Submitted by ADFENO on Wed, 09/14/2016 - 12:11
Remove mazeofgalious and its "data"
| Project: | Trisquel |
| Version: | 7.0 |
| Component: | Packages |
| Category: | bug report |
| Priority: | minor |
| Assigned: | Unassigned |
| Status: | active |
Description
It's under GNU GPL, but doesn't include all the source files. Besides, it doesn't seem to be a remake authorized by Konami. Lines beginning with "greater than" signal (>) are my original email message.
In attachment follows the email message as I received it (with all .mbox metadata).
Hi Adonay! sorry for the late reply (but your email was so long that I had to wait until my vacation started to have time to read it ;)) Santiago Ontanon Assistant Professor The College of Computing & Informatics Drexel University 3141 Chestnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19104 Tel: 215-571-4109 www.cs.drexel.edu/~santi On Sep 10, 2016, at 3:54 PM, Adonay Felipe Nogueira <name at domain> wrote: > Note: This email is supposed to be a friendly request/message. There is no intention on being aggressive here. > Hi, my name is Adonay, and I'm a free/libre software activist from Brazil, I volunteer to help various projects that have questions or issues with free/libre software licenses, and I also try to gather other people to help these projects if there is need to. > I and other free/libre software activists are thankful for the contributions made by you and other people involved on the free/libre software projects. For this I leave my sincere "Thank you!" message. > Two months ago, I was downloading the Maze of Galious source files so as to include the software (untouched) in my CD/DVD/USB free/libre software collection (to distribute the collection to the public, with optional donation), but when checking on the source files of Maze of Galious, I found some problems, but I still needed confirmation from some people to see if the issue really existed. Around one week ago, after finishing most of my college obligations, I looked at the issue again and decided to ask people on the #fsf IRC channel on chat.freenode.net, and as a result, I was instructed to contact either the entire Maze of Galious, or any person from it. > I attempted to register on the Maze of Galious forums, but although I can log in, I didn't receive any confirmation email, and I can't create forum topics, I also can't see my own profile, because the forums says I don't have permission to do such things. yeah, those forums are long dead. They were hosted in the server of a friend of mine, but I haven’t logged in for many years… I really need to create some new forums that work :) > If you want, we can try solving the issue with the forums first, and then discuss the original issue that brought me to this discussion (which I'll describe below anyways). Provided there are other users still in the forums, the issue might be worth discussing with them too, as long as everyone keeps it on a friendly tone. Even I cannot post in those forums anymore, I guess there is some permission issue in the server. Again, I really need to take those forums down and create some new ones :) > If you don't want to solve the issue of the forums, then here follows the original issue (please include, through "To" or "Cc" email headers, any person that you might want to involve in this conversation): > I just want to know **one of these**: > a) In which license the sound effects and music from the Jorito set are under? Wow, I would have no idea about this. The game was distributed for free, but I am not very knowledgeable on licenses. But you could reach out to Jorito (he is still active in the msx.org forums) > b) If the Jorito sound and music set are under the same license of the Maze of Galious project, and since the musics (mainly) are **complex works** (rather difficult to recreate without the proper files) and aren't improvisations, where can one obtain the complete corresponding source of the musics (since these are the more complex part of the sound set)? Again, that’s something Jorito will have to answer. I only worked on the source code. > Question/possibility (b) is based on the fact that part of item (3) of the GNU General Public License version 2 defines what "source code" means (or "source files", for general use), and since the GNU GPL 2 can also be used for non-software works, the terms apply to other things in the project except if noted by the copyright holders of either the project or the individual files or individual parts/contributions. > As I said earlier, items (a) and (b) written above exclude each other. Besides, if you find difficult to answer these items, we can perhaps do one of the following: > * Ask for contribution (or hire) someone to do replacements for the affected files/data. Perhaps we can ask for help on communities related to making game music??? Perhaps people around can help? > * Contact Jorito to either make replacements or provide the complete and corresponding source files. > Independently of the choice, I suggest (but don't force) you to remove Jorito's sound and music set from the releases for the time being. I'll try contacting Jorito and finding replacements on on my short free times. > Important note: Things such as "ignoring"/"overlooking" the issue are out of question, since the compliance of downstream recipients (society in general) is at stake. Don't worry, contrary to organizations like Oracle, we free/libre software activists try and insist on collaborating to solve the problems, as long as there is interest of the project to do so, otherwise we fork the project (or if we are the original copyright holders: then we act as organizations like Oracle do, through litigation. But since **I'm not** the copyright holder of the original project (nor am I representing him), I can only fork the project). I apologize for my answer in advance, but really the best solution in this case is precisely to overlook the issue. The reason is that the license for Maze of Galious is already dubious to start with. The original copyright for MoG belongs to Konami, we did not ask for permission to create a remake, and I know of many people that did ask for permission for similar remakes, only to get messages of “cease and desist” from Konami. So, I would not like to have the MoG remake distributed further, just in case it reaches Konami’s ears, and they force us to take the project down. I really like the project being there in a small website, only known by the people that cared about it (the MSX community), and not being widely distributed, since wide distribution will sure result in Konami asking us to take down the website. However, you are more than welcome to create a fork of the project and replace any assets you need, in order to distribute the software as you intend. But the original project will remain as is. > Be sure to reply, please. > Respectfully, Adonay.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Received email message.mbox_.txt | 20.64 KB |
To reproduce this issue, do:
The affected files are:
As said earlier, there's no indication of a different license for these files, and this isn't the source of the files because they are complex works. By "complex work", I mean: something that isn't easy to redo by luck, and which needs source files.
