Following up to my own post... Michael Thomas wrote: > Jason L Tibbitts III wrote: > >>>>>>>"HdG" == Hans de Goede <j.w.r.degoede@xxxxxx> writes: >> >> >>HdG> Hi, I had this idea last night, it would be nice to package doom >>HdG> (and other) gpl game engines, or improved spinoffs such as >>HdG> vavoom, but they are kinda useless without the shareware >>HdG> datafiles. >> >>The packaging guidelines specifically mention Doom: >> >>---- >>Shareware >> >>Shareware applications are not Open Source code, and are not >>acceptable for Fedora. >> >>However, it is worth noting that some non-executable content exists >>that is required to make Open Source applications functional. An >>example of this would be open sourced game engines, such as Doom, >>Heretic, and Descent. These game engines come with freely >>distributable shareware gamedata files. >> >>In this case, the gamedata files can be packaged and included in >>Fedora Extras, as long as the files meet the requirements for binary >>firmware. >>---- >> >>HdG> Now the shareware files are freely redistributed by a lot of >>HdG> sites, but nowhere there seems to be a clear license under which >>HdG> this is done, which makes things kinda dodgy. >> >>This seems to be the case for xu4, which is an (open source) engine >>which plays the Ultima 4 data files. I would like to package it, and >>the data is available all over (including from Sourceforge, which I >>understand has significant restrictions on what you can host there). >>But I can't find any statement that it's OK to distribute the data >>except for some archived emails. > > > Let me approach this from a different angle: > > Let's start with the assumption that we are not allowed to redistribute > the game files, and thus, can't include them in Fedora. Can we still > include the game engine? It would seem like we couldn't, because the > data files are required to make the application work. > > If someone were to come up with an alternate set of game data files that > were redistributable, then we should be allowed to distribute both the > game engine and the data files. There seem to be a number of > community-authored DOOM .wads available. Are any of them usable without > a copy of the original shareware data files? After poking around a bit, I found these: http://freedoom.sourceforge.net/ http://openquartz.sourceforge.net/ It seems to me that we could have two packages: freedoom - Data files for doom engines. Requires: doom-engine linuxdoom - or any other GPL doom engine): Provides: doom-engine Multiple doom engines could be included, perhaps using the alternatives system to set the default one. I haven't tried out freedoom or openquartz yet, but I'll try to do it in the next few days. The fact that the game engines can play the original shareware/proprietary DOOM files becomes secondary, because all of the components for a fully functional game will already be present. A level editor would also be nice, and it seems that there ought to be several freely available. --Mike
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