[Scummvm-devel] License FAQ draft

[Thierry Crozat]

For the COPYRIGHT, I am afraid I cannot help. In my initial draft there was a question mark because I was not sure myself if that was true or not (I think I have been told that a few times, but could not find anything to definitely back it - my reading of the license indicated this needed to be provided with the source code, but not necessarily with the executable).

For the source code link, your ref [1] indeed indicate this is a bit of a grey area that is clarified in GPL v3, but also says "the community has historically considered [this practice] GPLv2-compliant.” (based on [2]’s § 3 (b) and the last paragraph in 3). My initial draft was based on that. But I agree that this point is questionable.
And this of course only applies to the cases where the executable is distributed on the internet and not on a physical media (I didn’t mention that because I wanted to keep it simple and physical distribution of games is quite rare now).

Thierry

> On 1 Jan 2016, at 18:22, Johannes Schickel <lordhoto at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I gave this a quick look and it looks good overall. There are some points I am not sure whether the actually hold true. I will go through them.
> 
> We claim that "You need to provide the ScummVM COPYRIGHT file with the game.". I am not sure whether this is (always) the case. When I read [1] and [2], I think this only applies to source distributions. But for binary distributions this does not seem the case (unless I missed something). In particular [1]'s 4.1.2 examples for offers to the source code only state that there is copyrighted software used, but not who the copyright holder is. [2]'s § 1 states copyright notices need to be present in combination with source code distribution. Thus, we might want to consider rewording this (I did not come up with a good way for this so far).
> 
> We talk about links to source code to be an option for providing source code access. [1]'s 4.1.4 seems to suggest that this is a gray area for GPLv2 and indeed I can't say I think this falls under [2]'s § 3 (a) or 3 (b). Thus, I think we should remove this, or at least clarify that if someone takes advantage, they need to state that they distribute under GPLv3(+) and have an appropriate license file along with it.
> 
> // Johannes
> 
> [1]: https://softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/compliance-guide.html
> [2]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.en.html
> 
> On 12/23/2015 09:32 PM, Thierry Crozat wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> Following some discussions you may have seen somewhere else (hint: somewhere on github) I drafted a possible page to explain in concise and simple term the obligation of the GPL license and some additional recommendation. You can find it here:
>> http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/License_FAQ
>> 
>> I used the wiki because this provided a simple way to me to draft something. If we decide this is a good idea, this could be moved to the web site, or kept on the wiki with a link from the web site.
>> 
>> You are of course welcome to discuss and edit that page, especially as I am not a GPL guru and may have made (read: am likely to have made) mistakes. You may also think of a better way to present the information and additional information to provide. Finally the non-required aspect (e.g. giving us credit) can be discussed. I wrote what came to my mind but you may have other ideas (hopefully we can find something we all agree on).
>> 
>> Thierry
>> 
>> 
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