Warsow, le pragmatisme versus la liberté

https://linuxfr.org/users/spyhawk/journaux/warsow-le-pragmatisme-versus-la-liberte

Guessing from the rough google translation, free software hippies pooping their pants again for not getting free artwork to abuse =P

crizis wrote:
Guessing from the rough google translation, free software hippies pooping their pants again for not getting free artwork to abuse =P

No, not really, it's an analysis concluding warsow licence model is, while not as permissive, an asset for it's own success. Having the artwork proprietary reduce chances the game gets forked and the dev team got split which is a common problem of other open source games (according to the autor). Again, according to him, having the artwork under the project licence is better than each artist keeping rights on his work, because of the risk an artist leave with it's work.

So it start with a skeptical tone about it not being completly free, but end quite positively about the licence being an interesting tradeoff between freedom and open source software philosophy, and pragmatism about protecting the project against splitting (the article title, "warsow, pragmatism vs freedom").

I haven't read the comments but I guess they are probably more open-source integrist than the autor is just guessing from the domain name and all.
(updated 2012-08-10 17:14:44)

I was talking about comments, mainly. Sad stuff.

crizis wrote:
I was talking about comments, mainly. Sad stuff.

Yea I've read some, it's pretty sad. They compare warsow to any commercial game, closed assets blablabla, which is completly forgetting that, it's a completly free game based on unrewarded contribution of community. And so far, warsow is so unmatched by 100% open games, that their isn't much to be said about how stubborn this comments are.

There is a point with open-source talk, where you can tell the arguments are no longer about freedom and generosity, they are downright communist hate about anybody owning anything.
(updated 2012-08-10 20:22:36)

that is not a real language!

learn_more wrote:
that is not a real language!

Ye has >2000 words :D

wasnt the warsow proprietary license a response to the acid debacle - acid made the most iconic warsow map acidwdm2 and acidwdm6 (since retextured for the nth time) that people still associate with the game - displeased with the direction the game was taking decided to leave the team and take his maps with him - precisely the kind of case that they are talking about in the article.

that said, it doesnt have to be black and white - either free artwork to do what you like with, or no free artwork. it would be possible to allow their use exclusively within warsow or to control it and make sure anything that comes out of it always remains under the license.

another point is who owns warsow? if the artwork doesnt belong to the artists anymore but to warsow itself, then surely there has to be an official owner or some such?

There is a point with open-source talk, where you can tell the arguments are no longer about freedom and generosity, they are downright communist hate about anybody owning anything.

^ This. This irritates me so much about some free-software "extremists".

thelawenforcer wrote:

another point is who owns warsow? if the artwork doesnt belong to the artists anymore but to warsow itself, then surely there has to be an official owner or some such?

All licensed property of Warsow is owned by non-profit organization called Chasseur de bots.

BBQsauce wrote:

There is a point with open-source talk, where you can tell the arguments are no longer about freedom and generosity, they are downright communist hate about anybody owning anything.

That sucks..

All Warsow devs are owned by solomonk. He has a contract on our souls.

another point is who owns warsow? if the artwork doesnt belong to the artists anymore but to warsow itself, then surely there has to be an official owner or some such?

Right in the footer:

Copyright © 2012 Chasseur De Bots

Anyway, thanks and GG for your nice input in linuxfr's forum, BBQsauce =)

Well, this looks very funny.
You know guys, such questions are really complicated. For example, some of my maps were used in previous wsw releases and I can guess one of it is still in (crizis asked permission to bring it new look, need to check 1.0). On one hand I gave my permission to use my (own) maps with wsw, on other... what will you do if suddenly I would say "I want my intellectual property back" (I wouldn't)? Would you exclude new map fully remade by crizis?

I want to say that you are doing this things not the very easy way, but I understand you. Sometimes there are no other ways.
(updated 2012-08-13 10:10:22)

Well, technically if you give anything to us, it falls under Warsow Content License, and therefore gives up copyrights (Chasseur De Bots), but quite honestly we give huge respect for original authors and rather ask if it's ok to touch their maps or not, and keep this relaxed and fair attitude in development rather than go ballistic with our copyrights.

We did consider releasing all of our texture packs under some sort creative commons license, but there's also tons of authors, even we do own copyrights for them, it would potentially just piss certain people off if we 'open source' their work which wasn't originally intented as so.
(updated 2012-08-13 10:23:36)

just bla-blah-blah from my side... I don't know your road map and your goals (I mean team), but there should be something. In this case you should think about next step in your project (I guess you did): check all media content (sounds/textures and so on) of wsw and rework it by your own, exclude what can't be remade. Nasty, but this will let you to get some additional acceleration.

Right now the only plan is 1.1 bugfix release to "perfect" 1.0, after that we have no plans, or too much interest either to start new development projects concerning Warsow.

The main lesson to learn from this is :
we, warsowians, both devers and gamers, can't expect any kind of backup/support either from proprietary software or open source which could help the game to reach a larger audience.

We can count/rely only on ourselves. So here's few tips we (those who really care about Warsow) should all keep in mind :

1) hi/hf/n1/tks/soz/np/gg/bb supply everything.

2) Each victory is an opportunity to share one's knowledge.

3) Each loss is an opportunity to improve one's skill.

4) Both frustrated loss and pretentious win are weakness.
(updated 2012-08-18 16:44:13)