License?

tastytea · January 03, 2022, 02:50:47 AM

Hi! I want to package Pak64.German for Gentoo but I couldn't find information about the license. Can someone tell me more? It would be great if you could include a LICENSE.txt or something like that in the ZIP files.

prissi · January 03, 2022, 09:53:54 AM

Since it is closed source, there is no license with it. It is rather freeware.

Roboron · January 03, 2022, 01:33:32 PM

Some time ago I gathered the information about paksets licenses I could find and I added it to the wiki https://simutrans-germany.com/wiki/wiki/en_paksets

Some paksets have no license but are offered as freeware. Pak64.german is one of them. I specifically asked if I could re-distribute this pakset and I had been told I could, that's why is one of the available paksets to be downloaded on Steam.

tastytea · January 03, 2022, 03:41:01 PM

Thanks. Freeware usually has a license (or EULA) though. Unfortunately without a license it is impossible to know if I may redistribute it (I would have to ask every single contributor). You might want to add a short text file if you want to allow that.

prissi · January 04, 2022, 10:15:37 AM

Freeware has no license, as it is free to use as you like. Why would this need a license? A license neccessarily restricts usage (and especially GPL is extremely restricting despite lobbying for free software ... ) So software without license has implicitely the maximum freedom allowed by law.

tastytea · January 04, 2022, 12:03:00 PM

"Freeware" doesn't mean anything, legally speaking. Different people mean different things with it. Software without license means that copyright laws are applied. And copyright laws say I'm not allowed to redistribute it. If you want people to use software as they like, you have to allow that with a license, for example one of the creative common licenses.

prissi · January 07, 2022, 01:09:53 PM

In German law, copyright cannot be transferred (no matter what GPL wants ... ) it is fixed with the creator of a work and cannot be sold. You can only grant licenses. Freeware is an unlimited license with no restrictions. All the paks of simutrans have no license file in their binary distribution, I think.

makie · January 07, 2022, 03:43:29 PM

Quote from: prissi on January 07, 2022, 01:09:53 PMAll the paks of simutrans have no license file in their binary distribution, I think.

In all versions of pak128.german there is a folder "README" and there is a file "copyright"
Since Version 2.1 it say clearly "The complete Set PAK128.German can be distributed unlimited as a whole. "

Ok, here we talk about pak.german, and there it was a big dispute many years ago.

tastytea · January 07, 2022, 05:38:41 PM

Quote from: prissi on January 07, 2022, 01:09:53 PM
In German law, copyright cannot be transferred (no matter what GPL wants ... ) it is fixed with the creator of a work and cannot be sold. You can only grant licenses. Freeware is an unlimited license with no restrictions.

Freeware is just a word with no clear legal meaning. It's totally fine for users downloading this pak and sharing it with their friends to do so in a legal grey area but Linux/UNIX/Haiku/... distributions will not put it on their mirrors. Something like "This pak can be distributed provided you don't change anything." in a textfile in the ZIP archive would suffice to solve this. But I don't want to pressure you into adopting a license if you don't want.

QuoteAll the paks of simutrans have no license file in their binary distribution, I think.

The ones I packaged so far (Pak192.Comic, pak128.CS, PAK128.german, pak64.japan, pak.nippon) have licenses in their git/svn repos and PAK128.German includes it also in their binary distribution.

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License?