[games sig] Downloader for shareware data files for gpl engines such as vavoom

[Wart]

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Hans de Goede wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I had this idea last night, it would be nice to package doom (and other)
> gpl game engines, or improved spinoffs such as vavoom, but they are
> kinda useless without the shareware datafiles.
> 
> Now the shareware files are freely redistributed by a lot of sites, but
> nowhere there seems to be a clear license under which this is done,
> which makes things kinda dodgy.
> 
> Thus I had the following idea:
> -write a program / script which gets started by the .desktop file
>  instead of the game will do the following:
> -check if any (registered, whatever) datafiles are present, if any
>  found continue with running the game as usual/
> -if not display a nice graphical dialog under X explaining that some
>  data files are needed from say a CD and tell the user where to copy
>  them and to press continue once the files are there, when continue
>  is pressed, check again.
> -Also offer the user the choice to download the shareware version for
>  them as an alternative.
> -if the user choices to download the shareware version verify the md5
>  after download!
> -after download completes ask the user to press continue.
> 
> 
> So what do you think, I believe this is very user friendly, but is it
> legally ok?

As much as I would like to see these things included, I really don't
think we should be including games that require non-free downloads of
the game data.  Unless Fedora can legally provide all of the necessary
components required to run the application, it should not be included at
all.

It would be nice if there were freely available alternatives to the game
data files, but I don't know what the odds are of that happening.

- --Mike

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