Lack of license

onpon4 on 2014/10/20 11:36
— edited on 2014/10/20 11:41

I don't know if anyone else here is like me, but I personally will not play or review any proprietary software games, for ethical reasons. I want to give a heads up on this, because there are quite a few games (11, to be exact) that I am refusing to play and review for this reason. In a couple cases, it's because the license is some non-libre license like CC BY-NC or CC BY-ND; obviously, these games were made proprietary intentionally. But in most cases, it's because I couldn't find a license at all.

If anyone who didn't indicate a license meant for the game to be libre and either just forgot to indicate a license or misunderstood what not having a license means, please add a notice indicating a license. (See here for what not having a license means.)

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Comments

iminurnamez on 2014/10/20 12:00:

The rules state that a "game's license must allow for PyWeek to redistribute your game and its source". Maybe I've misunderstood the license terms, but the CC-BY-NC seems to fit that criteria while at the same time preventing someone else from charging money for a game that I made that I am not charging money for.

What exactly is the ethical dilemma?

Cosmologicon on 2014/10/20 14:43:

The dilemma for onpon4 is that CC-BY-NC and CC-BY-ND are not "free" (also known as "libre") licenses, as defined by the Free Software Foundation. That doesn't mean they violate PyWeek's rules, though, so it's not like it's cheating or anything. PyWeek doesn't require free licenses.

To be specific, free licenses must let you redistribute copies, even charging for them (so NC is out), and they must let you distribute modified versions (so ND is out). I believe that CC-BY-SA is considered a free license.

FWIW, the code in our game is free (CC0), but the music is not. Feel free to skip it if that's a problem for you!

mauve on 2014/10/20 15:20:

While I admire your principled stance, I don't think it's totally appropriate for Pyweek. Pyweek isn't a free software sprint, it's a showcase for creativity. People work on a creative endeavour for a week in exchange for having an audience and feedback about their work, not to produce reusable software.

iminurnamez on 2014/10/20 20:23:

The post was clear on how a game must be licensed before onpon4 deigns to play it, but I fail to see how this is an ethical issue or what principle is being upheld.

Cosmologicon on 2014/10/20 23:53:

I'm guessing the very existence of non-free software is an ethical problem as far as onpon4 is concerned.

(Sorry if that's presumptuous, but you may not get an answer. Since PyWeek comments are copyright their authors, onpon4 might not read them, for ethical reasons.)

Tee on 2014/10/21 02:18:

To perhaps reduce the chances of this thread entering a long discussion about free software, I'd like to emphasize mauve's point. It's perfectly fine if one refuses to use non-free software for any reason (if you're curious about the reason itself, see here). However, they must also keep in mind that Pyweek is focused not on producing free software but on showcasing creativity as mauve said, so it is reasonable to expect that not everyone gives importance to free licenses, especially given that they are constrained by time. (In fact, Pyweek would not be a great source of reusable code because most of the code is rushed.)

This is not perfect but an analogy would be a cooking competition. On one hand, it's perfectly fine if a vegetarian reviewer does not eat any meat, but on the other hand, the vegetarian cannot expect that all dishes do not contain meat.

iminurnamez on 2014/10/21 04:03:

I feel like that whole manifesto doesn't apply to games very well. To my mind, a game is a creative work more akin to a movie than the software behind skype or an operating system. Starving artists are great and all, but I have no moral qualms about ones that can afford to eat.

onpon4 on 2014/10/21 16:28:

Right, I wasn't trying to debate libre software, and I'm fully aware that Pyweek allows non-libre licenses (that's a major reason why I don't link to it directly on some other communities). I was more concerned about the ones (9 of them, I think) that I couldn't find a license for at all, because the idea that no license means public domain is a common misconception. (Also, no license at all does violate the rules.)

Cosmologicon: yours is not one of the 11. It's actually one of my favorite PyWeek 19 entries that I've played, incidentally.

iminurnamez on 2014/10/21 18:52:

Having never engaged in a discussion on the topic, this has been pretty enlightening for me. If you had asked me a few days ago if I supported the philosophy of the FSF I wouldn't have hesitated to reply with an uninformed "yes". Now I might answer "sorta...with caveats", but there doesn't seem to be much room in their philosophy for anything less than complete ideological stricture.

onpon4: I'll admit I'm disappointed with your decision as I feel like we all entered into a tacit agreement to play everyone else's games without regard to their personal politics, but I'm always up for sticking it to the man so, if you feel that eschewing my game somehow accomplishes that, more power to you.

grummi on 2014/10/21 19:48:

iminurnamez, releasing software as free software does not mean you can't sell it (or otherwise earn money from it). If you want to learn more, look here.

iminurnamez on 2014/10/21 22:13:

I understand that, but it also means that anyone else can also sell it or give it away at no cost. After the first copy sold, it's conceivable you might never sell a second because you're now competing with a no cost version of the exact same product. I know it comes from an altruistic place, but I think adhering to the libre philosophy would relegate game development to solely a hobby pursuit and I, for one, would sorely miss many of the awesome games that the evils of propietorship make possible.

onpon4 on 2014/10/22 00:59:

That's more an argument about copyright than an argument specific to libre software. It's an interesting argument, nonetheless.

