[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Please don't start the copyright stuff again!!!

[Reed Meyer <rdm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 8 Aug 2000, SamBC wrote:
> >      When I first heard about freeciv from Juan and played it, I assumed
> > that a software package that had been in development for that long and had
> > been seen by that many people MUST have survived the test, by that point,
> > that it was/wasn't an infringement of Hasbro's/Activision's copyright.
> > WRONG!!  I recently read the copyright-infringement threads in the
> > [Freeciv] mailing list archive for July and quickly came to the conclusion
> > that most of the freeciv developers/proponents had absolutely no clue what
> > they were talking about.  One of the few people who seemed to understand
> > what was going on was Brandon Van Every.
> 
> If you read the archive closely, you would've read the thorough reasoning
> and citations that show clearly that MOST of the things you say are not of
> concern (such as rule abstracts, code, UI incl. look and feel, etc).

Please improve your reading comprehension skills.  I didn't say a single
word about the "UI incl. look and feel" being a rip-off of Civ I/II.  In
fact, IMO it's one aspect of the game that the freeciv developers should
be commended for diverging from strictly mimicking Civ II.  I only
mentioned the source code insofar as the relatively small percentage of it
which implements those parts which rip-off Civ I/II (for example,
implementing the definitions of the buildings).
     The phrase "thorough reasoning and citations that show clearly" is a
joke, right?
     Anyway, I went back and read through THOROUGHLY the threads regarding
the copyright issue to make sure I didn't miss anything the first time.
And yep, I learned something, all right.  I learned that that exercise was
a complete waste of time.  Unless you are referring to some other messages
besides those from July 2000 in the [Freeciv] mailing list?
     Perhaps you don't quite remember how the discussion panned out.
For example, you say the "only thing we couldn't find citations &
precedents to put us in the clear over was ... the Tech Tree."  That might
be a memory of Jules Bean's post ("Re: software license violation", July
20) where he says "The 'tech tree' I could just about see a genuine case
for" (the meaning being that everything else is safe).  Unless Jules is a
copyright lawyer (and maybe even if he was), I wouldn't put a whole lot of
stock in this statement.
     The fact is that no actual legal precedents were put forth at all in
that thread in support of the freeciv case, and without that or a strong
argument from an experienced copyright lawyer, there's nothing I would
find convincing.  Note that this has nothing to do with
patents/trademarks.  I know very little about patent/trademark law and in
any case I don't see anything that would violate any patents/trademarks
held by Hasbro et al. (with the exception perhaps that possibly any
reference to the names of the commercial Civ games should be with a (tm)
or something) unless Hasbro actually owned patents on some of the game
concepts.  I'm concerned strictly with copyright matters, the same
thing Brandon Van Every was concerned with.
     Perhaps the misunderstanding is that copyright law is substantially
different from country to country?  I.e. people are only familiar with the
laws of their own countries and they might be a whole lot different from
the U.S.?  If this is actually the case (which I doubt), I apologize, as I
am only familiar with the U.S. laws.
     Also, the allusion to Linux/UNIX in the thread was completely bad.
If you look carefully at the matter, you'll see that Linux isn't ripping
off UNIX.  (Well, there might be small examples to the contrary here and
there, for example the fact that the names of all the basic system
commands are the same in the two OSes, but certainly not in general.
Furthermore, I think "Linux" refers strictly only to the kernel itself,
and you'd be hard pressed to find substantial examples of direct-ripoffs
of the UNIX "kernel" in there).  Needless to say, it all boils down to the
usual and unifying rule in copyright law, "ideas aren't copyrightable but
implementations are".
     IN ANY case, the reason why I brought this stuff all up in the first
place was only to point out that I do *NOT* want to be part of a project
**which does not take its legal obligations seriously**.  The more I read
the copyright-related thread, and the more I read posts from people such
as yourself dismissing the potential for trouble out of hand, and the more
it becomes clear to me that the majority of freeciv developers really have
NO desire to do anything original in regards to gameplay, the more I'm
convinced it's a Good Thing that my own submissions aren't being accepted.
Is there anyone here who could please tell me it isn't as bad as it sounds?

> In fact, the only thing we couldn't find citations & precedents to put us in
> the clear over was (one of the things you mention) the Tech Tree. This is
> not even now verbatim identical to Civ/II [...]

Replace "not even now verbatim" with "99.9%".

> to be a concern. This is a matter more for the future - the 'freeciv' mode
> evolving, which is the default mode (I believe), is growing further and
> further from CivII. If it becomes a problem (like a hint of a
> cease-and-desist order) then the Civ/II rulesets can be removed and the
> (then hopefully very different) Freeciv mode used exclusively.

Keep in mind that it's not just strictly stuff in the data/ directory but
also some source code which implements the stuff in data/, as well as some
other things such as the "nuking" implementation already given as an
example.  But a substantially less powerful case can be made against
freeciv just by changing the stuff in data/ (and some elements in data/,
for example the tilesets, are fine already).  

> Oh, and anyone is Europe is safe from any hint of patent infringement anyway
> (some convention or other - Munich I think, not sure). And we are not sure
> if the tech tree would be a work of authorship (and therefore covered by
> copyright) or a process (and therefore covered by patent). I go for process
> as we have not verbatim copied a chart/table, but IANAL (definitely IANACL).

The tech tree argument has nothing to do with patents.  It's a copyright
issue.  It's the fact that the NAMES and DEFINITIONS of each tech are
cribbed from Civ II.  And the shape of the tree.  This has nothing to do
with the IDEA that a "tech tree" can exist (I doubt very much Hasbro et
al. could have patented such a concept).  You may not have "verbatim"
copied something but you've come pretty damn close -- and simply not being
a "verbatim" copy does NOT mean it's not plagiarism, as any good student 
in an English class in a U.S. high school will know.

---Reed Meyer