Non-commercial redistributable game data

[Lubomir Rintel]

On Mon, 2010-05-17 at 16:45 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On 05/17/2010 04:34 PM, Jonathan Dieter wrote:
> > On Mon, 2010-05-17 at 15:36 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> >> My point is a bit different: I consider this mechanism to be a way to
> >> *circumvent* rpm as means of packaging and it to be a way of encourage
> >> *sloppyness*, *lazyness* and *carelessness*, which endangers Fedora's users.
> >>
> >> If FESCO has a little understanding, they would have noticed that
> >> "mechanically packaging" game data into rpms and to ship them via  repos
> >> is trivial. There is no need to add another mechanism for shipping
> >> packages and to endanger users from the security risks this comes
> >> attached with.
> >>
> >> Or differently: One fundamental key of rpm-based distros safety and
> >> consistency has been not to allowing other means of installation.
> >
> > Ralf, I think we all agree with the fact that it is optimal to install
> > game data as an rpm.  The problem is that, for any game that uses
> > autodownloader, the data *cannot* be packaged in Fedora because of
> > license reasons.
> 
> Rpmfusion can easily package them.
> 
> RH or Fedora are not required to be involved into this at all.

Guess what, neither Fedora nor Red Hat is required to be involved in
anything.

If I understand the FESCO's was a trade-off; there's a lot of free
software games that would be useless with a little help of
badly-licensed pieces and FESCO decided that Fedora's mission is better
accomplished if the games are as easily brought into state of being as
easily installable and playable by a common user as it can be.

That is not that uncommon. Ever heard of firmware blobs for the device
drivers? Sure, there's a difference that those, even though lacking the
source code, are distributable and this can be RPM-ized, but that's a
different issue and was discussed around here already. The principle
remains the same; a bit of a trade off for a rather big improvement. Be
it a greatly improved hardware support, or improved experience of game
players.

Regards,
Lubo

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