Hi All,
Jason Spiro wrote:
First of all, thanks very much for releasing Frets on Fire under the
GPL. It's a great game, and we at Debian[1] would love to get it
included in our distro. But there are three licensing-related issues:
the fonts, the built-in songs, and the other data files.
I know that this licensing stuff is time-consuming and boring, and I
regret that it is taking up your time. But think of the reward at the
end: a fully Open Source FoF package, including code, graphics, and
music, that will be used by Linux users worldwide. :-)
I think it's everyone's benefit that the licensing issues around the
game are cleared up. I hope that we can reach an agreement that suits
everyone; I'd also very much like to see the game in Debian, as it's my
OS of choice :)
== Fonts ==
I don't know anything about fonts and licensing. But, I propose that,
for now, we design the Debian FoF package to use DFSG-free fonts. We
can look more into the fonts situation later. What do you think of
that idea?
I agree, DFSG-free fonts are the way to go. Technically there is no
problem, since the game can work with any Truetype fonts. The system is
built so that default and title fonts are expected to be "fancy" fonts
that only contain ASCII characters, while an more generic and plain
international font is used if the game language is switched away from
English.
== Built-in songs ==
How much does it cost for a Teosto permit? Perhaps nobody would be
too offended if we tried to raise money on the debian-user list[2] to
pay for the permit? I could make a small contribution as well.
First some background (Tommi, correct me if I'm wrong): Teosto[1] is an
organization that handles music licensing contracts for works created by
their members, i.e. composers, lyric writers, arrangers and music
publishers. Practically any musician wanting to benefit from their work
commercially needs to be a member of Teosto. Basically Teosto tracks the
usage of music licensed from it e.g. on the radio or television and
compensates its members accordingly.
The tricky part is that the membership agreement states that the
commercial and distribution rights of all works created by the composer,
even prior to joining, get automatically transferred to Teosto. Since
Tommi, our musician, is a member of Teosto, we can't give anyone
permission to distribute the songs from the game even though they are
our own creation.
Thankfully there is some light at the end of the tunnel, since Teosto is
about to change their term so that the distribution rights of game music
are exempt from their contract. In fact, we've recently gotten
permission from them to set the distribution rights for the music the
game to our liking. The bad part is that apparently for game music to be
game music it really needs to be only distributed with the game, and
since GPL grants much more than that, it is not applicable in this
situation.
So basically, we need to have a license that only allows for
distribution with the game and forbids commercial usage of the songs.
What sort of licenses are used in other free games?
== Other data, including tutorial ==
Is it possible you could get the other data, including the tutorial,
relicensed under the GPL? This would simplify things, as it is
unclear whether Creative Commons Attribution-licensed work can go in
the Debian "main" repository. Using the GPL would simplify things for
us. If this relicensing would be difficult, let me know; there are
other licensing options.
The other data can be relicensed GPL and we'll do that for our next
release. The tutorial is still a bit of a grey area (is it a song?), but
GPL is okay for the other data files.
- Sami
[1]
http://www.teosto.fi/teosto/webpages.nsf/mainpages/etusivu_englanti?opendocument
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