Please may the data files be liberated?

Please may the proprietary files be released under a libre license?

As it stands, the data files cannot currently be packaged by any systems which are 100% libre, such as Parabola. This needlessly excludes entire communities of potential players, many of whom would also be willing to actively contribute back to the project.

The NC-type licenses also backfire, and only end up harming the freedom of the community whilst very few (often a single person) benefit from the terms and conditions of the license. (I don't totally agree with the article I linked, but on the whole it's more or less informative.)

From reading previous issues on the topic of licensing, I noticed many false claims, misconceptions, misinformation, and biased terminology, so I would be happy to discuss in this new thread why liberating the data is a good idea, if people so desire.

The MIT license is listed as acceptable on the page you linked to. As for the art...

Ultimately, Jon had his reasons for wanting CC-BY-NC for his stuff. He explained them immediately before the initial discussion was closed, and he seemed pretty set on it. He never intended it to be 100% free, and this license was about as free as it could be while still meeting his requirements. I don't really mind, either, since it's still made room for some pretty neat stuff as it is. We're still considerably better off than the other open-source projects I'm familiar with (FS2-SCP and OpenJK, specifically), as evidenced by the fact that we're actually legally capable of distributing the whole game (music notwithstanding), and have developed a system to do so just this week.

In other words: I wouldn't expect things to get any better than they are on the licensing front. But that's fine, IMO.

@DaloLorn, we'll never get anywhere with that sort of defeatism! :)

Moreover, open source completely misses the point of freedom, as demonstrated by how freedom was not the goal. The open source philosophy only ever mentions practical benefits, whilst wilfully ignoring any and all ethical topics, for fear of alienating the audience. I refuse to treat people I speak to as unintelligent or incapable of understanding the point. (By the way, I'm not implying you are treating me this way, plus you're free to use any langauge you choose, and I wouldn't ever dream of attempting to stop your freedom of speech.)

Instead of treating freedom as an ethical imperative, the open source mindset sweeps freedom under the rug and presents "openness" as merely a nice-to-have feature, if and only if the inventor of the work is feeling particularly benevolent that day.

To be clear: The inventors of the work were feeling very benevolent that day. 😛

As I see it, the game is free, as in free beer. The only two conditions to that freedom should not matter to the average person, and especially not to one who's actually interested in the game itself: Don't sell the graphics, and don't forget to mention who made the graphics. It's that simple, and to date, it hasn't been a problem to anyone who's actually cared to participate in the community. (Looking at your GitHub history, I think it's fairly safe to assume that this will not be changed by Jon magically changing his mind about his choice of license, because you don't seem to be the sort to offer much more than cultural enforcement.)

Do those conditions somehow make the project "morally impure" or something? Yeah, I guess. But ideology alone can't get you very far, and it's often the case that compromising that ideology will get you closer to successfully implementing it. Case in point, the OpenSR Modpack. We had a miniature Discord war the last time anyone brought up licensing - almost tore the project apart - because we all thought we were on the same page and never bothered to specify a license until the new guy started asking. But we solved it by examining what each of us wanted, and by finding a way to make sure we all got it.

What was the outcome? We didn't have to spend years (there's not a lot of us, and we would also have had to figure out the legal nuances of where the "what" and the "how" of a given block of code parted ways) rewriting every non-free contribution to the MP, and we were still able to license the rest of the MP under the MIT license. Not ideal, but as far as the health of the project is concerned, it was the absolute best-case scenario, because even the hardliners on both sides of the debate agreed to keep their stuff in the MP. We may have harmed some ephemeral "community that could have been", like your original post implies, but we avoided harming the community that is, and my inner utilitarian says that's good enough.

Back to SR2: These sorts of high-minded ideological debates tend to ignore a number of unfortunate realities about the world. For instance:

Of the countless games (or any other software product, for that matter!) that are released each year, very few will ever be open-sourced. By the time their copyright expires, the source code will be irrevocably lost, and the games themselves will most likely be forgotten as new technology renders them virtually impossible to run on modern machines.
Of those few games that do get open-sourced, many that I know of... actually aren't. Not by the original authors. There are, IIRC, projects to recreate Age of Empires, various Command & Conquer games, and a number of other games from scratch, but aside from EA's later decision to open-source Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert, these have generally not been initiated by the copyright holders. Notable exceptions include FreeSpace and Jedi Outcast/Academy, but they're just that - exceptions. Enlight also made the remarkable move of completely releasing Seven Kingdoms under a free license, but that's literally the one example I can think of.
Of the non-reverse-engineered games on the above list, only the license for Seven Kingdoms legally empowers you to install/distribute the complete game. You can mess with the engine all you want, but the only way you're going to play the associated game is if you buy a copy of it for the OS engine to run with. SR2 is in a very exclusive club here.
Let's face it, SR2 is a lot newer and more sophisticated than Seven Kingdoms. This further adds to the significance of what Blind Mind decided to do.
Despite your apparent belief to the contrary, nagging people about things is generally not a great way to get them onboard with your ideology, no matter how admirable that ideology may be. Even putting aside the above remark about their relative sophistication, I would rather see ten new OpenSRs than one more Seven Kingdoms... but when one of the most generous developers out there still has to deal with constant demands for more, how many people do you think will take that as encouragement to open their stuff up? Would they not feel more encouraged by seeing Blind Mind receive gratitude and respect for their decision, rather than demands for more stuff?

@DaloLorn, thank you very much for taking the time to write out a long and considered reply; I appreciate it very much.

The first thing I should address is the myth that freedom is motivated merely by philosophical thinkers for the purpose of ideological purity; I've seen this myth plague discussions around licensing and liberation many times before, and I'm genuinely wondering if it was started by proprietary software corporations to delegitimise the concept of software freedom. In reality, the free software and free culture movements adopt the concept of pragmatic idealism, which in a nutshell states that making sacrifices in the short-term will strengthen our community in the long-term. Compromising one's ideals in order for short-term gains and instant gratification will only ever weaken one's endeavours in the long-term.

Moreover, even if people are motivated purely by ideology, totally disregarding practical reasons, so what? In general, people would not murder someone because they think it's unethical, not because they might worry about cleaning the knife and digging the grave afterwards. In the same way, people in the free software and free culture movements would refuse to author proprietary works because they think it's unethical, not because they might worry about taking the time to sue people for sharing their work afterwards.

At the moment, the free software and free culture movements accept both the philosophical and practical reasons behind freedom. As an example, if I remake all the graphics and 3D models of this game (which sounds like a fun side-project), no matter how much time, effort, and work I put into it, the original author of the work will have the legal right to reach out through the ether and restrict me from selling the fruits of my labour. This is totally against any sort of free market, which is both ethically unjust, and impractical, as the quality of goods available to users and customers will be stifled, as one might never have any motivation to remake the graphics in the first place without the right to profit financially from it.

Plus, there are a plethora of reasons people are motivated to author or contribute to free works, not just money.

Enacting noncommercial restrictions restrict everyone, but especially hurt the minority of people who want to put in the time and effort to legally commercialise a work. The NC restriction only harms the good guys in the end who will follow the unjust license and refuse to use the work altogether, thus blocking out a community of people who would otherwise enjoy the game and potentially contribute back to the project, wheras the people who were going to illegally commercialise it just will anyway, and it's hardly enforceable in a world of online anonymity, cryptocurrency, and global trade. Tracking down the person would be virtually impossible, and if it turns out he or she is in a different jurisdiction, you can't really do anything short of travelling to the country and lodging a complaint in person. Do you really think the author has international legal teams, private investigators, and the funds to prosecute someone on the internet who sold the works he authored? All of this is silly and downright ineffective when the work could just be libre in the first place.

Personally, I have no plans to profit from this game even if it were liberated, but I stand with the principle of pragmatic idealism and refuse to use it if it means that myself and others are not granted freedom. By making this sacrifice in the short-term, our community is strengthened in the long-term, as we remain steadfast and are not subjugated by the unethical, unjustifiable, and unreasonable restrictions of proprietary works.

It doesn't matter how benevolent the authors were, per se, what really matters is if they did anything malevolent, which they did by adding restrictions.

The game is neither gratis (free as in beer), nor libre (free as in freedom):

The game is not gratis because it requires the music from the proprietary, paid version of the game. Skipping extracting the music from the proprietary, paid version leaves players stuck with an inferior, mute version of the game. Not only is this strategy ineffective, since players could trivially download and share the proprietary version of the game anyway, although this is technically illegal, but leaving players who wish to be more free (as in freedom) stuck with an inferior version of the game is quite a malicious bait-and-switch move, as from a distance it looks like the game is at least semi-free, but it turns out that the music isn't even included upon closer inspection.
The game is not libre because all its components are not libre. It cannot be played in freedom. This is the most crucial point: the game data (non-code components of the game, such as graphics, audio, sound effects, 3D models, etc.) are the game. These components are arguably the most important part of the game in a sense, because they are all the player interacts with, with the code just stringing the experience together behind the scenes. Moreover, unlike code which can be reverse-engineered and legally reimplemented, the non-code components cannot be reinvented in such a way, and it will probably be a century, or at least far into the future, long after the game is obsoleted, before they will enter the public domain, if ever, as copyright is regularly retroactively extended by unjust laws which are bought by lobbying groups.

To put it another way: if the game is not liberated the will of the authors, it never will be within our lifetimes, unless dramatic changes to legislation take place, which is unfortunately quite unlikely.

It does not matter whether people currently find the nonfree terms acceptable; most people are completely oblivious to the arguments and philosophy of the free software and free culture movements, so complacency is unfortunately to be expected. One can only cite people not caring if they are actually aware of the issues and have taken sufficient time to familiarise themselves with all the ideas and arguments surrounding the topic, which is almost certainly not true in the case of the community of this game.

All I can do is engage in friendly debate as in this thread, and hope to spread the word of freedom and hopefully convince more people to care. I cannot "enforce" people agree with me, and even if I could, I would never do such a thing as that would be tyrannical.

Your analogy presumes that the only factors worth considering in the licensing of a work are how the authors can benefit. Whilst the authors can and should benefit from works they authored, this should never be at the expense of the freedom of others. It is better that a proprietary project never be started than to exist and subjugate users. This only makes life more difficult for free software hackers and free culture artists, musicians, authors, etc. as it's one more project that has to be replaced with a libre replacement, if that is even legally possible as I discussed earlier in this post.

Your bullet points apart from the last one are all arguments in favour of liberation at the earliest possible moment as far as I can tell:

Projects should be libre from the start, thus solving the issue of source code being lost, as many people would have a copy.
These projects can then be updated and ported to newer architectures, systems, and machines, like the DOOM engine, thus solving the compatability issues.
Projects are not always liberated by the original authors, thus proprietary works should be illegal, so the freedom of users of works is always respected.
Projects sometimes have to be reverse-engineered to be understood: this is solved by liberation, as the source code is distributed, so time and effort does not have to be wasted figuring out how the binary works.
"SR2 is in a very exclusive club": as I said previously, all works should be libre anyway, so everyone can have their freedom respected, not only if the inventor of the work just happens to be feeling particularly benevolent one day.

Don't you see how liberation, a supposedly "purely idealistic" philosophy as I discussed earlier in this post, as per the silly myth, actually prevents and solves real-world issues?

I apologise if my post was perceived as nagging; that is not my intention. :)

You say the developers are "generous"; liberation is not a nice-to-have, it's a moral and ethical imperative. By your continuing use of the term "open source", which you are of course free to use, it is readily apparent that freedom is not your concern or goal, which helps explain the motivations behind your decisions and views on the other issues you mention. We should not be at the mercy of developers to have our freedom respected; it is a universal and inalienable human right. I suppose this is why it hurts so much when a project is almost but not quite free in that some of its components are free and some are not, instead of being fully proprietary; the developers obviously care enough to have semi-liberated the project in the first place, but it's almost like we're being teased and taunted, like we are not worthy of being granted full freedom.

I am immensely grateful of the liberation of the project by the developers, I just want them to finish the job only they can do, and grant us full freedom. As it stands, I cannot in good conscience give gratitude and respect for proprietary projects; the license may be substantially more free than most, but unless it grants full freedom, it's useless in the free world, and impossible to package and host in the repositories of a 100% libre operating system like Parabola, which is my main motivation for begging at the feet of the developers for liberation in the first place.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this reply. :)

@throwaway1037 You strike me as very opinioniated in stating that "all works should be libre" and defining this libre as 100%. You said you're grateful for the liberation of the project, but the rest of the post doesn't strike me as grateful (especially saying that [the project] "is useless in the free world")

"Open source" has nothing about "freedom" in the name, so they're free to use "open source".

The game is not gratis because it requires the music from the proprietary, paid version of the game.

This, actually, is a very valid point.

@Zireael07 I apologise if my writing is perceived as harsh and ungrateful; it's just my tone.

In reality, I am immensely grateful that the project has been semi-liberated, I'm just heartbroken that it's not fully liberated.

It's going to take a lot longer to form a coherent response to the original comment, but for Zireael's stuff:

@throwaway1037 You strike me as very opinioniated in stating that "all works should be libre" and defining this libre as 100%. You said you're grateful for the liberation of the project, but the rest of the post doesn't strike me as grateful (especially saying that [the project] "is useless in the free world")

"Open source" has nothing about "freedom" in the name, so they're free to use "open source".

You're not the only one who feels that way...

The game is not gratis because it requires the music from the proprietary, paid version of the game.

This, actually, is a very valid point.

Unfortunately, the music's not something Blind Mind even has the right to release. For similar reasons, they've had to hold back on open-sourcing SR1. IIRC, they were using a third-party engine for that one.

The first thing I should address is the myth that freedom is motivated merely by philosophical thinkers for the purpose of ideological purity; I've seen this myth plague discussions around licensing and liberation many times before, and I'm genuinely wondering if it was started by proprietary software corporations to delegitimise the concept of software freedom.

For my part, it stems from a much simpler matter: I like SR2. I want to see it grow and thrive, because it's an amazing game with a ton of potential, and it really shouldn't have been the death of the studio. But that's a lot easier to accomplish if the community has the right to keep fixing and improving it, as with the OpenSR project. The community has that right, so I'm satisfied.

In reality, the free software and free culture movements adopt the concept of pragmatic idealism, which in a nutshell states that making sacrifices in the short-term will strengthen our community in the long-term. Compromising one's ideals in order for short-term gains and instant gratification will only ever weaken one's endeavours in the long-term.

Here's the thing... we have slightly different goals, you and I. The free software movement is about building an ecosystem of free software, but it doesn't specify which software that is. Losing SR2 is a disappointment to you as an outsider, but it's just another in a long list of programs that won't enter your ecosystem. If it dies on ideological grounds? That's fine, there's plenty more fish in the ocean.

Meanwhile, as someone who's played this game since Early Access, I have a specific interest in preserving this program, even if some compromises have to be made. This, too, is a form of pragmatic idealism; the difference is in which ideals I'm more likely to compromise on.

As an example, if I remake all the graphics and 3D models of this game (which sounds like a fun side-project), no matter how much time, effort, and work I put into it, the original author of the work will have the legal right to reach out through the ether and restrict me from selling the fruits of my labour.

