23 Sep 12, 09:48PM
Or, a Fedora user's lament.
As I'm sure many of you know, AssaultCube is freeware. This means that you can all get it for zero cost, which is all fine and dandy. Unfortunately, this also means that certain Linux distributions can't put official packages in their repositories, and it also means that there's a dangerous net of legal issues around modifying the game. The Cube engine is written under the GPL license which SHOULD be perfect for distribution, but unfortunately AC has a great deal of its art assets under non-free licenses.
My main proposal is that an initiative is launched for the community to provide GPL-licensed art, such as crosshairs, sound effects, and other assets, and that we talk with the dev team to get these included either in the standard distribution of the game or in an alternative FOSS package. The benefits of this are many: it allows the developers more freedom to adopt assets and dispose of them as needed, it's easier to make mods and forks of the game, and it makes official packaging for Linux distributions much easier.
As I'm sure many of you know, AssaultCube is freeware. This means that you can all get it for zero cost, which is all fine and dandy. Unfortunately, this also means that certain Linux distributions can't put official packages in their repositories, and it also means that there's a dangerous net of legal issues around modifying the game. The Cube engine is written under the GPL license which SHOULD be perfect for distribution, but unfortunately AC has a great deal of its art assets under non-free licenses.
My main proposal is that an initiative is launched for the community to provide GPL-licensed art, such as crosshairs, sound effects, and other assets, and that we talk with the dev team to get these included either in the standard distribution of the game or in an alternative FOSS package. The benefits of this are many: it allows the developers more freedom to adopt assets and dispose of them as needed, it's easier to make mods and forks of the game, and it makes official packaging for Linux distributions much easier.