New candidates for inclusion in Extras : udftools and starfighter-music

[Michael Schwendt]

On Wed, 9 Feb 2005 21:31:50 +0100, Matthias Saou wrote:

> Matthias Saou wrote :
> 
> > - starfighter-music
> [...]
> 
> Yikes.
> 
> "Much ado about nothing" :-)
> 
> I started wondering, so I asked... and I was right :
> 
> "Aye... The music is already in the pak file. The music is just there as a 
> seperate download because a lot of people requested access to the music
> files 
> since they wanted to listen to them seperately ;)"
> 
> Sooo... basically the separate package it totally irrelevant (that's what I
> get for never playing the game with sound on!), but things did get cleared
> up regarding the license of the included music files. Should this be
> reflected in the "License:" tag of the package? Or does "public domain"
> mean that these files can be reused in any proprietary or free software,
> thus relicensed just about any way one wants?

That's a question for lawyers, whether somebody also waives all his rights
in the composition (melody, accompany and such details) when he releases
music into the public domain. It is my understanding that work released
into the public domain is not even copyrighted.

There is no evidence to believe that these files were not released into
the public domain.

Upstream could add a note or a README which explains where these files
come from and that they are believed to be in the public domain.

I find it unimportant to do that at the rpm level as you can download
thousands of MOD files freely. With a bit of research (on composer's
pseudonyms or song titles) it might be possible to find exactly these
files in some place where they can be downloaded independent from the GPL.
There are MOD music collectors who maintain composer information
painstakingly, so proper credits can be given when reusing a file from
such a collection.