Mmm, that depends. Jon can't stop you from creating brand new graphics for the game and licensing them under any terms you choose. He can stop you from remastering his work and licensing that however you like... but realistically, I think the Starflare engine will need an overhaul by the time we need remastered graphics. (And by that time, who knows? Maybe he'll be more amenable to letting you have at it.)

This is totally against any sort of free market, which is both ethically unjust, and impractical, as the quality of goods available to users and customers will be stifled, as one might never have any motivation to remake the graphics in the first place without the right to profit financially from it.

There is an amusing irony to the fact that you question the likelihood of anyone ever remastering SR2's graphics if they can't expect to profit from it... in a community where every single shipset was created in exactly that context. Jon was an unpaid volunteer when he made all the vanilla shipsets, and every shipset mod still in existence portrays copyrighted content (Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate...) that the authors can never be paid for. 😂

It doesn't matter how benevolent the authors were, per se, what really matters is if they did anything malevolent, which they did by adding restrictions.

And you don't see how this alienates the people you're trying to convince here? Calling them malicious for protecting their rights?

The game is neither gratis (free as in beer), nor libre (free as in freedom):

The game is not gratis because it requires the music from the proprietary, paid version of the game. Skipping extracting the music from the proprietary, paid version leaves players stuck with an inferior, mute version of the game. Not only is this strategy ineffective, since players could trivially download and share the proprietary version of the game anyway, although this is technically illegal, but leaving players who wish to be more free (as in freedom) stuck with an inferior version of the game is quite a malicious bait-and-switch move, as from a distance it looks like the game is at least semi-free, but it turns out that the music isn't even included upon closer inspection.

I know I already said this in response to Zireael, but I'll repeat it for emphasis: This was not a strategic maneuver. They didn't release the soundtrack because they couldn't legally release the soundtrack.

I also think that raising such a big fuss about the music is... excessive, at best.

The game is not libre because all its components are not libre. It cannot be played in freedom. This is the most crucial point: the game data (non-code components of the game, such as graphics, audio, sound effects, 3D models, etc.) are the game. These components are arguably the most important part of the game in a sense, because they are all the player interacts with, with the code just stringing the experience together behind the scenes.

Ehhh. I may be biased, being a code monkey myself... but the engine's really the big thing here. AFAIK, there's never been a fully-functional space 4X released into the public domain before - the next best thing I can think of is FrEee, which I think is still a good way away from completion?

The graphics can be replaced (shoddily, but they can!) within less than a year if someone feels like doing it. We're not talking about an RPG here, and SR2 doesn't, strictly speaking, need fancy graphics. Reverse-engineering the engine... could take years. Longer, even, because a lot of the things that happen under the hood are not at all obvious until you've had a look at the source code. (For instance, there's a whole pile of modinfo fields that have never seen public use!)

Moreover, unlike code which can be reverse-engineered and legally reimplemented, the non-code components cannot be reinvented in such a way, and it will probably be a century, or at least far into the future, long after the game is obsoleted, before they will enter the public domain, if ever, as copyright is regularly retroactively extended by unjust laws which are bought by lobbying groups.

Nobody says the Saar need to look like snakes. Nobody says Beacons need to look... well, the way they look. You've got plenty of leeway to reinvent SR2's graphics without qualifying as a derivative work.

To put it another way: if the game is not liberated the will of the authors, it never will be within our lifetimes, unless dramatic changes to legislation take place, which is unfortunately quite unlikely.

And if it weren't open-sourced, it never would be liberated at all. Even in its current state, there's no guarantee that people will still be playing SR2 by the time its copyright expires... but it's certainly improved the odds!

It does not matter whether people currently find the nonfree terms acceptable; most people are completely oblivious to the arguments and philosophy of the free software and free culture movements, so complacency is unfortunately to be expected. One can only cite people not caring if they are actually aware of the issues and have taken sufficient time to familiarise themselves with all the ideas and arguments surrounding the topic, which is almost certainly not true in the case of the community of this game.

I do, in fact, understand the issues surrounding free software. Furthermore, if you take the time to peruse my other SR2-related repositories, you will find that, wherever I was able to do so, I've used the MIT license for all of my work, and I've encouraged others to do the same. But I have also accepted that "no" means "no", not "ask me again later", and that asking about it outside special circumstances is likely to waste both my time and the time of whoever I'm asking.

More importantly, as I mentioned before, this isn't as high a priority for me as it is for you.

All I can do is engage in friendly debate as in this thread, and hope to spread the word of freedom and hopefully convince more people to care. I cannot "enforce" people agree with me, and even if I could, I would never do such a thing as that would be tyrannical.

And yet, throughout this post, you have, by my count, reacted to dissenting opinions in the following ways (I'll admit to using some measure of hyperbole, for the sake of making it absolutely clear how you're coming across):

We are immoral villains for not agreeing to make free software our primary priority
We are uneducated fools who have never heard the true meaning of "free software", and you are morally obligated to preach it to us
The devs are vile monsters, daring to taunt us by only partially liberating their work

There's a scene from The Good Place that reminds me of this a little: One could get a few good points by being a vegan, but they got a lot more good points by not zealously trying to convert everyone else to veganism. Your goals are good, and what you're trying to talk the devs into doing is absolutely in line with those goals... but the way you approach it, it just comes across as a religious crusade, where everyone who disagrees with you is a filthy heathen and must be cleansed.

