Re: [GZG] Can Haz Full Thrust Game Server?

On Friday 19 September 2008 17:15:45 Ernest Prabhakar wrote:
> Or, do you want us to place the source code itself under a non-
> commercial license (CC-NC), so that it isn't legally permissible to
> use in any commercial products?
>
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

No such license would restrict what the copyright holder can
do - they are free to relicense under a commercial license at
a later point if they so wish. If you really want Jon to keep
control over commercial aspects of it, then probably he would
need to own the copyright on it.

> (or perhaps under the GPL, so it is at least difficult to
> commercialize)?

Not true - this is a common misconception. Linux is under the
GPL, and Red Hat makes lots of money by selling it.

Just to complicate things further though, see:

US: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html
UK: http://www.britishcopyright.org/pdfs/info/infosheet018.pdf

Basically, game rules can't be copyrighted. Text describing
the rules, and background flavour can of course be copyrighted.
You could implement the FT rules in a computer game, as long
as you didn't use any of the descriptive text from the FT
books (probably including ship designs and graphics).

Of course, Trademark and Patents (see second page of UK
document) still apply.

All the above ignores what people may try to enforce, and
what may or may not be considered polite by various people.
Also, don't assume that I actually know what I'm talking about.
I've merely seen these sorts of discussions before.

-- 
Be seeing you,			       http://www.glendale.org.uk
Sam.			    Mail/IM (Jabber): sam@glendale.org.uk 

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