Game content autodownloader

[Nicu Buculei]

Callum Lerwick wrote:
> I am one of the few and the proud who went out and bought the Linux
> edition of Quake 3 when it came out. I rather like being able to play it
> again. Good luck getting the original binaries to work on a modern
> system...

Quake 3 is an excellent example, one that I wanted to use myself but for 
a completely opposite conclusion: we have OpenArena in the distro.
I am not a huge Quake player, but I enjoy a occasional deathmatch. From 
this position, I don't notice any advantage on playing with the Q3 demo 
datafiles (what's offered by the autodownloader) over OpenArena, so I 
see the use of autodownloader *for this particular case* as redundant 
and useless.
Having the Q3 application to use with OpenArena and UrbanTerror is, of 
course, wonderful.

> What are the licensing implications of this? Hell if I know. The game
> engine is GPL. The game content I bought legitimately. Dare I draw the
> parallel to web browsers, which are used to view all kinds of content
> that *isn't* licensed properly? I suddenly feel a strong sense of deja
> vu...

This is not the point: you surely are free to use your own datafiles in 
any way you want. It is about us pushing (with autodownloader and 
somehow circumventing our general policy) the proprietary bits in Q3 
demo data files, when we have a good and free replacement.

-- 
nicu :: http://nicubunu.ro :: http://nicubunu.blogspot.com
Cool Fedora wallpapers: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro/wallpapers/
Open Clip Art Library: http://www.openclipart.org
my Fedora stuff: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro