Re: [piecepack] Re: Rule Liecenses

["Michael Van Biesbrouck" <mlvanbie@...>]

On 8/2/07, palindromic_man <barry.reber@...> wrote:
> Could you sell the piecepack, and give the purchaser a CD-rom with the
> games?  I don't know if that would satisfy the "no commercial use" of
> many of the licenses provided, but it might.  You're not selling them,
> you're giving them away.  In fact you could give a cd to anyone who
> buys something in the shop.  I don't know.

That doesn't constitute free due to potential for abuse.  Clearly
indicating that all the rules included are freely available from a
particular site and included for convenience might be better.  Even
charging for the service of translation of materials stated to be
freely available in another language might be okay to some people.
Making the translations freely available is better.  But some
licenses, as mentioned, don't allow such derivative works.

> You're asking good questions.  I've wondered myself why these games
> aren't public domain like the piecepack, or licensed more liberally
> under something like a Creative Commons license.

I think that most people who create rules for piecepack would be
flattered to find their rules included with sets but unhappy to find
that a major game company was selling their game as a product that
would normally get them $1/game (or more) royalties.  It is difficult
to distinguish between these situations when creating a license.

I am interested in reading further license discussion.  I feel that
licenses should permit translation (at least if the result is freely
available and can be checked to be accurate; some commercial games are
believed broken due to bad rules translations into English) and should
permit inclusion with generic piecepack sets as part of an anthology
of rulesets noted as coming from a given website.  Permission to
substitute suit names might worthwhile, too.

Michael