[Freeciv] Re: copyright infringement

[Tobias Brox <tobiasb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> multi-national, as is Hasbro itself.  (Just think of the MPAA reaching
> into a Norwegian teenager's home - I was surprised too.)

Horrible ... but still, in that case somebody thought the teenager was
breaking the Norwegian law.  I can guarantee you that Freeciv is 100%
legal in Norway.  Though, I've heard that things are getting a bit out of
control here too, as the union wants to implement fascist patent laws.

> At that point you'll either have to
> spend your own money to fight it, or divest FreeCiv of anything that
> looks like it was derived from Sid's original design.

They might make it harder to distribute and contribute, but they can never
ever stop Freeciv completely.  They can't even stop the distribution of
copyrighted music at the 'net even though it's illegal in most of the
world - so why should they be able to stop the distribution of FreeCiv?
It is, and will continue to be legal in most of the world, regardless of
eventual American patents and copyrights.

> Short-term, I don't think all this is much of a problem; but the best
> long-term strategy would be to continue to engine-ify FreeCiv
> and isolate all the Civ1/2 clone bits into separate files, so if it
> ever becomes an issue, you can remove them from the main package
> without disrupting development.

That might be worth the effort anyway.  Even though one of the
goals of FreeCiv is to be civ2 compatible, it's really possible to make a
completely different game just by altering the rulesets.  It shouldn't be
that hard to make it possible to remove the civ-compatible modes from a
distribution.  Then there is nothing left at all.  Freeciv would be
related to civ as a computer w/ printer is related to a typewriter - it
_can_ be used for the same purpose, but it's a completely different thing
that can be used for many other things as well.

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