Wormus of prey and Debian

[Goneri Le Bouder]

Le 16/12/2006, "Thomas Pohl" <Thomas.Pohl at rrze.uni-erlangen.de> a écrit:

>Hi,
>I browsed through the mails concerning the packaging
>of WoP and have a few comments:
>
>1) Graphics are 100% homegrown, made by Gismo, one
>    of the three main developers of WoP.
great

>2) Most sounds have been taken from the original Worms
>    by Team17. Of course we asked them before and they
>    allowed us to use them (see the README file in the
>    source package and http://wormsofprey.org/thanks.html).
>    The rest of the sounds are free downloads from the
>    internet. Here is part of my original eMail to Team17
>    and Marty's answer:
>
>    -- Tom ----------------------------------------------------
>    Dear Mr. Brown,
>    we are a bunch of people programming a
>    free computer game called "Worms of Prey"
>    ( http://wormsofprey.org/ ) which is a
>    realtime Worms clone similar to Liero,
>    NiL or Wurmz. Right now we use many
>    sound effects we found on the web. Some
>    of these seem to originate from your
>    original Worms game.
>
>    Do you mind if we keep your sound
>    effects in the game when we release it,
>    which is scheduled for this month? Of
>    course we would acknowledge the
>    cooperation of Team17.
>    [...]
>
>    -- Marty --------------------------------------------------
>    This is ok regarding the sounds, but we must object to the term
>    "Worms" in the title since this contravenes our copyright & trademarks.
>
>    Martyn Brown,
>    Team17 Software Limited.
>    -----------------------------------------------------------
Sadly, we can't accept these files in Debian because they don't respect
the Debian Social Contract ( http://www.debian.org/social_contract ).


>3) As you just read, Team17 exlicitly forbid us to use the
>    word "Worms" in the game title. That's why we changed it to
>    "Wörms of Prey" (I don't know if the "Umlaut" in
>    the first word is displayed right, just look on the
>    homepage to see the correct spelling). So far, Team17
>    does not seem to mind, but if you want to stand clear
>    of any trademark problems, you should use "WoP" (or
>    "Wörms of Prey" if you dare).
Well let's use WoP for the package name.


>Regarding the sound issue, I see three options (the first
>I like most, the last one least):
>a) keeping the Team17 sounds; they allowed us to do so.
>b) replacing the sounds (maybe with Wormux sounds)
>c) no sounds at all (except for the intro tune which is
>    not from Team17 and we are allowed to use it).
I suggest 'c' first. Then when a new release of WoP will be released
we'll change.

About the rest of sounds, we need there licenses to be able to publish
them. And the license must respect the Debian Social Contract. Which
license is used for the intro?

>Let's hopel that all this trademark stuff is not a showstopper,
License issues are not very fun to fix but there is nothing impossible
here.

>because Debian is my favorite Linux distro and I would just love
>to see WoP on the official Debian servers. We really appreciate
>your work! Thanks!
Thank you ;). WoP is fun and we all want it to enter Debian.

Best regards,

        Gonéri