Your analogy presumes that the only factors worth considering in the licensing of a work are how the authors can benefit. Whilst the authors can and should benefit from works they authored, this should never be at the expense of the freedom of others. It is better that a proprietary project never be started than to exist and subjugate users. This only makes life more difficult for free software hackers and free culture artists, musicians, authors, etc. as it's one more project that has to be replaced with a libre replacement, if that is even legally possible as I discussed earlier in this post.

I find your claim shortsighted and unconvincing (mostly because of how shortsighted it is). So many of the things we take for granted today only exist because of proprietary projects. Heck, GitHub itself is a proprietary project, but that doesn't stop you coming here and using their service to tell people about the evils of proprietary projects.

Your bullet points apart from the last one are all arguments in favour of liberation at the earliest possible moment as far as I can tell:

They are, yes... in that they offer evidence of why a world full of liberated stuff is a good thing. But they're also not, in that they demonstrate just how little stuff is liberated, and how immensely precious even these pseudo-liberated projects are to the people who care about them.

Projects should be libre from the start, thus solving the issue of source code being lost, as many people would have a copy.

The SR2 source code can no longer be lost.

These projects can then be updated and ported to newer architectures, systems, and machines, like the DOOM engine, thus solving the compatability issues.

Assuming anyone bothers to do it, SR2 can totally be updated and ported to new architectures, systems, and machines.

Projects are not always liberated by the original authors, thus proprietary works should be illegal, so the freedom of users of works is always respected.

I won't repeat what I said earlier about the importance of proprietary works.

Projects sometimes have to be reverse-engineered to be understood: this is solved by liberation, as the source code is distributed, so time and effort does not have to be wasted figuring out how the binary works.

"SR2 is in a very exclusive club": as I said previously, all works should be libre anyway, so everyone can have their freedom respected, not only if the inventor of the work just happens to be feeling particularly benevolent one day.

"Should be" and "is" are two different things. Either way, what Blind Mind has done is a step in the right direction. A baby step, in the grand scheme of things... but a step nonetheless.

Don't you see how liberation, a supposedly "purely idealistic" philosophy as I discussed earlier in this post, as per the silly myth, actually prevents and solves real-world issues?

Don't you see how all the real-world issues that absolutely needed solving about SR2 have already been solved without proper liberation?

I apologise if my post was perceived as nagging; that is not my intention. :)

As noted above, you've done a lot of things you say you didn't intend to do. Intent is not everything.

@DaloLorn, thank you again for taking the time to write a response to my message. :)

You're content with being granted enough freedom to do what you want, and then giving up and going home when the job is not done for everyone else. Can you imagine how it feels for others who haven't been granted enough freedom to do what they want to do?

I also want to see this project grow and thrive, but only in freedom. That's why I've taken the time to kindly beg and grovel at the feet of the proprietors for full liberation. As I've mentioned multiple times now, as it stands, the game is unfortunately and avoidably literally unplayable and useless in the free world, at least so long as no libre data exists which can be used with the engine, and cannot be packaged for 100% libre systems, such as Parabola, which needlessly excludes entire communities from playing the game and potentially contributing back to it.

Perhaps this doesn't come across to someone who's being playing the game for years: we in the free software and free culture movements cannot play the game yet. I'm only here because I want us to be able to!

Again, to repeat to make the point crystal clear: we will never be able to play the game unless it is liberated by its authors. Waiting about a century in order for the game to be 100% liberated is not acceptable or practical in any sense of the word.

You say you understand the issues surrounding free software, yet you use misleading, biased, and potentially confusing terms. Of course, you are free to do so, but this indicates that you either do not actually understand the issues surrounding free software as well as you thought (which is totally understandable and quite common, and I don't blame you if this is the case), or you do indeed understand them, and exercise your freedom of speech to talk against free software instead of to defend or promote it. Due to the amount of misleading, biased, and potentially confusing terminology you used, your "low priority" level of care for this issue, making a mistake about the public domain, and potential copyright infringement in your repositories (eg. here, here, and here; have you been granted the freedom to redistribute these files? I apologise in advance if you have), I'm inclined to believe the former.

You used the term "ecosystem", which implies the absence of ethical judgement, thus undermining the philosophy of free software. I'd recommend using the term "infrastructure" instead, as this makes it clear that the software is an artificial work and should be questioned and challenged on moral and ethical grounds just like any other human activity or work.

This also shows the open source mindset in comparison with the free software one: "openness" is good enough, anything beyond that is a nice-to-have, not a moral and ethical imperative, and anyone actively seeking to improve the situation should be grateful for whatever is bestowed upon them by the inventor of the work, and stop "nagging" others about it.

