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

Hi Jerry,

On Sep 20, 2008, at 4:12 PM, Jerry Han wrote:

> Samuel Penn wrote:
>> On Friday 19 September 2008 22:23:50 Ernest Prabhakar wrote:
>>> If you really want to be picky,
>>
>> No, I don't. I was just trying to be helpful in clarifying things.
>
> Things need to be discussed at that level of detail (i.e. "picky") --
> because, if we don't think about this, and you put this up there,  
> and a black
> hat who is "picky" finds the loophole and makes money of your efforts
> and Jon T.'s IP, everybody loses (except the bastard who found the  
> loophole
> to make money.)

I completely understand. As I told Sam, sorry if that came across the  
wrong way.  I actually handle Open Source licensing in my day job, so  
I am well aware of all the nuances; I just wasn't sure if people here  
wanted to get into all of that.  But since you are...

> So, be prepared for much pedantic detail discussion, because, that's
> where the devil is, and that's the type of discussion you need to
> have to protect Jon T.'s work.

So, let me see if I can summarize the concerns:

a) Drive sales of miniatures
b) By increasing public awareness of Full Thrust
c) while prevent slimy bastards from (legally) profiting
d) and also preventing cannibalization of the existing miniatures  
markets

Given that, I think there's two open source licenses worth considering:

GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/agpl-3.0.html

Common Public Attribution License
http://opensource.org/licenses/cpal_1.0

Both of these are relatively unique, in that they are designed to  
protect web services (like FTGS), not just redistributable software.

While the GNU AGPL is more hostile to 'slimy bastards', I would  
actually prefer the CPAL, since it has a wonderful attribution clause:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Public_Attribution_License

Which, in this case, would point to Ground Zero Games.	That way, Jon  
would be assured of public recognition whenever *anyone* used the  
software, which I think is a more important point.

Also, as I said before, I'd want the actual "data" to be under a non- 
commercial license.  Since it would (hopefully) be submitted by  
multiple authors, that would prevent anyone from taking control of it  
and using it for commercial purposes.

Does that sound like reasonable way forward?

To be sure, this doesn't address point (d).  So, for now, how about I  
promise to only implement "Full Thrust Light", since that is intended  
to be the "teaser"; and, frankly, sufficient for my personal goals.   
Once we see how that works for the community, we can re-negotiate.

So, to summarize:

a) Only Implement Full Thrust Light
http://downloads.groundzerogames.net/FTLrules.pdf

b) Source code under the CPAL, with Ground Zero Games for the  
Attribution
http://opensource.org/licenses/cpal_1.0

c) Data under a Creative Commons - Non-Commercial license (with a  
similar Attribution)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

Does that seem a reasonable set of safeguards?

-- Ernie P.

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