#1465 dreamweb is in fedora with a license that does not allow modification
Closed None Opened 8 years ago by dshea.

= phenomenon =
The dreamweb package (review: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1206901) has the license "Redistributable, no modification permitted" which is generally only allowed for binary firmware. A bunch of ScummVM files is kind of stretching the idea of firmware.

Also it's freaking huge and I wished I hadn't wasted the time it took the sync it.

= background analysis =

here's the full text of the license:
Dreamweb PC DOS version. Version 1.1
(C) 1994 Neil Dodwell and David Dew trading as Creative Reality


Changelog:
v1.1 Added manual and diary scans. With help from Simon Sawatzki (SimSaw@gmx.de)
v1.0 Initial freeware release

LICENSE:

1) You may distribute this game for free on any medium, provided this license
and all associated copyright notices and disclaimers are left intact.

2) You may charge a reasonable copying fee for this archive, and may distribute
it in aggregate as part of a larger & possibly commercial software distribution
(such as a Linux distribution or magazine coverdisk). You must provide proper
attribution and ensure this license and all associated copyright notices, and
disclaimers are left intact.

3) You may not charge a fee for the game itself. This includes reselling the
game as an individual item.

4) All game content is (C) Neil Dodwell and David Dew trading as Creative Reality.
The ScummVM engine is (C) The ScummVM Team (www.scummvm.org)

5) THE GAMEDATA IN THIS ARCHIVE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING AND NOT LIMITED TO ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

= implementation recommendation =
remove dreamweb from Fedora


Looking more closely at the review bug, I see that this was justified under "shareware" section of Fedora's license policy (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main?rd=Licensing#Shareware). I still think that's pretty shaky grounds in this particular case (this game isn't necessary for scummvm to be useful, just a game), but if it's the case, maybe a clarification of the Fedora legal policy, or a cleanup of the wiki pages, would be nice? I completely missed that part about shareware software while reading the pages about licenses in Fedora.

Without looking at the reported problem here, shouldn't we report any licensing issues to legal list first? I will suggest to contact legal list first and if needed they only can change the information on Licensing wiki pages.

I agree with pnemade here, that the legal list should be involved here.

That said, here is my IANAL opinion: The ScummVM application is a general-purpose execution environment. As such, I would be treating the interpreter and each supported game as a closely-tied tuple. In other words, I would interpret the dreamweb data files as a necessary shareware component of the (ScummVM, Dreamweb) application.

Now, I'd also like to propose an alternative approach to this problem that might be friendlier to our mirror network (because you're right; these files are massive and not necessarily generally useful to a large set of Fedora users). What if we took advantage of the new "disabled-but-searchable" repository functionality in GNOME Software (and others). We could move this and other shareware data file content out of Fedora proper and into the COPR build system instead. We could then ship this repo in Workstation (or the Games spin, etc.) as either enabled or disabled-but-searchable. Then the mirror networks can avoid duplicating this much rarely-used, enormous content.

dshea: Can you open that discussion on the legal list? Since you are the interested party you would know what clarification/changes you are looking for in the legal pages.

The problem with moving these packages to copr is: They are not mirrored then, so might be slower to download for some interested parties, and they don't get drpms (which are a big help on large package downloads like this).

Replying to [comment:4 kevin]:

dshea: Can you open that discussion on the legal list? Since you are the interested party you would know what clarification/changes you are looking for in the legal pages.

Sent to legal list, awaiting moderation.

dshea,
I don't see your email on legal list yet. Try contacting spot on IRC otherwise.

Any response from legal?

I mentioned the email to spot and forwarded it to him at flock, and he said he'd take a look at it. No response yet.

I just talked to dshea and come to know, he is still waiting reply from spot.

Sorry. I have quite a backlog at the moment and only got to this today. The good news is that this license issue was already opened in 2013 by Debian and they agreed to add the standard modification clause to the license terms, which makes it Free Software. I reconfirmed that we could make that change locally and they are in the process of updating the "dreamweb" zip files to reflect the updated license.

Doesn't solve your mirror issues, but it resolves the legal concerns.

To be clear, if upstream had not been able or willing to fix the license to be a proper Free license, I would have recommended that dreamweb be pulled as not technically meeting the "shareware" exception. I am not a fan of that exception.

The legal issue is solved. We can revisit the space problem later, if need be. (+7)

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