[Ubuntu-gaming] Fwd: [FSF] Breakthrough for Free Software Gaming

[Arc Riley]

Unless something has changed with this that I'm not aware of, this is
nothing to cheer about.

Ryzom is wholly locked into a proprietary environment and proprietary
toolchain - all the artistic material requires proprietary source to edit
and "compile" (and thus can never comply with the GPL), the client is locked
into Microsoft's DirectMedia framework - most notably DirectX instead of
OpenGL, so you will likely never see this being played on an Ubuntu desktop.

Who is volunteering to rewrite their game engine from scratch to get it
running with OpenGL, OpenAL, GStreamer, etc?  Who is volunteering to add
features to Blender to support the features of their proprietary media
formats?  Who's going to break the news to Peter Brown that the FSF just
wasted a lot of time and money to "liberate" a proprietary game that will
never run on a free desktop?


On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 8:34 AM, Danny Piccirillo <
danny.piccirillo at ubuntu.com> wrote:

>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Peter Brown <info at fsf.org>
> Date: Thu, May 6, 2010 at 08:01
> Subject: [FSF] Breakthrough for Free Software Gaming
> To: info-fsf at fsf.org, info-press at fsf.org
>
>
> Breakthrough for Free Software Gaming--Ryzom Announces Full Release of
> Source Code and Artwork, and a Partnership with the Free Software
> Foundation to Host a Repository of the Game's Artistic Assets.
>
> Press release: http://dev.ryzom.com/news/13 and at
> http://www.fsf.org/news/free-ryzom-1
>
>
> By Brett Smith - FSF Licensing Compliance Engineer
>
> Ryzom is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG),
> where players work together to explore a fantasy world and set out on
> various quests. Today, the Ryzom team has released the game as free
> software: both the client and server programs have been released under
> the GNU Affero General Public License version 3, while its models,
> textures, and other art are covered by CC-BY-SA 3.0.
>
> This release is probably the single-biggest contribution to free
> software games yet. If you missed it, check out the press release. We're
> thankful to the Ryzom team for making this release, and excited about
> the possibilities it presents to all free software games. The code is
> tested and proven, having run the Ryzom game since 2004, and the
> art—more than 13 gigabytes of data—can be adapted and used in other
> games. This release can provide a lot of new resources and energy for
> free software game development.
>
> Since we're expecting people to have a lot of interest in this release,
> we wanted to provide some detailed information up-front about exactly
> what has and has not been released, and suggestions for ways developers
> can contribute to the project effectively.
>
> All of the code necessary to run both the client and server software has
> been released under AGPLv3. If you want to play on the official Ryzom
> server today, you can do that using only free software. Modified clients
> will not be allowed to connect to the official server, but a testing
> server is available to try them out.
>
> If you want to run your own server for the game, you have the software
> to do that, but you won't really have any world data—information about
> geography, special places, characters, quests, items, and so on—to run
> it with. Winch Gate Properties, the company that currently holds the
> copyright for all game materials and runs the official server, has
> decided not to release that data, to avoid causing disruption for their
> current player community. People who want to run their own server will
> need to develop their own world to do so—only a small test world comes
> with the code.
>
> Unfortunately, that development can't be done with free software,
> because most of the world creation process depends on proprietary 3-D
> modeling software. Work is already underway to eliminate those
> dependencies and use free software alternatives like Blender. This is
> the next big task that needs to be done to make Ryzom even more useful
> to the free software community, so if you'd like to help, please see the
> project page for more information. In the meantime, the server code may
> be adapted for other games.
>
> Art files from the game, including both textures and 3-D models, have
> been released under CC-BY-SA 3.0. The FSF is helping distribute these
> files by hosting a mirror for the Ryzom media server. You can use these
> files in other games, software, artistic works—anywhere, really—under
> the terms of that license. Music and sound effects are not being
> released today because Winch Gate does not have the legal rights to do
> so, but they are trying to find an arrangement that will see these files
> released under a free license as well.
>
> Today's release offers free software developers a lot of opportunities,
> both to contribute to Ryzom and to improve other software. If you see a
> project that you'd like to see benefit, please get involved! For more
> information about this release, including downloads and more projects
> underway, please visit the Ryzom team's page.
>
> http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/ryzom-free-software
>
> info-fsf mailing list
> info-fsf at fsf.org
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>
>
>
> --
> .danny
>
> ☮♥Ⓐ - http://www.google.com/profiles/danny.piccirillo
> Every (in)decision matters.
>
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