The free software movement does define which software enters our infrastructure: it has to be free software of course! I understand where you're coming from, ie. there is no magic list predicting which program will be free, because it's ultimately up to the benevolence of the developer, although just stating this doesn't excuse any developers from not liberating their programs. (By the way, if you want to see a list of 100% libre programs, then you can check out the Parabola repositories.)

By saying "there are plenty more fish in the ocean" you also seem to be implying that in this so-called "ecosystem", some software just happens to be proprietary through no wilful action, and we just have to live with that. This is totally wrong; everyone has the right to criticise anything else, although it's up to each person to decide whether the criticism is constructive and comes from a place of love, or hatred. My criticism for this project originates from the former: as I stated previously, I actually want more people to be able to play it, but only in freedom.

I'd strongly recommend gaining the courage, strength, and confidence to say "no" to things, otherwise your positions and stances will only ever be weakened as you abandon your principles in exchange for mere instant gratification and short-term gain, at the expense of long-term success. Compromising on the very thing you sought to protect is not noble or strategic, it's failure. This kind of compromise is ruinous and will only lead to disaster.

As an example of remaking graphics, the Freedoom project makes replacement data files for the DOOM engine, so as to allow the game to be played in freedom, as the engine is useless in the free world without libre data to use with it. However, whilst this version is certainly ethically superior than DOOM, it lags behind on a technical level, in my opinion. All this effort trying to remake data for a playable game could have been spent on more fruitful endeavours instead of duplicating effort for files which could have just been liberated in the first place.

I apologise for being unclear: I was not suggesting people would never remake graphics without the financial profit motive, I even linked other motives for doing such work, and I might be interested in doing so myself, if they were libre, I was just using this an example of how the license leads to practical injustices, and is not just a theoretical and ideological argument, as per the silly myth.

You again use a biased and misleading propaganda term: "protecting their rights". There is no such so-called "protection" going on here, there is only restriction; nobody should have the right to stomp on the freedom of others and tell them what they can and cannot do commercially with a work; this is rightly described as malicious and tyrannical.

If it "alienates" you, then that just shows how far gone the unethical mainstream is, although this is totally understandable and I don't blame anyone personally for not realising this. This also demonstrates why spreading the message of freedom is so important nowadays. There is also this comic satirising debates such as this one.

Okay, I understand the situation with the music now; although it may not have been intentional, it still doesn't stop the project being a bait-and-switch, however. This should be fixed by liberating the music.

As for the game engine, it's brilliant that it's libre, but it's useless in the free world if there's no free data to use with it. The hackers in the free software movement have become very good at replacing proprietary software by writing libre replacements from scratch; it's been happening since 1983, after all. The problem is that reimplementing non-code components of projects is often legally impossible or ends up with a technically inferior lookalike whilst leaving the proprietary data the superior experience, which only pushes people towards using that instead, as they abandon freedom in exchange for short-term gratification. We shouldn't have to spend "less than a year" "shoddily" replacing graphics; it's a massive waste of time and effort when they could just be libre in the first place.

Waiting the author's lifetime + 70 years + all the copyright extension laws of the future for the non-code data to enter the public domain and therefore become libre is far longer than the couple of years or so it would take to write a libre engine from scratch or reverse-engineer it to a sufficient extent so as to extract any knowledge of technical tricks. Plus, there are enough libre game engines already, so all that would need to be reimplemented is the game logic, thus shortening the amount of time it would take to get the free software up and running.

You're incorrect about it being "released into the public domain"; it's not, it's licensed under the Expat (so-called "MIT") license.

You can't just accept what people tell you, especially when it's an injustice! It is far more productive to engage in friendly debate such as this than retreat and cower in fear. Again, this shows the open source mindset in contrast to the free software philosophy: "openness" is just a nice-to-have, not an ethical and moral imperative that sometimes needs to be fought for and defended.

I would only really describe the worst offenders as villains; as it stands, this project is semi-free and far less unethical than most, although I am taking the time to engage in friendly debate in favour of the final step of liberation in order to make it a reality.
I don't think you're fools, nor uneducated. I think you're reasonable and intelligent people who have done some things with which I disagree, who are taking the time to hear me out.
I don't think I am obliged to talk about freedom, I just think it's important to help spread the word; it is a movement, after all.
Again, I don't think the devs are vile, nor monsters, but they are genuinely taunting us in a sense by making the project almost free but not quite, in such a tantalising way.
I dislike the religious imagery and I genuinely understand where you are coming from, and I know non-mainstream opinions can seem odd at times, especially if you're not familiar with them.

Yes, GitHub is terrible; that's why I have a temporary account. At the moment, it's just about usable with only free software, although I'd advise switching to a 100% libre code forge.

My claim is not shortsighted; it's better that proprietary software were never written than exist and subjugate users; that's one of the core assertions of the free software movement. What would have happened had a proprietary project never been written is that another team would have made a libre project which does the same job, which is a win-win for everyone; there now exists a project to do the job, and it's libre too.

I agree semi-liberated projects are better than no project, since the proprietary parts can be discarded and rewritten, except as I mentioned before, this sort of reimplementation is rarely legal, practical, or results in technically high-quality work for non-code projects, which is partly why it's so important that the project be 100% libre. However, it would be better if the proprietary parts were never invented in the first place, so they could have been made by another team, 100% libre from day one.

