Payable TechTree

[Gabbe]

Me and GGeri thinks about making a tech that you will have to buy, does the GNUGPL allow that, or rather, does the glest license allow that?

I`m not interested in your thoughts about it being unfair to sell it, just if its allowed.

[wyvern]

I think its allowed but whats the point, plus this is supposed to be a free game

[jda]

If you change the engine code (must still provide the changed code to whoever buys your tree):
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney

If you use anything based on Magitech:
http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/
See CC-By-AS, that's the license Magitech was released under.

If you do it all from scratch and include no code... released it as you want, might even add your own cutom EULA (End User License Agreement) to it, surelly you've seen some when installing Microsoft "addons".

Both GPL and CC licenses really are templates. You can use as they are or you can indeed change them (if you hold ALL copyrights to what you're publishing) at least when it comes to the GPL. Not sure for CC though.  
You just won't be able to say it is "released under GPL version whatever" though as you changed the text. But you can use it as a template. Probably better look at GNU FDL license too.

[Gabbe]

wyvern:

I`m not interested in your thoughts about it being unfair to sell it, just if its allowed.

obiviously the point is to make money. were going to sell it at our local store, and they agreed that we could.

JDA thanks, and were not using anything from magitech, except from the xmls, wich we will remake, but i don`t know if that includes it

[jda]

I edited my post after yours.

[Gabbe]

me 2

[jda]

Well... the XML's are a good question... I mean... there's not so much you can be original about them, is it?...
I mean, actually you can but...

BUT... if you are selling your tree at your store ... if you bundle it with the Glest engine (or MG or GAE)... you'll have to release the code as GPL (well... just... include the disclaimer and the full text of the license)... AND declare how you're releasing the data! (if you include Magitech too... you may release different parts of the data under different licenses).
You might go for a tri-license in this scenario.

[Gabbe]

If the licenses go kill eachother?

I`ll have to see if the license don`t mess eachother up...

[ElimiNator]

Why would someone buy yours when there are so many out here?
Keep this game free!
Did you ever here the free software song?
Are you a hoarder?

[-Archmage-]

It would be much better to sell cheap copies of Glest on a cd for Windows and Linux.

Hardly anyone would buy a mod, because Glest isn't very famous.

[Gabbe]

a mod preinstalled on glest, (hopefully next-gen ready, but likely not) will not be glest, it will be a new game

Why would someone buy yours when there are so many out here?

Its a local deal with the local store, and im local famous, and here at my local place everyone knows me and the game is going to be sold localy on both me and ggeris local positions.

Keep this game free!

The game will still be free, im just making some money for my class, were going to a class-holiday, maybe that translation sucked but...

Did you ever here the free software song?

No, i search now

Are you a hoarder?

What in the hell is that? a orc?

It would be much better to sell cheap copies of Glest on a cd for Windows and Linux.

I don`t know if im allowed to do that...

[Gabbe]

BTW: Hasta la VISTA my laptop crashed with RSOD... and i`ll have to re-render my whole trailer for glest...

Watched the free software song, it was good, still

The game will still be free, im just making some money for my class, were going to a class-holiday, maybe that translation sucked but...

[ultifd]

BTW: Hasta la VISTA my laptop crashed with RSOD... and i`ll have to re-render my whole trailer for glest...

Oh, well isn't that just great... by the time you finish, someone else will prbably have done something similar already...   

Well, your mod has to be top notch and uhh...good quality and such...also I would associate your mod with mg rather than vanilla glest... 

[John.d.h]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with selling copies of GPL software.  In fact, it's explicitly mentioned in the license than it can be sold for any price, or no price at all (meaning you can give it away for free too).  There is also nothing stopping you from bundling your own created content under a difference license, which can be proprietary (i.e. all rights reserved).  This is how the Quake games are.  Every Quake engine ever made is open-source and freely licensed, but the game art assets (models, textures, maps, storyline, etc.) are not.  In this way, you can make a game with the Quake engine, but you have to make your own models and whatnot.  This is how we have games like Open Arena, which uses the code from Quake 3.

[Omega]

Are you a hoarder?

What in the hell is that? a orc?

A hoarder (in economic terms) is someone who tries to get all or a lot of resources to him/herself, usually to sell for more (since they have them all, they control the prices). In this case, he means really to just make a mod and sell it though nobody else does. Not the best use of the term, but they use it in the Free Software Song (see below) so I guess it's okay.

It would be much better to sell cheap copies of Glest on a cd for Windows and Linux.

I don`t know if im allowed to do that...

Sure it is! OpenOffice.org did that (though they bundled other software with it). The money generally goes for development of the game in the same way as a donation would. They're generally focussed to people who can't download it (no internet, etc) or don't mind giving the company some financial support. Of course, doing this for your own profit is DEEPLY frowned upon, but if the money went to the glest team...

a mod preinstalled on glest, (hopefully next-gen ready, but likely not) will not be glest, it will be a ne

Did you ever here the free software song?

No, i search now

Join us now and share the software;
You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free.
x2

Hoarders may get piles of money,
That is true, hackers, that is true.
But they cannot help their neighbors;
That's not good, hackers, that's not good.

When we have enough free software
At our call, hackers, at our call,
We'll throw out those dirty licenses
Ever more, hackers, ever more.

