why not properly license whynot? :-D

gentooza commented 2 years ago

Hi!

Your game is licensed under GPLv3 only in the minetest contendb page, but I see the code here unlicensed!

I you want, if you are interested, I can help

the basic guidelines from the FSF can be found here

cheers and happy hacking

Section made by @Lazerbeak12345 in order to make this issue actionable

[x] #135 licenses files should be named COPYING
[ ] Ensure that licences are included in each mod or modpack
- [x] That big batch
- [x] https://github.com/lisacvuk/minetest-toolranks/issues/19
- [ ] https://github.com/orwell96/engrave/issues/2
- [x] https://github.com/minetest-technic/mese_crystals/issues/5 (#138)
[ ] Resolve incompatibilities (either remove or re-licence them)
- [x] https://github.com/SokolovPavel/helicopter/issues/11
- [x] Moararmor is GPLv2 only
- [ ] https://github.com/Amaz1/flight/issues/2
[ ] Image licences
- [ ] Generate list of current image licences to determine current status (and next steps)

[ ] add license header and copyright holder in every file. all licensing steps here

dacmot commented 1 year ago

Yeah. Well, at the very least, if Pavel answers we should be able to include it as GPLv2 or any later version.

I found an email address and tried to reach him directly, in case he doesn't get notifications from Github anymore. Hopefully we get an answer... eventually :)

dacmot commented 1 year ago

Hmmm... email is bouncing :( that might also explain why he's not very responsive to stuff happening on Github...

Lazerbeak12345 commented 1 year ago

As posted on the related sub-issue, I've attempted to reach Pavel through the forum. Pavel was "Last active:Sat Jan 16, 2021 02:22". That was 649 days ago from today. If we assume that's the period that Pavel sees forum notifications, then we will have to wait till "Tuesday, August 6, 2024" - and I don't think that waiting that long is an option.

Lazerbeak12345 commented 1 year ago

I also checked to see if Pavel has a discord account and is in the Minetest Discord. There is a Pavel - but different last name.

dacmot commented 1 year ago

Yeah, I have the feeling he's gone, done, moved on from minetest. Given how long ago he's visited the forums I doubt he'll be back.

I think Github may have more chance of grabbing his attention, even if his last activity was May 2022. I checked Gitlab, codeberg and notabug too just in case... turns out his name is fairly common :-/ I couldn't tell if he has another account in any of those places.

In any case, I think we may have to remove the helicopter mod for the time being. It'll break compatibility, but I feel like we don't have much choice.

Lazerbeak12345 commented 1 year ago

All noted incompatibilities have been addressed.

dacmot commented 1 year ago

All noted incompatibilities have been addressed.

Not quite. Still missing engrave

Lazerbeak12345 commented 1 year ago

All noted incompatibilities have been addressed.

Not quite. Still missing engrave

Right. That still needs done. I was just referencing that all mods with incompatible licences have been fixed in one way or another.

Lazerbeak12345 commented 1 year ago

Actually, we haven't reviewed the image licences. I have no idea how it works at all. While I've read the full license text for all of the relevant code licenses and know of resources to double-check my assumptions and understandings of the code licences, I can't say the same for image licences. I know we do need an expressly granted right to redistribute but I don't know what else we need for this project.

gentooza commented 1 year ago

Actually, we haven't reviewed the image licences. I have no idea how it works at all. While I've read the full license text for all of the relevant code licenses and know of resources to double-check my assumptions and understandings of the code licences, I can't say the same for image licences. I know we do need an expressly granted right to redistribute but I don't know what else we need for this project.

I don't find a link anywhere :-/ What I can say is what I needed to do for publishing projects in the GNU Portal, Savannah, in the past.

The media content, must be specified in a README in it's folder, and in the main README, with a image, sound, video, filenames list in it, it's copyright and license for every one.

If other license has been chosen for them, for example, CC-BY, it's legal text must be added to the project root folder also.

I had to to this:

I had images in ./image folder.

in the main README:

[...]
# Images license
./images/banner_logo.png
./images/calandra_chica.PNG
./images/calandra_grande.PNG
[...]
are licensed under CC-BY-SA
copyright 2012-2015 xxxxxxx , mail: xxxx@xxxxxxx.com
[...]

I added the legal text for CC-BY-SA, in plain text, to project as COPYING-CC-BY-SA:
I added another README in the ./images folder with same paragraph about image licensing

:-/

Lazerbeak12345 commented 1 year ago

I'd guess then, akin to my list of code licences in use, we need a count of what media licences are in use. We can then evaluate from there next steps.

dacmot commented 1 year ago

Yeah... Probably.

Lazerbeak12345 commented 1 year ago

I was going through but there's a few edge cases I don't know if works. I guess we could just assume any mod that doesn't define the licence for at least a portion of the media is putting the licence under the code licence.

And from my digging, here's the types of media I found:

textures
audio
3d object files
in-game text
text files like the readme or api docs
translations (of any text)

Did I miss anything?

dacmot commented 1 year ago

Would screenshots fall into textures? Are they copyrightable?

Lazerbeak12345 commented 1 year ago

Ah missed that. And that's a good question. I'd argue there's "Fair use" involved there. So perhaps, but perhaps not?

Lazerbeak12345 commented 1 year ago

From other use around screenshots, it seems that screenshots are a derivative work - if not a complete copy. The way we use them, I'd say derivative, seeing as they are composed of the other assets used in the game.

Lazerbeak12345 commented 1 year ago

The result of find -path ./mods\*textures\* -name \*.\* | cat -n is 4021 lines long. That's only the textures of course, any other art, including 3d models, and of course our screenshots, are not included in this list.

As before, it might be best to go on a mod-by-mod basis.

Lazerbeak12345 commented 1 year ago

Licence unknown

[ ] mods/tools/woodcutting/screenshot.png

Credit given, media licence not specified

All media within

[ ] mods/tools/trash_can
[ ] mods/tools/subspacewalker
[ ] mods/tools/orbs_of_time
[ ] mods/tools/maidroid_tool
[ ] mods/tools/maidroid_core
[ ] mods/tools/maidroid
[ ] mods/tools/jumping

Textures are specified, but does this qualify?

[ ] mods/tools/rainbowswords/screenshot.png
[ ] mods/tools/handholds/screenshot.png
[ ] TODO finish. left off on flyingcarpet

Lazerbeak12345 commented 1 year ago

Problem: The flyingcarpet mod says:

Code is under the LGPL v2.1, as I think this is what the Helicopters mod is licensed under... Please correct me if I am wrong!

They actually are wrong....

Lazerbeak12345 commented 1 year ago

issue made upstream https://github.com/Amaz1/flight/issues/2

dacmot commented 6 months ago

I think it might be time to take decisions on flyingcarpet and engrave. Neither ones have responded to requests to properly license their mods. Looking at their github accounts, they are not active at all and will likely never respond.

In both cases, we could fork them and add the proper licenses ourselves. Flying carpet is based on helicopter which is GPLv2 or later, and engrave is LPGL v2.1 according to the forums. I think that would be preferable to removing the mods.

What do you think?

Lazerbeak12345 commented 6 months ago

Compared to Apercy's modern flight mods, carpet is very low quality. It functions nearly identical to the upstream helicopter, and like that mod doesn't limit flight in any way. My players on my server moved to it from Pavel's heli, and many prefer it over the faster but more limited hydroplane

dacmot commented 6 months ago

So it feels like cheating :) I agree. Though that should probably be addressed in a separate issue.

minetest-whynot / whynot-game