I'm glad you recognise semi-liberation as a small, baby step. I wonder if you actually agree with me on many fronts but are repressing it so as to justify your love of playing this game for so long.

There remains one real-world issue which absolutely needs solving: it needs to be fully liberated.

I write in such a tone and style that prioritises clear communication over potentially hurting people's feelings, which is a double-edged sword. If you take offense at something I said, I almost certainly did not intend for it to be offensive; please ask me to clarify if you feel such a way about something I wrote.

Thank you again for taking the time to read this long reply. :)

I write in such a tone and style that prioritises clear communication over potentially hurting people's feelings, which is a double-edged sword. If you take offense at something I said, I almost certainly did not intend for it to be offensive; please ask me to clarify if you feel such a way about something I wrote.

@throwaway1037 I would recommend putting disclaimers like this at the start of your comments in the future. People read comment from the start to finish, and if you put this at the end, the damage may already be done, and they may no longer be able to take it as genuine due to the frame of reference they started reading the comment. It's much easier to re-frame your emotions on something from the beginning, than it is to be able to at the end after you've already experience an emotional reaction. This is especially true the longer something takes to read, and you seem to have a tendency to be extremely verbose.

@Eeems your recommendation is brilliant; in fact, I already do this in my emails, but didn't on these messages because they're already very long as it is, since I make sure to be very clear and precise in important writings such as debates.

As an example, if I remake all the graphics and 3D models of this game (which sounds like a fun side-project), no matter how much time, effort, and work I put into it, the original author of the work will have the legal right to reach out through the ether and restrict me from selling the fruits of my labour.

Can you expand on this please? My understanding was any artist with sufficient time could go through all the assets in the game, document what the asset is in one or two words and the aspect ratio / resolution, then go off and create new assets (without referring to the originals) which would be compatible with the MIT licensed engine but not a derivative work of the CC-BY-NC assets, hence 'liberating' the game as one could put it. Said asset replaced game would likely be compatible with all existing mods and crossplay multiplayer with commercial clients since the engine wouldn't care what the bitmaps actually look like.

As it stands, the data files cannot currently be packaged by any systems which are 100% libre

I don't know about what specific limitations Parabola imposes on packages, so this may not be applicable, but have you considered packaging the https://github.com/OpenSRProject/OpenStarRuler-Launchpad instead? It is capable of downloading Star Ruler 2 and is able to install/manage mods, and its only license is MIT.

What would have happened had a proprietary project never been written is that another team would have made a libre project which does the same job, which is a win-win for everyone; there now exists a project to do the job, and it's libre too.

Not the case, unfortunately. For many projects, there exist no open source equivalents, let alone libre projects as you define them. For instance, there is no free CAD software that matches the commercial offerings. There is only one open source CAT tool, which is also miles behind the commercial options.

There remains one real-world issue which absolutely needs solving: it needs to be fully liberated.

You were told already that this is not possible due to the terms of the license that the developers had for the assets. Instead of continuing to "grovel" for something that cannot happen, you should be grateful that this is not one of the games that had to be pulled from stores worldwide because the license for their music expired completely. (Yes, that did happen!)

As an example, if I remake all the graphics and 3D models of this game (which sounds like a fun side-project), no matter how much time, effort, and work I put into it, the original author of the work will have the legal right to reach out through the ether and restrict me from selling the fruits of my labour.

Can you expand on this please? My understanding was any artist with sufficient time could go through all the assets in the game, document what the asset is in one or two words and the aspect ratio / resolution, then go off and create new assets (without referring to the originals) which would be compatible with the MIT licensed engine but not a derivative work of the CC-BY-NC assets, hence 'liberating' the game as one could put it. Said asset replaced game would likely be compatible with all existing mods and crossplay multiplayer with commercial clients since the engine wouldn't care what the bitmaps actually look like.

The latest wall of text included remarks to the effect of "it's not the same as the original stuff, so it's not good enough".

As it stands, the data files cannot currently be packaged by any systems which are 100% libre

I don't know about what specific limitations Parabola imposes on packages, so this may not be applicable, but have you considered packaging the https://github.com/OpenSRProject/OpenStarRuler-Launchpad instead? It is capable of downloading Star Ruler 2 and is able to install/manage mods, and its only license is MIT.

It won't work. It would require them to rules-lawyer the matter in something less than the most frustrating way possible. 🙄

What would have happened had a proprietary project never been written is that another team would have made a libre project which does the same job, which is a win-win for everyone; there now exists a project to do the job, and it's libre too.

Not the case, unfortunately. For many projects, there exist no open source equivalents, let alone libre projects as you define them. For instance, there is no free CAD software that matches the commercial offerings. There is only one open source CAT tool, which is also miles behind the commercial options.

There remains one real-world issue which absolutely needs solving: it needs to be fully liberated.

You were told already that this is not possible due to the terms of the license that the developers had for the assets. Instead of continuing to "grovel" for something that cannot happen, you should be grateful that this is not one of the games that had to be pulled from stores worldwide because the license for their music expired completely. (Yes, that did happen!)