The way I see it, art and culture don't need to be given an economic incentive. Historically, they never have been a result of economic incentive; it's something else that drives artists. It sucks to be poor, and creating a system to make artists money is helpful to artists who are poor (though I doubt it's all that helpful to them; publishers are the ones who tend to benefit most from copyright), but not so helpful to non-artists in need of money. The proper solution to poverty of artists is one that fixes poverty of non-artists as well.

It's important to note that the software portion of games doesn't typically need to be proprietary for currently common models of making money off of them to work. Many games have some non-functional data, such as levels, that is needed to make the game experience what it's supposed to be; it's perfectly possible to keep these data files copyrighted while making the software portion libre. For online games, requiring people to pay for server access is perfectly possible with libre clients.

iminurnamez on 2014/10/22 13:30:

That's a romantic, but inaccurate notion of art history; many of the works we consider masterpieces were the direct result of economic incentive in the form of patronage and many artists are able to devote all of their time to creating art (as opposed to between their shifts at a fast-food joint) by selling their works. I suppose licensing just the software portion as libre would be slightly better than licensing the entire project as libre, but still puts developers in an untenable position, IMO. It seems that any game that achieves any kind of popularity ends up competing with cloned versions of itself within a very short time. The ability for cloners to reuse your code would provide them a competitive advantage in that they don't have to invest in development time. I'd point to the case of Threes/2048 as an example. The developers of Threes spent over a year working on their game; within weeks they were competing with no-cost clones and that was with a non-libre license. I imagine a libre license would have compressed this short time window even further. Obviously, I'm not opposed to libre software; I reap the benefits daily by using Python, Pygame, Notepad++ and a host of other programs. Hopefully, I'll be able to reciprocate someday by creating something useful and I would likely release it as CC-0 because it adds a fifth freedom: the freedom to avoid the licensing morass entirely. I just feel that games are a separate class of software than software used for a practical purpose (like writing a game) and should be treated like a work of art rather than a tool. While I agree it's ridiculous to put restrictions on how a painter can use their brush and I wouldn't buy a brush that came with such restrictions, I do feel it's appropriate for the painter to control how the resulting painting may be used. Honestly, I have no delusions of grandeur, I don't think there's an army of people (or any person, for that matter) waiting to try and sell anything I've made, but some great games come out of Pyweek that I think are commercially viable and the possibility of someone profiting from them while the developer gets nothing just doesn't sit well with me. If the developer has no problem with it, great, but I don't think it's unreasonable (and certainly not evil) if they do feel they have a compelling interest in how their work is used. Consider this as a little thought experiment: Under the license for your game there's nothing to stop someone from renaming it Racewar and selling it to raise money for neo-nazis. If requiring people to get my express permission is what it takes to avoid that, so be it. In closing, I think we just have fundamentally different views of how the world works/should work and I doubt there's much chance of either of us being swayed from our initial positions, but I've enjoyed the discussion immensely.

onpon4 on 2014/10/23 01:14:

Consider this as a little thought experiment: Under the license for your game there's nothing to stop someone from renaming it Racewar and selling it to raise money for neo-nazis.

I don't consider this to be a problem. Actually, I think such a bastardization would be hilarious.

iminurnamez on 2014/10/23 16:14:

Apparently we have dissimilar senses of humor, as well; that would aggravate me to the point of regretting having made it at all.

mauve on 2014/10/24 13:18:

Regarding the issue of missing licenses, I kinda thought there was some license implicit in uploading an entry, maybe like a CC-BY-NC-ND. Perhaps we should add that to the terms and conditions, so that however else you may choose to license it, by uploading an entry to Pyweek you agree that it may be dual-licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND.

iminurnamez on 2014/10/24 14:39:

mauve: Or that by submitting your entry you grant express permission to the organizers of Pyweek to distribute it regardless of license (or lack thereof).

mauve on 2014/10/25 16:45:

Better to allow redistribution, imho. Would allow independent anthologies, torrents, etc.