tremulous maps in openarena

[white haired boy]

hello all,

i've been thinking about how to satisfy the demand for bigger, more tactical maps on openarena and the obvious solution has occurred to me, port some of the tremulous maps over.

tremulous is gpl, runs on the same engine as openarena and has a load of really nice, big, strategic maps. it's perfect. there would have to be some minor tweaking done (removing alien stuff and addding openarena weapon pickups etc), but not that much.

anyone interested?

white haired boy.

[fromhell]

Tremulous's media is mostly non free and is not GPL but Creative Commons. This would conflict.

[white haired boy]

that's not what they reckon, they claim to be gpl. from their "about" page...  (http://tremulous.net/about/)

Tremulous is open source, licensed under the GPL. Tremulous is open source because we believe that the source code should be made available to the public, along with the binaries. The primary reason behind this is to allow other developers to utilise sections of this code in their own works, should it be useful to them. It should be noted however, that using the source requires your work to also be covered by the GPL and hence be open source itself.

[Ferk]

When a software project claims to be GPL usually it forgets to mention the content itself.

Take a look at this Topic on Tremulous forums:

So, if any of you mappers want this to happen with your map, say so here. Note this entails that your map and textures/sound/etc it uses must be licensed with the creative commons license used by Tremulous http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ .

Apart from OpenArena, Open Quartz and FreeDoom, Nexuiz is the only FPS game I know that licensed the contect under GPL

[white haired boy]

that's annoying. thanks for clearing that up ferk.

white haired boy.

[white haired boy]

i've joined their forum and put up a post asking whether the game media is covered by the gpl. with a bit of luck they may have some maps that are gpl.

http://tremulous.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3166

[white haired boy]

nope, i got given a link to this....

http://svn.icculus.org/tremulous/trunk/COPYING?rev=775&view=markup

where it says....

Tremulous is licensed in two broadly separate sections: the code and the media.

The code is licensed under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE. This license is
contained in full in the file named GPL. Please be aware of the exceptions to
this license as listed below.

The media is licensed under the CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION-SHAREALIKE 2.5
LICENSE. Please read http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ to learn
more about this license. The full license text is contained in the file named
CC.

interesting that they claim to be gpl on their "about" page, but forgot to mention the gpl incompatible cc license, except on obscure pages in the svn.

shifty, very shifty.

white haired boy.

[fromhell]

Yeah, very misleading with the news coverage they've been getting.

[Vector_Matt]

interesting that they claim to be gpl on their "about" page, but forgot to mention the gpl incompatible cc license, except on obscure pages in the svn.

CC is not gpl incompatible, here's the actual license text:

Code:

You are free:

    * to Share -- to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
    * to Remix -- to make derivative works

Under the following conditions:

    * Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
    * Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one.
    *
    * For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.
    * Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.

And if this is not a lose enough license, look at this part"* Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.". So you can just contact the person who made the map if you need more freedom.

[fromhell]

CC is not gpl incompatible,

GNU disagrees.

[Ferk]

you can just contact the person who made the map if you need more freedom.

That's true, whatever the license was (even the most restricting Copyright), the author allways can grant permision (usually authors sell  permisions). But that doesn't mean that it is GPL compatible.

You could contact the author and convince him to relicense the work under the GPL for free, but you will need that personal permision.

Anyway, is not that CC-sa is more restricting, it is the GPL that has an additional restriction to grant GNU freedom: it requieres the sourcecode distribution forcefully.

Restricting to grant GNU freedom may look unnecesary sometimes when you think of artwork that is itself the source (as source is the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it), but it is not a good idea to license artwork under an incompatible license if that artwork is intended to be distributed in GPLed software. That's the reason why the icons of the Tango project aren't included as default in any GPL software, they are under a CC-sa license.

[tuppe666]

Much as I love a CC and GPL debate as much as the next person, and love tremulous. I believe the content of tremulous to be very distinctive, and should be left in tremulous.

I know Openarena would benefit from more maps/models, but I suspect that more *appropriate content* could be got from elsewhere.

There is an awful lot of single maps/models out there. I would suggest now OpenArena now has a little momentum that these people are contacted

[fromhell]

I agree, preserving identities of the other games are important too. I don't want OpenArena to look like a mishmash of everything out there heh....that's called CRAPPY FRANKENSTEIN PATCHWORK PIECE OF CRAP GAME NOT WORTH MENTIONING XD

[dmn_clown]

I know Openarena would benefit from more maps/models, but I suspect that more *appropriate content* could be got from elsewhere.
/quote]

Or do original work

[jqp]

Tremulous's media is mostly non free and is not GPL but Creative Commons. This would conflict.

Why would that matter for stuff as a mod?  I can see how this MIGHT be an issue if said media were distributed with OpenArena (in the tar ball, etc.), but as an "aftermarket" mod, I don't see the problem.  Even if it's CC'ed and not GPL'ed.  If someone wants to run said maps on their server, does the GPL prevent someone from running non-GPL media on it?

Point being, it would be nice if media development can take place under other Free licenses even if the platform itself is GPL'ed.

[tuppe666]

@jqp you've got the wrong end of the stick. This thread is about content in OA not a mod running on OA.

[Keet]

Tremulous's media is mostly non free and is not GPL but Creative Commons. This would conflict.

Why would that matter for stuff as a mod?  I can see how this MIGHT be an issue if said media were distributed with OpenArena (in the tar ball, etc.), but as an "aftermarket" mod, I don't see the problem.  Even if it's CC'ed and not GPL'ed.  If someone wants to run said maps on their server, does the GPL prevent someone from running non-GPL media on it?

Point being, it would be nice if media development can take place under other Free licenses even if the platform itself is GPL'ed.

tuppe666 is right. The thing is, it's fine running the maps on a server...just not okay to include these maps in an official package of OpenArena...then that would mean trouble.