More tactful than the response I was trying to type up before you and Skeleton posted your comments, but you've pretty much summed up the key point. I may agree with the general notion that copyright is an evil (... though even then, I might find some limited exceptions to that notion...), but I'm not so blinded by my ideology as to ignore the fact that it is a necessary evil. Like taxes, and lawyers. 😛

you should be grateful that this is not one of the games that had to be pulled from stores worldwide because the license for their music expired completely. (Yes, that did happen!)

... On a tangentially related note: Which game did that happen to? 🤨

@DaloLorn: One part of the GTA series was the most recent (and probably best known) case, but I am certain it's not the only one. IIRC they started offering it again, after removing the offending music track.

@Skeletonxf AFAIK you are correct; I was referring to remaking as in remastering, not reimplementation. See my above posts for a more in-depth discussion, eg. regarding Freedoom.

You used the following misleading, biased, and potentially misleading terms:

"Asset": this term presumes the work has no value to society aside from commercial value, which justifies terrible things like making the work proprietary.
"Create": this term implicitly compars authors to a deity in order to justify a higher moral standing and terrible things like making the work propriety.
"Commercial": by using "commercial" as a synonym for "proprietary", you're confusing two totally different issues: freedom, ie. either libre or proprietary, and financial price, ie. either gratis or paid, which are two independent axes, moreover, this conflation presumes that libre works cannot also be commercialised, which is false. In fact, the freedom to commercialise the work is part of the very definition of libre works and the very definition of free software

Of course, you are free to exercise your freedom of speech as you wish, although using it to say things like this is harmful.

As for the other project, installers are useless; launchers which are written specifically to download and install programs are obsoleted by package managers. The whole point of package managers is that they manage packages, ie. the only program on the system that installs things by downloading and building them is the package manager. Moreover, doesn't that project literally just fetch and build this semi-free project, in which case it's just an indirection to a project which is still not fully libre?

@throwaway1037: You know there is such a thing as free assets? In the IT world, "asset" is a catch-all phrase that covers anything from music to art, and does not mean anything about its' commercial value

And people can create things too, not just deities, so that argument is... weird to say the least.

@Zireael07 this indeed is the case; with the notable exception of video games, there is a libre replacement program for virtually every proprietary program, the vast majority of which are also technically superior in addition to being ethically and morally superior by being libre.

As for CAD programs, there is FreeCAD, LeoCAD, LibreCAD, OpenSCAD, qCAD, KiCAD, etc. all of which are more than capable libre tools.

You used the following misleading, biased, and potentially misleading terms:

"Asset": this term presumes the work has no value to society aside from commercial value, which justifies terrible things like making the work proprietary.
"Commercial": by using "commercial" as a synonym for "proprietary", you're confusing two totally different issues: freedom, ie. either libre or proprietary, and financial price, ie. either gratis or paid, which are two independent axes, moreover, this conflation presumes that libre works cannot also be commercialised, which is false. In fact, the freedom to commercialise the work is part of the very definition of libre works and the very definition of free software

Of course, you are free to exercise your freedom of speech as you wish, although using it to say things like this is harmful.

Your open source mindset is also evident: "openness" is just a nice-to-have, in stark contrast to the free software philosophy, in which freedom is a moral and ethical imperative.

I have not been told this is impossible, and even if I had the person saying it would be lying.

Please stop telling people to be grateful for injustices. Just because the situation is not as bad as something else, that doesn't justify the situation.

Moreover, doesn't that project literally just fetch and build this semi-free project

It does not, in fact, build the game, in the technical sense. It fetches its constituent components and puts them together, and it also lets you install mods from any Git repository on the web. Since you're so upset about our use of misleading terms, I thought you might want to know.

@Zireael07 the term "asset" is unfortunately used by some as a catch-all term, and it does have the implications I listed whether the person using it intended it to or not.

Have you read the link about "create" I linked? I'm not saying that only deities can create, I'm saying that in the specific context of copyrighted works, people use the term "create" in order to elevate authors to a higher moral standing in order to justify terrible things like making the work proprietary and extending the length of the term of copyright, so you have to be careful when using the term, or avoid it altogether, so as to avoid endorsing this argument, which is what I would recommend.

@DaloLorn you are free to use any langauge you desire, I'm just alerting you to the fact that the terms being used here plague discussions of licensing and liberation, and carry false assumptions and endorsement for arguments we're actively fighting against.

As for the launcher, please may you explain?

It fetches its constituent components and puts them together

That's what "build" means, in this context; it doesn't have to include compilation.

Oh, I didn't realise it had other features. Although, I suspect many of the mods available are proprietary, and having a third party program act as a package manager is very bad practice and recipe for system breakage disasters down the road. Plus, does it have any links to proprietary mods hardcoded into it?

@DaloLorn

It won't work. It would require them to rules-lawyer the matter in something less than the most frustrating way possible. 🙄

???

Proprietary software is not a necessary evil. This is needless defeatism.

Also, are you going to reply to my latest large reply point-by-point as before? :)

@throwaway1037 freedom is illusion cope

BlindMindStudios / StarRuler2-Source

Please may the data files be liberated? #79