The Dark Mod

[es20490446e]

The Dark Mod seems unlisted on the wiki, in case you liked to include it.

By the way I created a packager for it.

[Julius]

Thanks for letting us know

Some more info here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/c ... _packager/

Not sure why it isn't listed on the Libre Game Wiki, but it might be because of non-free media licensing.

[es20490446e]

License

[Lyberta]

Deleted.

[Wuzzy]

Yeah, I have asked about the media license in their forums years ago, shortly after 1.0 came out, and yes, it was -NC and from what I have heared it already seemed impossible to change at the time. Becaue many artists were involved and they have (mostly) disappaered even back then (but I'm not sure if they actually disappeared). And today it's probably even “more impossible”, if you know what I mean. You know the drill: Basically convince all artists to relicense their work without the -NC. Yeah, good luck with that.

The real frustrating part? Before 1.0, they had non-free media before, but with a copyright they didn't own. Or it was the engine used media from another game and so they could only distribute the engine, without the media. IIRC, similar situation like with early OpenTTD. So they recreated ALL the artwork so they can have the copyright. Sadly, they decided for -NC. That's so extremely frustrating.
I wish I would have heard of the project earlier, when they started to replace all the media so I could talk to them about licensing stuff. But I came too late. Far too late.

AFAIK the engine alone is under a free software license, however. But that is, of course, not the full game, so The Dark Mod, sadly, cannot qualify as free software.

Basically, to “liberate” The Dark Mod, someone has to recreate all the artwork … ONCE AGAIN. xD Yeah, copyright is !!!FUN!!!

[es20490446e]

Big mistake.

[Julius]

I didn't follow the discussion about it for the DarkMod, but in other projects that did similar things in the past it was a major factor of discontent with art contributors (often especially the ones providing a main chunk of the work). It's often very difficult to explain to people who work in their free time on a for all practical purposes non-commercial game, why they should license their contributions for commercial use. In many cases it even makes them suspicious of ulterior motives.

So most likely this wasn't a mistake, but rather a compromise. If you have the choice between NC licensed assets or almost no assets at all, the choice is difficult.

Longer term experience shows though that standing your ground on Free licensing probably is for the good of the project, and more and more non-programmers also seems to get the message

[Lyberta]

Deleted.

[es20490446e]

It's often very difficult to explain to people who work in their free time on a for all practical purposes non-commercial game, why they should license their contributions for commercial use.

Most likely this suspicion can be overridden by warranting that the project itself isn't a comercial one.

[Lyberta]

Deleted.

[es20490446e]

Topic on the Dark Mod forums