Join us now and share the software;
You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free.
x2


Personally, I'd advise against selling something economically when it's made so heavily in a world of free things. If you want to make profit, make an online free downloadable version and a purchasable version that can be used for those lacking internet, or with slow internet, or the suckers who you never told there was a free download (similar to the OO.o thing I said above). Or even better, just make it all free and go donation-ware.

[ultifd]

Did you ever here the free software song?

No, i search now

Better sounding... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Free_Software_Song_Bulgarian_Style.ogg

[John.d.h]

Keep in mind that free software has nothing to do with price.

“Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.”

Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the program's users have the four essential freedoms:

    * The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
    * The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
    * The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
    * The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

A program is free software if users have all of these freedoms. Thus, you should be free to redistribute copies, either with or without modifications, either gratis or charging a fee for distribution, to anyone anywhere. Being free to do these things means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission to do so.

[ElimiNator]

So are you saying I can CP & PST glest on a CD and sell it for 2 grand?

[jda]

It would be much better to sell cheap copies of Glest on a cd for Windows and Linux.

I don`t know if im allowed to do that...

Sure it is! OpenOffice.org did that (though they bundled other software with it). The money generally goes for development of the game in the same way as a donation would. They're generally focussed to people who can't download it (no internet, etc) or don't mind giving the company some financial support. Of course, doing this for your own profit is DEEPLY frowned upon, but if the money went to the glest team...

Do you mean StarOffice? StarOffice actually predates OpenOffice.org
Then again... it looks like it got renamed:

Oracle Open Office —formerly known as StarOfficẹ— is Oracle's proprietary office suite software package. It was originally developed by StarDivision and acquired by Sun Microsystems in August 1999. The source code of the suite was released in July 2000, creating a free, open source office suite called OpenOffice.org; subsequent versions of StarOffice have been based upon OpenOffice.org, with additional proprietary components.

Source: Wikipedia
So I guess it's natural that you think Sun released commercial StarOffice / OracleOpenOffice after opensourced OpenOffice.org which obivously was not the case...
Also interesting this Oracle rebirth, I'd actually completelly forgotten about it (i.e. I didn't even noticed its "death" )! SQL (MySQL, PostgrSQL, SQLite, any other?) dominates the database market now!  
A bit more ontopic... Sun finantially supports OpenOffice.org!

That (hopefully) cleared up, I will repeat myself:
Sun finantially supports OpenOffice.org.
Canonical finantially supports Ubuntu (and sells Linux sollutions to the enterprise market).
Mandriva (formerly known as Mandrake before they bought Conectiva) offers a very solid Entreprise Linux sollution (support) in Europe (mostly in France).
RedHat (together with Debian and Slackware those are (I think) the oldest Linux distros still activelly developped) actually left the "free" market and moved on to produce RedHat Enterprise Linux, for which you need a paid subscription.
Fedora, which was just something like Medibuntu is for Ubuntu or the PLF was for Mandrake, took on to be RedHat's "free" successor. RedHat Entreprise Linux sponsors Fedora...
SuSE, now openSUSE is finantially supported by Novell (who bought SuSE).

So... opensource isn't really "free" as in "free beer", there's most often than not someone paying for it.

Hey, here's a two-cases scenario for you:

"Free beer": E.g. a freeware game that is NOT opensourced but closedsourced instead.
You can get and play the game for free, no money involved.
You cannot however change the engine nor reuse the gamedata for the same game itself nor for any other project.
In short: a no-money-cost game you can't mod.

"Opensourced": E.g. a game you must pay some money to get and be legally able to play. Once you do pay for it however, you can change the engine and reuse its gamedata either to mod the game itself or to use somewhere else.
In short: you pay money for it but once you did you pretty much do own it (unlike in the other "free" game you are only free to play).

I prefer scenario #2 myself.
And actually, if all software was open-sourced I'm pretty sure you could have all software be sold at affordable prices (instead of the lunatic prices charged for many/most software commercial products).
M$ itself would either be gone or gone decent (in any ways, it's decent in no way at all currently).

[ElimiNator]

Or like glest (Let this be a example to you).

#3
"Opensourced & Free" You can get and play the game for free, no money involved, you can change the engine and reuse its gamedata either to mod the game itself or to use somewhere else.
In short: you don't pay money for it and still you pretty much do own it (unlike in the other "free" game you are only free to play or that you need to pay for.).

BTW:

So are you saying I can CP & PST glest on a CD and sell it for 2 grand?

[John.d.h]

So are you saying I can CP & PST glest on a CD and sell it for 2 grand?

If you're some kind of marketing genius, then yes.  Why wouldn't you be able to?

[Omega]

Do you mean StarOffice? StarOffice actually predates OpenOffice.org

No dude! I am familiar with OO.o's history, but I actually mean OO.o. I saw a version in stores and I read it on their webpage about being able to do so. Also, many linux, etc things that are free and large filesized sometimes have a method of purchasing a disk, sometimes paying just the Shipping costs. Other times there is even a free one!

[titi]

Of course you can sell gpl software, BUT
you have to release everything for free too 

But this will not affect your mod!
So you can burn a CD with glest and your proprietary mod and sell it.
But if you change anything in glests source you'll have to publish it.

I personally don't like it, but I think its allowed and possible.

[Omega]

I personally don't like it, but I think its allowed and possible.

My feelings exactly!

[wyvern]

I personally don't like it, but I think its allowed and possible.

Same here