Bug#861612: pixbros: level designs appear to be non-free

[Steve Cotton]

On Fri, May 12, 2017 at 11:03:24PM +0200, Markus Koschany wrote:
> What we need to check is: Does the game comply with the DFSG and does it
> infringe the copyright of another programmer/artist. In my opinion that
> is not the case here because the license is DFSG-compatible and the game
> looks and works differently in style and artwork. We are not aware of a
> verdict which states that the level resemblance infringes the rights of
> another party.

Hi Markus,

To clarify, I think it's a copyright violation.  The copyrights in
question are the layout of the levels, the level designers' choices of
where the platforms are.  For a simple level like level 30 it would be
unremarkable for games in the same genre to have a similar level, but
not the complex designs of most of the levels from 31 to 49.

> This whole bug report reminds me of Giana Sisters, ...

> On the other hand we have many open source games that try to clone an
> older game but they look and behave often differently and use their own
> graphics or they just reinvent the engine and then use the original
> artwork (hence why those games are shipped in contrib)

But the ones in contrib using original artwork only have the DFSG
parts in contrib, the copy of the original artwork isn't in contrib.

> Look at Pathological which is obviously a clone of Logical or Tuxpuck
> which very much resembles the Shuffle Puck Cafe game. Are they non-free
> too? I don't think so because I have played the original games and I can
> tell you that the older games had both better graphics, more levels and
> were more feature complete. They resemble each other but they are not on
> a par and the risk that some company sues Debian just for distributing
> them is highly unlikely because we make no money with them either.

Just as they used new artwork, Pathological used (AFAIK) new level
designs. The first level looks like a level of Logical, but that's
forced by the genre, there's a limited set of level designs for a
tutorial level that introduces the concept of the game.

With tuxpuck the level design seems to be a rectangular table, with a
rectangular area of that table that the player can move the bat to.

Neither of these games seems to have a direct copy from the game that
inspired them.

Regards,
Steve