Here's my first draft for a mail to the FSF Europe. I'm quite tired, I
guess my style of writing deteriorated a bit to the end. Corrections and
additions welcome, please keep the discussion short and on-topic.
--
The code also assumes that it's difficult to misspell "a" or "b". :-)
-- Larry Wall in <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am writing to you on behalf of the Warzone Resurrection Project
(www.wz2100.net, gna.org/projects/warzone), since we have a problem regarding
the license under which the source and data to the game Warzone 2100 were
released.
The game Warzone 2100 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warzone_2100) was developed
by Pumpkin Studios and published by Eidos in 1999. After ten patches to the
game, Pumpkin Studios ceased development on Warzone 2100, and was disbanded by
Eidos in early 2000. Pumpkin Studios then reformed into Pivotal Games
(www.pivotalgames.com).
The fan community produced two further patches. Feeling that they could not
realize their plans for the game without access to the source code, the
community started petitioning Pumpkin Studios to release the source code.
On December 6, 2004 Alex McLean, Lead Developer of the game, uploaded an
archive file to a community member's FTP server. This archive, downloadable at
http://www.3ddownloads.com/liberatedgames/Warzone2100.rar, contains the source
code to the game and several utilities (as far as they could release it), and a
copy of the game stripped of only the music (which were CD audio tracks in the
commercial release) and most of the larger video sequences telling the story of
the single player campaign. In addition to that, a gpl.txt (version 2) and a
readme.txt were included. I'll quote the readme.txt in full here:
*******************************************************************************
"Warzone 2100 Source & Data
1) These source and data files are provided as is with no guarantees.
2) No assistance or support will be offered or given.
3) Everything you will require to make a build of the game should be here. If
it isn't, you'll have to improvise(*).
4) None of us here at Pivotal Games are in a position to be able to offer any
help with making this work.
5) This source code is released under the terms of the GNU Public License.
Please be sure to read the entirety of this license but the summary is that
you're free to do what you want with the source subject to making the full
source code freely available in the event of the distribution of new binaries.
Finally, the primary motivation for this release is for entertainment and
educational purposes. On the subject of the latter, don't be surprised to see
some pretty gnarly old-school C code in here; the game was a classic but large
areas of the code aren't pretty; OO design and C++ evangelists beware! We
haven't spent any time cleaning the code or making if pretty - what you see is
what you're getting, warts n' all.
Thankyou to Jonathan Kemp of Eidos Europe for permitting the release. Thanks
also to Frank Lamboy for assistance with the release and for campaigning along
with many many others over the years for the source to be made available. The
correspondence, online petitions and persistence made this possible. We were
constantly amazed at the community support for Warzone even after all this
time; it's nice to be able to give something back, assuming you can get it to
compile...;-)
6th December 2004
Alex M - ex Pumpkin Studios (Eidos)
(*) Except FMV and music..."
*******************************************************************************
The archive was put together by Alex McLean (as far as I know) without spending
a lot of time on it, since they were busy with their newer games (thus also the
refusal of any help or support), they basically just put everything together
and added the gpl.txt and the readme.txt files.
Now this was a bit unlucky. The readme.txt states in 1) "These source and data
files are provided as is with no guarantees", but 5) says "This source code is
released under the terms of the GNU Public License." As the source archive
contains both source code and data, this seems to indicate that only the source
was released under the GPL. This leaves the question about the data. Is "as is
with no guarantees" some kind of license itself (ie. can we just assume an
implicit "... and any restrictions" after that)? (I'll repeat the important
questions at the end again.)
Parts of the game are implemented in a scripting language.
The release was intended as a present to the fan community, so there was no
intention of keeping anything closed (except for a few code parts like the
movie codec, sound and networking which were licensed, and the music and movies
themselves, probably just for size reasons). But to legally be able to
distribute the whole game, the licensing situation has to beresolved in some
way. Distributions (Debian as a prime example) are quite wary of those
licensing issues, and need a legally unobjectionable license.
A previous debian-legal discussion
(http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-legal@lists.debian.org/msg30913.html)
resulted in "probably everything is GPL, but you have to ask the author to be
sure." Unfortunately, until now, none of our inquiries was answered. Some of
those were done by Frank Lamboy (mentioned in the readme.txt, who had contact
with Pumpkin Studios since the release of the game, was involved in the
creation of the ten patches to the game, and cruical to the petitions for the
source), but even he received no answer. Now he has said
(http://www.realtimestrategies.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=15347&highlight=#15347)
that "the legal rights to the WZ Cam content were turned-over by Eidos to the
ex-Pumpkins and they inturn have liberated it". Is this possible? So now we
have to contact them for any clarifications on the license? Does it make sense
to contact Eidos on that matter (not that they'd have answered any past
inquiries; they have been bought by SCi, and at least Jonathan Kemp isn't
employed there anymore, so it might be quite difficult to reach someone
knowledgeable on this matter)? Might an inquiry by the FSF have a better chance
at an answer?
This is all quite frustrating, since several members of the fan community have
stated that the intention of the release was to free the game, and it's
probably just an unlucky wording of the readme.txt. I am quite sure there will
be no legal action against us (there's no indication anyone will bother, and
with the frequent inquiries, they must be quite aware of our project), we just
need a legal clarification for Distributions to be able to include Warzone (and
for hosting the game on gna.org, though they haven't complained yet).
Questions:
1. Does the readme.txt give us any indication on what license the data was
released under, ie. does "as is with no guarantees" give us any permissions
(like an implicit "with no restrictions", since they don't mention any)?
2. Is there a way to distribute the game data without further word of the
copyright holders?
3. Is it possible for Eidos to transfer the copyright of the game to the
Ex-Pumpkin employees to do as they please?
4. If so, what proof of that is necessary and who has that?
5. Does it make sense to try to contact Eidos on this matter?
6. Would an inquiry by the FSF better our chances for an answer?a
7. Any other possible solutions?
I intend to post your replies to our mailing list (warzone-dev@gna.org) to keep
the other members updated; if you do not want your answer publicised, please
state so clearly.
Thanks for your help, and if you have any further questions, don't hesitate to
contact me.
Yours faithfully,
Christian Ohm
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