For now, we must also consider the entire software as non-free since we need to assume that most parts of the software came from Konami.
Furthermore, I'll reply to Ontanon's message and ask him how exactly the Maze of Galious remake differs from the original in the source code level, and how exactly it started (perhaps it was a reverse engineering or a disassembly?). From his answer, we can decide whether to fork it, or to forget it entirely.
Those files are audio files. You shouldn't assume they were created using source files. They may have been recorded, or made manually from non-copyrightable or free parts.
An counterpart example of this in software is an assembler source file coded by hand. It is just executable code in different form, no different from some complied code, but it doesn't have a corresponding source other than itself.
Using GPL for the license of an audio file is not very useful and not recommended by the FSF, but it doesn't mean it can't be legally done or that files licensed like that are not free.
Trisquel can be sued for copyright infringement and this is the risk it has to take for all the software it includes, together with Ubuntu and Debian. But I don't think these packages should be removed. I think there needs to be proof that the files are not under GPL first, or a troll could file an issue for every single package. By removing the packages of the game and using the same reasoning for all the other packages, most of them would be removed from Trisquel.
A remake doesn't have to be authorized by anyone.
On a personal note: If you want to distribute the game, you have to take the risk. Maybe the laws in your country are stricter than for Trisquel and that might not be fair. The fact that Trisquel includes these files doesn't mean that distributing them won't create problems for you, especially if you do it commercially (sometimes donations also count as such). Trisquel doesn't knowingly distribute files that are under an unclear license. If you want to do a better job than Trisquel of checking the copyright of files for your distribution, do so. You will feel that you are taking less risk by distributing them. If you find out that some of the files are copyrighted under a non-free license, I advise you to report that to Debian instead of Trisquel. Trisquel doesn't have as much resources as Debian to tackle the problem (Debian maintainers are more likely to replace the files than remove the whole package compared to Trisquel, unless you do the replacing). Also that way both will benefit, and so will Ubuntu.
The paths where information the copyright notices and license notices are expected, don't have indication of **either one** of the following:
a) The license, if different than the one being used, for the audio files.
b) The location of the complete corresponding source files (could be a music sheet, even if scanned to take it out of a paper, or a notice allowing the reader to get the source by request; one of these would do).
The paths I looked for, are:
I also noticed that there's no metadata in the sound files mentioned before. So the references couldn't be found there either.
The audio files are adaptation of the original ones from Konami. To check it out, you should do either one of the following:
a) Download the source files from the project's official web site, inside the directory tree you'll notice that there is a sound pack called
original, this one is from the original game by Konami. Trisquel's package **does not** have this sound pack (instead, it refers to Jorito's as the same).b) Play the original game by Konami, passing through the "castle" of the game (main area), and at least through one of the "worlds".
c) Or search for the original sound track somewhere in the Internet.
One must note, however, that I **do know** that the GNU GPL can be used for audio files. I'm not saying that "every audio file under GNU GPL is non-free". I'm saying that "these files in special, don't have complete and corresponding source, or don't have indications on how to acquire it".
Finally, I'll try to contact Jorito, as suggested by Ontanon.
Happy Software Freedom Day! :)
I've got a response from Ontanon
The original .mbox response is attached.
Also, I got response from Jorrith "Jorito" Schaap:
The original response's .mbox is also attached.
I'll reply thanking both and say that I'll probably start a fork...
... Or we can simply remove the "-data" package (or whichever package provides the musics which have no source).