Requesting permission for Porting CIV2TOT Catfish graphics to Freeciv

[rpg_knight]

Hello everyone , I played CIV2TOT with Catfish graphics and i loved it! Its a much better improvement than the original.

In a thirst for more civ-like games, i browse around the web and found that apparently there is a FOSS Civ clone called Freeciv. I played around with it, and tried to fiddle with it. Apparently it has support for custom tilesets. The tileset specification very different than CIV2TOT

My idea is to try to port CIV2TOT graphics to freeciv. I admit (by reading at a glance), the freeciv tileset spec is more complicated compared to CIV2TOT. But there's nothing wrong with trying right?

So, Would it be all right if i try to port this graphics to Freeciv?​

 

[Prof. Garfield]

@Catfish, this concerns you.

 

[Catfish]

I don't have a problem with the concept of porting that ToT Original Game modpack to FreeCiv, however, my casual understanding is that all artwork distributed with FreeCiv projects must be compatible with the GNU GPL, and that modpack contains derivative and proprietary art. FreeCiv's licence requirement is stated explicitly at the top of its 'Art and Tilesets' subforum. Perhaps you could contact authors of some of the scratch-built ToT graphics, eg, @Fairline, who has previously given permission for some of his work to be used in FreeCiv projects. Note that distributing artwork with the GNU GPL allows anyone to use the assets, without credit, for any project, even commercial ones - so long as it's also distributed with the GNU GPL. In the past, the licence issue has been one of the barriers to people in the Civ2 modding community crossing over into FreeCiv territory. I don't know what the FreeCiv community's position would be on creating a FreeCiv modpack that isn't GNU GPL-strict and posting it, for example, in the 'Other Civ-Related Games' subforum or downloads section here at CFC. I have no objection to that.

 

[CurtSibling]

Why Freeciv's team don't just commission Catfish, or Fairline to make them a GFX pack speaks much about their parsimony.

 

[soundnfury]

my casual understanding is that all artwork distributed with FreeCiv projects must be compatible with the GNU GPL... In the past, the licence issue has been one of the barriers to people in the Civ2 modding community crossing over into FreeCiv territory. I don't know what the FreeCiv community's position would be on creating a FreeCiv modpack that isn't GNU GPL-strict...

I'd like to clear up a possible misunderstanding here (with the obligatory caveat, of course, that I'm not a lawyer).
The FreeCiv development team's policy is, indeed, to require GPL licencing of all artwork included in the FreeCiv distribution that they ship.
However, this does not prohibit anyone else from including non-GPL art assets within a 'fork' of FreeCiv. Art assets are not a 'derivative work' of the game engine, so don't have to be compatible with its GPL licence. Similarly, a FreeCiv modpack may contain GPL-incompatible art assets. (The same is not necessarily true of ruleset code, which could be argued to be a derivative work of the game engine.)
The only impact FreeCiv's policy will have on this is that the non-GPL parts of the fork or modpack won't be able to be incorporated by the FreeCiv development team into a future release of their 'upstream' distribution; and that if you post the art assets in their forum you need to be explicit about the licence.

(My personal opinion is that the FreeCiv devteam are being a bit daft here, especially as the GPL is not a good fit for artwork — what is the Complete Corresponding Source for a sprite? — but just because they don't want your non-GPLed art upstream doesn't mean you can't cross over into FreeCiv modding territory.)