Thanks Rusty, great summary. 2010/8/3 Rusty Russell <ru...@rustcorp.com.au>
> On Sunday August 1st, at 16:00 UTC the Wesnoth developers met on > Internet Relay Chat to discuss their attitudes towards (and possible > responses to) the licensing questions raised about sale via Apple's > App Store. > > Summary: > > The atmosphere was positive and constructive, and we all gained a > better understanding of each others' concerns, but the differences are > significant and we are did not reach a conclusion. > > Proposals will be culled from the logs and posted separately for > evaluation and discussions leading to a follow up meeting. > > Thanks to all who attended and contributed (as always!). > > Details: > > Noy chaired and coordinated the flow of topics. We started by asking > everyone's motivations for contributing, and a few cherished moments > in their personal experience with Wesnoth. > > The most common motivation was how great the game itself was; at least > 9 people mentioned that. Seven people praised the excellent Wesnoth > community. Sharing or contributing was mentioned by four people, and > Open Source / Freedom was noted by five. 4 indicated they found it > fun :) > > The point was generally agreed that this meeting was about where our > boundaries are, and not specifically about Apple; other platforms we > are considering present similar issues. Android (with AT&T's apparent > removal of the "allow third party apps" button) and PalmOS were > specifically mentioned as imminent porting targets. > > There was a proposal to change the iPhone port from a $5 app to a "pay > what you want" model (this is as close to donations as Apple allow), > to at least alleviate some of the most obvious access restriction. > There was a fair bit of support for this. > > There was a proposal to make a build available for jailbroken devices, > eg. on Cydia. The question was then whether this was pointless if the > app was made freely available via Apple anyway. (The legality and > ease of jailbreaking was discussed, and the question of whether > "voiding the warranty" was real, but we got back on track.) > > It was proposed that we emphasize the community "world-wide volunteer > contributor nature" on the app store and in the game, to grow > community and contributors. This seemed fairly uncontentious. > > It was also proposed that we add an in-game donate (or Pay What You > Want) on all platforms, now we have found a use for money. It was > noted that a previous donate button on the web site was very little > used, however and has been removed > > Things got a little scattered again, with discussion of the legalities > of licensing and violation and compiling apps for a jailbroken phone, > Apple's Terms of Service and some wise statements about why it's more > important to know firstly what we want before worrying about what the > law or licenses say. > > Two proposals were then raised: that the code always be available, and > that a "howto compile" document be kept to ensure that it be as simple > as possible to make Wesnoth for such devices (presumbly jailbroken). > This was generally well-received as a baseline requirement, at least. > > In the context of potential loss of users, it was noted that although > an estimated 10% of the userbase were on these devices, most of them > likely have another supported platform: one popular recent feature is > the ability to transfer saved games to Windows/MacOS. > > Ad-hoc version releases were discussed (limited to 50 users and 100 > versions per $99 developer license), but generally dismissed in favor > of jailbreaking as a preferred non-AppStore distribution method for > people to contribute and modify their code. > > A suggestion was made that even within the closed system, the app > itself could be made more hackable, particularly the WML which > describes scenarios. Some developers didn't know that currently even > this modification is not possible. There was little followup > discussion on this point, but what there was was supportive. > (Discussion wandered again into the exact details of jailbreaking, > warranty and non-AppStore apps and developer licenses.) > > It was proposed that a second license be crafted for Apple's AppStore > (and possibly other platforms). > > It was proposed that the GPL remain, and we provide an alternate > version for jailbroken phones with easy to find instructions on > wesnoth.org on how to jailbreak/install, and we set up a 'pay what you > want' system for all platforms with a competent presentation > (i.e. Humble Indie Bundle-style). > > It was proposed that "if you sell on a closed deviced, you must share > your revenues (X%) w/ Wesnoth", for some definition of closed. No > comments on this proposal > > It was proposed (again) that we should make license-questionable > platforms less attractive than fully compliant ones. There was some > support, but concerns about "punishing users on their device choice", > and unanswered questions about how exactly it would be done, such as a > one-version delay for the app store. > > Towards the end it was proposed that on non-jailbroken phones, Apple > takes 30% of your gold at the end of every scenario :) That helped > close out the discussion. > > It was agreed that we would meet again. > > Attendance (those who spoke during the meeting, thus appeared in my logs): > > alink > cjhopman_ > eleazar_ > freim > grzywacz > ilor > Ivanovic > KylePoole > mordante > noy > Noyga > rusty > shadowmaster > silene > Sirp > timotei > YogiHH > zookeeper > > Late arrivals: > boucman > gabba > Sapient > > _______________________________________________ > Wesnoth-dev mailing list > Wesnoth-dev@gna.org > https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev >
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