.

Yeah, I'm starting to agree with this. Finding a license that pleases everyone's particular needs or ideology has so far detracted more time and energy from our actual development work than we have received from people contributing usable code. Maybe the balance will change down the road, but I'm leaning towards agreeing with matricks at this point.

Can I ask everyone to stay away from the hypothetical doomsday scenarios and retain some rationality? As long as we're actively developing the game, most of these points are moot anyway. If and when we decide to move on to other projects, we'll address the issue of finding a suitable post-mortem license, and we can have many of these discussions then.

Otherwise, we'll be forced to re-evaluate the benefits of open licenses, since I don't particularly approve of some of the attitudes that surround this discussion.

Okey, again you not reading the license correctly. Paying for distribution is okey, you are paying for the distribution and not the game itself. The only reason why you should bother with point 4 is if you intend to sell the game with profit. The license is derived from zlib/libpng with point 4 being the only addition. That addition was made so people just couldn't sell the game and to communicate the point that if anyone should sell the game it's us.

I will refer to this wikipedia article about this whole debate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_of_the_bikeshed

It's fucking pointless, takes my energy and motivation for making the game. I wanna make a good game, instead I'm discussing trivial questions to non-existing problems. I've discussed this in GREAT LENGTH before choosing license that fits what we want. I don't care a shit about marketing! We have done almost nothing to promote the game. I personally don't care about it. If it's good enough it will spread itself. The game could have been closed source for all that I care and perhaps it should have stayed that way to avoid all license/FSF/OSS/whatever-junkies that I'm getting pretty sick off dealing with.

EDIT: the distribution thing could be clarified, but if you intend to do something like that, you could just ask us.

That's just knitpicking. Demanding payment for distribution is not far from selling. Actually very very close to it. I could charge $10 for Emacs or $10 for the distribution of Emacs. Absolutely no big deal and the FSF guys know that their products can be "sold"

I do not intend to sell your game. And if I would want to sell it, I would not need to ask you because your license allows the selling of your game (packaged with another game, for example)

I just like free software. Yours isn't, but very close to it. It's sad, but that's the way things go...

Only to clarify two things:
1. There would be no fuss if you would have chosen original zlib/libpng.
2. Your addition does not prevent anyone from selling your game, it only generates negative fuss that nobody wants.
3. If Point 4 is really just for pointing out that no one should sell the game except for you, a "please don't sell our game" on the homepage would have the same effect.
4. No one will sell your game, anyways because it's available for free. If someone tries to, he will have only little or no profits and stop the endeavour in no time.

@Scott, when they say "distribution" they refer to it as a GNU/Linux distribution, like Red Hat or Debian.

No, they refer to GNU/Linux disrtibutions.

If you don't understand that line read it again and again and again till you'll understand it.

I just pointed that he is talking about distribution. However matricks will say what he meant.

And again read that line: "You are paying for the distribution and not the game itself."
I don't see sense if he talked about distributing in this line.

Hint: It reads "the distribution", not "distribution". Read again.

If you don't like the license, don't play the game.

kkthxbye.

I personally don't see why a disagreement about this is taken as personally by the developers as to get so angry.  It's not the first time I see this happening, this seems to be quite common especially among some game developers, and it also makes us working in the packaging and distribution of Free Software among the different distributions tired. At least me. I sometimes just don't start packaging a game simply for not asking the developers for clarification of the licenses, or I don't share my point of view with them -which might be right or wrong, but having different points of view involved is always a good thing- because I don't feel like fighting (I'm not talking about this game in concrete, I'm not the maintainer of this game, I'm just talking in general). I don't see why some developers are so aggressive towards different point of views coming from maintainers, as if we were the enemies or if they considered we wanted to attack them or their games or something like that. Perhaps you're angry about other people having different points of view about the license, but it makes me sad feeling that some developers seem to consider us distribution maintainers more as the enemy than being in the same team, and that sharing our point of view with them -some of us have quite a lot of experience with different licenses- is totally unwelcome. Sorry if I'm being so aggressive in this reply, I'm just tired of this situations. Oh, as a matter of fact, Debian considers that license free, so don't worry about it.