..on or around Tue, Dec 11, 2007 at 03:49:58PM +0100, Jan Ciger said: > > > Regarding the license change, somebody mentioned that GPL3 should be > used because it takes an active stand against patents. Well, again, I am > not going to advocate anything here as my opinion is not really relevant > - - I have very little code in Soya to be considered a copyright holder. > However, adopting GPL3 on these grounds is more making a political > statement (with a little practical impact, IMHO) than licensing or > engineering issue. Code can be a mean of political expression, there is > nothing wrong with that, but it also "boxes you in" in a certain > position and it will restrict the potential user base. Is that what you > want?
<rant> software patents are a good thing to license /against/, they are a great risk to independent game developers, if only in that they discourage innovation by making it look too dangerous to attempt. in other words, if you really want to avoid restricting your user-base in the long term, choose a license that protects the code from users that wish to file patent litigation against other users of that same code. licensing against software patents (a patentable form not fully recognised in the EU anyway) is /both/ political and economic: it's hard to find a legal position that doesn't imply some form of politically strategic motivation anyway.. small projects such as Soya3D are wise (IMO) to choose a license that protects downstream users from such risks.the GPLv3 also discourages those that wish to collapse a healthy, grassroots, open-source development scene through a patent monopoly over the tools of production. in America it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and research before you can even begin making the game you wish to "take to the market". much of this research surrounds the threat of software patents. compare that to the industry 15-20 years ago: in 1989 the hugely successful game Prince of Persia was made by a father and son team with hardly any monetary investment (for instance). the GPLv3 is great for independent game development. it discourages proliferation of 'software patents' like these having influence over our tools and our imagination: United States Patent 6544040: "A method of storytelling in an interactive system includes presenting a narrative, interrupting the presentation of the narrative in response to a user input, presenting information regarding at least one mental impression of a character in the narrative, and continuing the presentation of the narrative after presenting the information. http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6544040.html ---- U.S. Patent No. 6,200,138: A video game concept in which the player drives a car around a map, and where a target destination is highlighted for the user." eg. anything like this: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20070119/crazytaxi.jpg ---- U.S. Patent No. 6,729,954 "Battle method with attack power based on character group density." Only Blizzard can afford to be 'legal'? it doesn't matter that these 'software patents' are absurd; if there's anything contemporary American politics can teach us it's that "You can't Argue against the Absurd": absurdity is outside of the language of logical debate. for this reason it is wise to strategically disallow users of open code to target other users of that same code with patent litigation.. don't even enter the possibility for debate.. this is where the GPLv3's 'intolerant' and 'restrictive' stance is sane, and i would argue, necessary in these cannibalistic times. don't forget also that patent offices are legal enterprises in their own right: they want to widen the scope of what's considered patentable in order to widen their wallets. this is precisely why America is starting to see patents on things like narrative structures, musical forms, videogame designs, the smell of fresh bread etc.. here's some reccommended reading: http://www.armchairarcade.com/aamain/content.php?article.35 http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3/tokyo-rms-transcript.en.html#patents </rant> cheers, -- http://julianoliver.com http://selectparks.net emails containing HTML will not be read. _______________________________________________ Soya-user mailing list Soya-user@gna.org https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/soya-user
