Inform7, the language to create text adventure games, got released under a libre Artistic 2.0 license.

2 Antworten [Letzter Beitrag]
andermetalsh
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Beigetreten: 01/04/2013

https://intfiction.org/t/inform-7-v10-1-0-is-now-open-source/55674

Today we got great news for gaming (and not only).
Inform was a language to create text adventure games targeting a virtual machine
called the Z-Machine, the original one made to play Zork and the Infocom games.
We had a libre interpreter since long ago, Frotz, Zip, and a lot more), and
Inform6 (the compiler), the English library and the Spanish adaptation (INFSP6)
under libre licenses too.

But then Inform7 was created, and the syntax was English-like with logical
clauses instead of the classical programming with functions, kinda like Prolog.
But it was not free. Today, it is, under a libre license.

And the tool is so powerful that is not just useful for games, it has many uses
by just using, I repeat, a language that looks like plain English.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inform

jxself
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Beigetreten: 09/13/2010

I remain cautiously optimistic but this needs careful review and examination before being accepted as free. I'm trying not get swept away in the excitement and instead let cool heads prevail.

I'll bring up a related matter for Inform 6 for an example:

Remember that, to be free, one must have access to the source code (i.e., "Access to the source code is a precondition for this" in https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html)

The Inform 6 standard library contains the file infglk.h which is used for Glulx stuff. That file is auto-generated from a different program; it is not the source code.

I understand why they do this: For convenience so that people don't then have to back up and recursively build several different programs in order to compile their games from source but at the same time a file that is generated from elsewhere is not source code, shouldn't be treated as such, and doesn't really belong in git.

This is why, in my version of the Inform 6 Standard Library, that file is gone: https://jxself.org/git/?p=informlib.git

It's gone because I didn't want to take on that additional work I described. That means my version of the library is missing Glulx stuff but that's no loss for me as I am more interested in the Z-Machine anyway.

But if upstream is going to do this, they should include the relevant source code instead and have that get generated at compile time instead of including an auto-generated file in git.

And this is just the library, not the compiler which I could also talk about but I've also got a modified version of that to address the concerns there too - https://jxself.org/git/?p=inform.git

Anyway, enough with Inform 6 and back to Inform 7:

Inform 7 also needs to have a careful examination done too. Not just for missing source code but for keeping an eye out for any potential software freedom problem. Sadly, Inform 7's much larger and more complex than Inform 6 is.

andermetalsh
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Beigetreten: 01/04/2013

I understand. By the way, a few weeks ago I asked the Inform author on the Inform 6/11's library license, and he told me that release is under Artistic 2.0 too.

Thus, the Spanish library for Inform6 (INFSP6) can be used with no licensing issues at all
to translate any libre English game into Spanish. The library it's almost 95% compatible with the English one. Most issues can be fixed trivially. By just changing the headers so they point to the Spanish counterparts and editing the strings the game (not even the name of the functions or verbs) often most games compile just straight.

Then there may be issues for gendered female words in Spanish, but that's just a property added to the object, it's a trivial task ("has female").