Re: Profitable sales of free-culture Piecepack

[Ben Finney <ben+yahoogroups@...>]

Jorge Arroyo <trozo@...> writes:

> I understand the points about the non-commercial clause not being free
> and all that, but I can see why people might not want others to profit
> on their creations by default...

There are many reasons for people to want to impose that restriction,
and I'm not making any judgement about the people who choose to do so.

But that choice brings consequences: Imposing a restriction on
commercial redistribution makes the work non-free, and I'd like that
fact made prominent on the Piecepack site. Hence my work in that
direction.

> I've used it some times, and some others I've used more free
> licenses... But I don't think it is too important in this particular
> case, as all the games are freely available to anyone anyway. I don't
> think having actual rules in the box is essential...

Whether it's essential is a separate issue. (We are talking about a game
system, after all.)

The issue at hand is whether having the freedom to get the rules for a
game, derive a new work from it (by translations, or streamlining, or
prose rewrites, or whatever), and then sell it with a Piecepack, is
something that is desirable for free culture and for the Piecepack
system in particular.

I maintain that it is very desirable. Piecepack game writers who want
the free-culture Piecepack system to flourish have every incentive to
release their work under a free-culture copyright license (by the
definition at <URL:http://freedomdefined.org/>) by not restricting
commercial redistribution nor modification.

Piecepack game writers who don't want free culture to flourish are under
no constraint to release their work as free culture, of course. But we
can advocate for it to happen, and argue for why it's a sound move.

-- 
 &#92;     “Try to become not a man of success, but try rather to become a |
  `&#92;                                   man of value.” —Albert Einstein |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney