[Scummvm-devel] engine-data file licenses

[Max Horn]

Am 26.05.2009 um 12:05 schrieb Johannes Schickel:

> Max Horn wrote:
>> OK (and thanks for augmenting the README -- hopefully many others  
>> will  follow this good example ASAP ;).
>>
>> However, I am now concerned that this puts us into a questionable   
>> situation, from a legal point of view. It would seem much  
>> preferable  to get rid of kyra.dat and instead extract the required  
>> information on- the-fly. I mean, if create_kyradat can extract it,  
>> then we should also  be able to extract it on the fly, right?
>> The only problem with that I am aware of right now are fan-  
>> translations, which might involve a custom kyra.data right now.  
>> Well,  for those, a compromise could be made -- don't store the  
>> actual data  in kyra.dat, but rather, only store the relevant file  
>> offsets in  kyra.dat (data which is currently hardcoded in the  
>> create_kyradat code).
>> Of course, I am not very familiar with the kyra engine, so there  
>> might  be tons of other serious issues with this -- I am looking  
>> forward to  hearing them :-).
>>
>
> Due to slight differences in various executables out there, which  
> result in offset changes even for the same language, it would be a  
> required to get *all* versions. Next one would have to take on the  
> task to create a list of offsets for all game executables out there.  
> Currently we have the possibility to avoid a full list of offsets  
> for translations (including official ones that is), since main  
> static data can usually be used from the English version, thus we  
> just have to add offsets for translated strings. Actually if we  
> really would want to get rid of kyra.dat, I fear we can only support  
> a few Kyrandia versions out there.

That's bad, of course. On the one hand, we would of course want to  
support all versions out there. On the other hand, putting ourselves  
into a legally grey zone by distributing copyrighted data we have no  
rights to and thus risking to be sued sounds even worse to me...


Max