Libregamewiki talk:Article policy

Why only open content?

Please give reasons for why the listed games should only be games with open content? I am sympathetic towards the idea of open content, but am a bit unsure about that games should be definitely ignored if only their code is free. Maybe a category for them (os games with not-so-free media) would do good? --Qubodup 01:22, 24 Aug 2007 (EEST)

This very strict policy is to designed to make sure that we won't go down a very slippy road of adding proprietary games and make it very clear on what to include and not include. Beside I already promise people that I won't allowed games with proprietary. If I can't deliver a promise, I am untrustworthy by character. It would also undermine my personal agenda.--Kiba 01:40, 24 August 2007 (CEST)

Free indie games

About freeware indie games where the author maintains a closed-source policy, do they come under the "can not be included" category? --D'riss (talk) 22:45, 21 January 2008 (CET)

All freeware games are proprietary so they cannot be included.--Kiba 23:50, 21 January 2008 (CET)

About Wikipedia

Just want to know why would copying articles from Wikipedia(or other GFDL wikis etc) be a problem if these guidelines were followed? --D'riss (talk) 22:55, 21 January 2008 (CET)

We are dual licensed under CC by and GNU FDL so we cannot take content under only GNU FDL content.--Kiba 23:52, 21 January 2008 (CET)

This should be rewritten as the GFDL 1.5 allows transition into the CC-BY-SA (and previous GFDLs allow transition to later versions) and Wikipedia is now also very close to the licensing of this wiki. Based on these two developments, Wikipedia text I am pretty sure would be legal now. It is a pain the proverbial to rewrite Wikipedia content, as I have done for OpenArena (which I am happy to say now has descriptions some people removed from the Wikipedia article in the deletionists' war on content) and Robotfindskitten. Also I would like to say that I am a bit of a fan of duel-licensing as it seems to me to help unify the copyleft/share-alike sphere. - Graham Wilson Piga 07:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh sorry, check that. You are using a different Creative Commons license than the one supported by the GFDL 1.5 and Wikipedia. That is one thing about Creative Commons that really annoys me, they are by far the most gratuitous purveyors of license proliferation - some of which are not even true Free Software Foundation free. Piga 23:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

About free screenshots

Some useful reading, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing#Screenshots Quote:

To create a free screenshot:
   1. Use a free program with a completely free skin. (A KDE Program using Crystal images is an example.)
   2. Cut away all possibly copyrighted elements. Only show the relevant content.
   3. The content of the screenshot must be free too. Make sure the screenshot does not contain unfree text or images.

If you are looking for games to add

Look for suggestions and links in Libregamewiki:Suggested games.

Noncommercial clauses

Libregamewiki has rejected games based on their noncommercial clauses, but this page does not in any way clearly state that noncommercial games are not allowed to enter. It says that games need to be free software and that they need to have free media. Free software is defined by the Free Software Definition, which does not include the freedom to do commercial activity anywhere. The free media licence article on its hand says that free media is media that you may distribute freely - even in a commercial fashion. It does not however explicitly prevent noncommercial media from being free.

Thus there are two things to consider here. The first is that the wiki rejects games based on a seemingly unwritten rule - a sort of axiom. The other is - should the wiki reject noncommercial games? To the latter I vote no, being more concerned with the freedom to share than the freedom to make money. Consequently we should accept games with noncommercial clauses. If people disagree with me and want the wiki to indeed reject noncommercial games, then the article policy needs to reflect this. Alexander (talk) 11:10, 5 November 2012 (CET)

Freedom 0 of the free software definition explicitly includes selling the software. So, if the license of the code does not allow selling, it's not free software. "A free program must be available for commercial use, commercial development, and commercial distribution."

The freedom to make money does not exclude the freedom to share, no price is required. On the other hand the non-commercial clause denies the freedom to make money. GNUbie (talk) 18:10, 3 January 2013 (CET)

Red flags?

Do you have any experience with common “red flags” for games that on surface level look like FOSS but on closer examination turn out to be proprietary? Sometimes games are not as libre as they seem to be … --Wuzzy (talk) 19:18, 21 July 2020 (CEST)

One fairly obvious one is reading in licensing that "All code/media in under [free license], unless otherwise mentioned". Some lazy people make statements like this. Other is having a free game however depending on non-free libraries or even non-free operating systems. --GNUbie (talk) 13:51, 22 July 2020 (CEST)