Conflicting licenses

[absolutelynothinghere]

In the root of the repo, the LICENSE file is for the MIT license, however the Hurrican/readme.txt file states:

1.2 Enduser license agreement

This program is freeware and may be used for free by anyone.
All content is copyright by the author (poke53280).
You may not sell this program. It may be freely distributed and offered for download
as long as all original content remains included and unmodified and a reference to the author is given.

For distribution on any data storage medium, a written permission of the author is required.
Please contact [email protected] for further information.

Poke53280 can not be made responsible for any damage that is caused by this installer or the program itself.

These are two conflicting licenses, and what's worse is that the second is not a free software license at all.

[DavidBruchmann]

Actually the word unmodified might even forbid any changes of existing files.
While I never assume that Poke53280 is against any improvements and further development, his words state otherwise.
On the site https://www.winterworks.de/project/hurrican/ it seems though that this repository is known and development accepted.

[drfiemost]

The other readme in the root states:

You can take everything contained within this archive and do with it whatever you find appropriate (as long as you don't charge any money for it):

• modify it
• learn from it
• laugh about it
• use it to port the game to other platforms
• fix bugs :D
• release your own game

[...]

If you plan to use assets from the game in a COMMERCIAL release, please contact me at
[email protected]

It would be nice if you could give some credit to Poke53280 if you choose to use anything contained within this archive in your own releases. But it's not necessary. [...]

so yes, it looks like it's not MIT compatible.
Maybe someone should try to get in contact with eiswuxe, and pickle136, and find an agreement on the license or point them to this discussion?

[Mia75owo]

I can send this in the Winter works discord so maybe Eiswuxe will respond to this.

[drfiemost]

Oh, I did add the MIT license due to this line:

https://github.com/HurricanGame/Hurrican/blob/2c5596b2fa242eb3ad7eebe7cdbf81b3586678bb/README.txt#L27C1-L28C1

Not sure where Pickle got this from though.

Anyway the original Enduser license agreement refers to the binary package distributed before Eiswuxe released the code so I think we can consider it superseded by what's in the other readme.

[Pickle]

what i remember the original source drop had a odd license. I think the intent was that Eiswuxe didnt want someone making money off their work.
And you found my line to attempt to deal with it, so for any changes I made to the original source could fall under the original license, but the completely new files I put under the MIT (i had exisiting source already under the MIT)
feel free to reach out for any questions.

[drfiemost]

Thanks for the clarification @Pickle, removed the license accordingly

[absolutelynothinghere]

@Pickle Thanks for the clarification. Are there any plans to relicense the code --as it is in this repo-- under an open source license? (MIT or otherwise)

[drfiemost]

Someone has to get in touch with Eiswuxe and find an agreement.
I think the assets could be licensed as CC BY-NC-SA while the code could be GPL or some other OSI license which prohibits commercial use. But it's really up to him making the final decision, being the original author.
So far only the code under the Hurrican/src/SDLPort directory is licensed as MIT.

[IntinteDAO]

Well, it's not the best way, but we can just do assets on libre License. But it will not be Hurrican anymore (maybe LibreHurrican as a asset fork)

However we need info about source code
In contrast, no “free” license prohibits earning. Libre licenses says "do whatever you want"

[absolutelynothinghere]

The GPL doesn't prohibit commercial use, and AFAIK none of the OSI licenses prohibit it either... Why the aversion to commercial use anyway?

[DavidBruchmann]

Why the aversion to commercial use anyway?

Actually that seems having been the basic intention of Eiswuxe, while everything else around the license has been somehow unclear or contradicting.

[drfiemost]

GPL prohibits closed source commercial use, that's why LGPL exists.

[Eiswuxe]

HI there. Sorry, I'm late for the party xD

I must admit that I really dont know about todays license definitions, so it was not intentional to confuse anybody with a "weird" license. I just did not know how to phrase it better.

My intention was that everyone can use the source and assets, modify all stuff, and even release work based on it, as long as no money is charged for the result.

My "aversion to commercial use" comes from my opinion that its not right to take the work of someone else who has dedicated his time and effort into creating it, and then make money out if it.

[DavidBruchmann]

Great @Eiswuxe, seeing you here and getting your clarification!
I knelled down already many times towards you and feel it's time to start the game again for more 😂

[Eiswuxe]

I'm sorry that I missed out the converstions here. I know that some wrote in the discord server a while ago (must have been @Mia75owo ) but I never managed to answer properly :/

As you already found out, the readme.txt from the original game refers to the binary version that was released with the installer. The new readme from the source release "supersedes" it.

[DavidBruchmann]

I'm not deep in the issue anymore, but it would be good to have a clear path perhaps how to proceed.

[Pickle]

maybe one idea is use different licenses for different parts of the source.

1. put the original source code under a GPL-like license requiring release of any modifications (does allow commercial use)
   Good reason for commercial use is when distros used to sell linux on physical media. Bad reason is if someone sold a phone app. But for those commercial cases they would be required to release the code and modifications so anyone then could release their changes for free.
2. put the binary assests (images/music) under a CC BY-NC-SA meaning users can create new derivatives but must give credit and can not use commercially. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
   This would mean someone legally could sell the engine but would have to provide their own assests. Making an app harder to produce, and even then they would still need to provide the engine source code.
3. third party changes like my SDLport files can remain under MIT license.

I dont consider myself an expert on licenses so any feedback is welcome.
The other common answer I see is dual licensing with a open copyleft and a commercial license (which you would sell). But this sounds more useful to a library like project.

Edit: just went back up and read again and saw drfiemost had the same idea ;-)

[absolutelynothinghere]

I agree that non-commercial assets with open source code would be the best mixture for Hurrican.

The CC NC licenses allow the assets (graphics, sounds, levels) which are the meat of the game to remain accessible to the public, without anyone profiting off of them. Meanwhile the engine source code should ideally be open (MIT/GPL) to allow the creation of ports, the packaging by Linux distributions, and the maintenance of the game by others when the owners are no longer available. Remember that the engine source code alone allowing commercial use does not permit the recreation of Hurrican and selling it, but it would greatly help keep the game alive.

I recommend reading the text for the licenses mentioned above, it's actually not that long and I found it easy to understand. Knowing for yourself what each license entails will make licensing a breeze.

• CC-BY-NC-SA: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en)
• MIT: https://opensource.org/license/mit
• GPL 2: https://opensource.org/license/gpl-2-0