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Liberating games: low hanging fruit

PostPosted: 06 Jul 2019, 19:41
by drummyfish
EDIT: the ASCII version of KeeperRL has been liberated!

So I just wanted to add KeeperRL to libregamewiki. Their advertisement makes it looks like the gratis version (ASCII version without the commercial assets) is free -- they state it on their website and the whole repo that can be compiled and played is licensed GPLv2. However, that is not true because, as I have found, there is this sneaky little line hidden in COPYING-MEDIA:

Every file located in directory 'data_free' is granted under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA licence.


So the game is non-free, but it's just because of a few GUI elements and configs that could easily be replaced (or maybe even just deleted). Only a relatively small effort would be required to make the game free.

I am creating this thread firstly in order to highlight this fact so that there is a bigger chance someone will liberate the game, and secondly to ask you whether you know about other similar low hanging fruit projects like this. I'll start a list of these games, which I will keep updating.

the list:

  • KeeperRL: The gratis ASCII-only version is free except a few NC GUI assets and configs. liberated by the devs!
  • Meteorite: Only a font is non-free!
  • Tuxemon: A few tiles are under a weird "XYG" license, whose text I haven't found anywhere.

Re: Liberating games: low hanging fruit

PostPosted: 10 Jul 2019, 00:40
by Hythlodaeus
Hi there,

Thank you for pointing out this! I will update the article I have written for Freegamer accordingly.

I think that the sound thing to do here would be to contact the developers and ask them to relicense the NC elements to plain BY-SA.

Many sound reasons can be presented for this, for example, the desire to submit the game to the Debian repos. I think the devs should be kind enough on this matter, given they're already offering the game gratis and with libre code.

Re: Liberating games: low hanging fruit

PostPosted: 10 Jul 2019, 00:54
by drummyfish
Yes, your article is how I came across that game :-) Contacting the devs is definitely a good thing to try as a solution, a simple way can be creating an issue in the GitHub repository. I've done this a lot of times and it often leads to me painstakingly reiterating and explaining over and over exactly why I am asking for it, why that is important, sometimes even arguments arise. I've kind of ran out of energy to doing that, but I'll be glad if someone else does.

Re: Liberating games: low hanging fruit

PostPosted: 10 Jul 2019, 06:52
by Julius

Re: Liberating games: low hanging fruit

PostPosted: 10 Jul 2019, 10:05
by Hythlodaeus
Ok, so the developer was around and actually seemed committed to make the game 100% free, so the NC clause might have been a misunderstanding in this regard. I'll try to contact him to see what can be done. :)

Re: Liberating games: low hanging fruit

PostPosted: 11 Jul 2019, 19:57
by Wuzzy
Nice! I suggest to add a wiki page for low-hanging fruit on the LibreGameWiki as well so they don't get lost.

Also, PLEASE try to give any improvements to upstream FIRST, before even thinking about a fork. :)

Re: Liberating games: low hanging fruit

PostPosted: 15 Jul 2019, 02:03
by Hythlodaeus
Hello,

I just contacted the author of keeperrl and he changed the license to CC-BY-SA in 5 mins. Please check the updated copying media file in the repo for reference.

You can now add the ASCII version of the game to libregamewiki and submit a repo inclusion request to the Debian Games Team. :)

Re: Liberating games: low hanging fruit

PostPosted: 15 Jul 2019, 16:36
by drummyfish
Wow, this is really great, thank you very much :) I'll check it out further and create the article. Will also probably start playing it.

Re: Liberating games: low hanging fruit

PostPosted: 15 Jul 2019, 17:41
by drummyfish
I've created the article, feel free to expand: https://libregamewiki.org/KeeperRL.

Re: Liberating games: low hanging fruit

PostPosted: 16 Jul 2019, 12:12
by Hythlodaeus
Suggestion:

With some effort one could to try to adapt the supercomplete Dawnlike tileset by DragonDePlatino as replacement graphics.

Re: Liberating games: low hanging fruit

PostPosted: 17 Jul 2019, 05:12
by drummyfish

Re: Liberating games: low hanging fruit

PostPosted: 17 Jul 2019, 10:34
by Hythlodaeus
I would consider trying dawnlike first, because not only it looks better, it actually has character animations and it definitely covers all of KeeperRL's needs.