Oolite Bulletins

Hello. Can somebody make a list of all the OXP's that are "free"? I keep finding too many OXP's that are nonfree, and there is no easy way to manage them.

Free licenses:
gpl
cc-by
cc-by-sa
cc0

Non-free licenses:
cc-by-nc
cc-by-nc-sa
cc-by-nd
cc-by-nc-nd

This is, of course, assuming the main game data is still dual licensed gpl2/cc-by-nc-sa. And of course, there are probably other licenses I'm forgetting...

They're all free, surely?

JazHaz wrote:

They're all free, surely?

Danfun128 is referring to "free" in the sense of "freedom to do whatever you please with the material".. not in the sense of "free beer"..

To quote Wkipedia on the subject:

Free content, or free information, is any kind of functional work, artwork, or other creative content that meets the definition of a free cultural work. A free cultural work is one which has no significant legal restriction on people's freedom:

* to use the content and benefit from using it,
* to study the content and apply what is learned,
* to make and distribute copies of the content,
* to change and improve the content and distribute these derivative works.

Although different definitions are used, free content is legally similar if not identical to open content. An analogy is the use of the rival terms free software and open source which describe ideological differences rather than legal ones.

In the case of this discussion, points 3 and 4 in the bulleted list are the most important ones.


G'day, Danfun128, and welcome aboard!

Licensing is one of those thorny issues which we are still, to some extent, getting to grips with when it comes to OXPs.. witness the recent discussion over "dead-man" clauses, for instance.. To my knowledge, nobody has yet compiled such a list, as the uses for same would appear to be rather limited. Generally speaking, licensing is of little interest except for OXP authors who may wish to borrow from or adapt the work of others. The only other reasons that come to mind for creating such a list are for somebody seeking to re-distribute OXPs themselves, or for those individuals obsessed with having zero non-free code or other material on their computers..

Since you seem to have been examining OXPs from a licensing perspective already, perhaps you yourself are well positioned to contribute such a list.

Danfun128 wrote:

I keep finding too many OXP's that are nonfree, and there is no easy way to manage them.

Hmm.. why do you feel there are "too many" that are nonfree? And could you clarify what you mean by "manage them", please?

Danfun128 wrote:

This is, of course, assuming the main game data is still dual licensed gpl2/cc-by-nc-sa.

Correct. To be more specific, the game code is GPL2.. the game resources – models, textures, sounds, images - are dual-licensed.. (GPL2/CC-by-nc-sa-3). See here for further details.

Because there is no central control over, or repository for OXPs, the only way to compile such a list would be to download each OXP and check its licence so they can be listed.
Anybody is free to do this if they want to...

As for 'what is free?', well as has been said, they are all free as in beer, and most have a very liberal licence (mostly CC-by-nc-sa 3) which means they are free to use and/or adapt but with a couple of reasonable restrictions, namely that the original author requires a mention (fair enough I think), they cannot be used for any commercial purpose (also fair enough - we authors put in many hours producing our work which we then freely and happily give to the community, and most of us would object strongly to a third party exploiting them for personal gain), and that derivatives should carry the same licence (thus perpetuating the 'freedom').

Diziet Sma wrote:

Licensing is one of those thorny issues which we are still, to some extent, getting to grips with when it comes to OXPs.. witness the recent discussion over "dead-man" clauses, for instance.. To my knowledge, nobody has yet compiled such a list, as the uses for same would appear to be rather limited. Generally speaking, licensing is of little interest except for OXP authors who may wish to borrow from or adapt the work of others. The only other reasons that come to mind for creating such a list are for somebody seeking to re-distribute OXPs themselves, or for those individuals obsessed with having zero non-free code or other material on their computers..

Well, for example, just for my own use I have, during the last year, been compiling a new version of Oolite Extended - for those who might not know, that would be a version of Oolite with nearly all available oxps, obviously except HUD and cheat/fun oxps, preinstalled - one that can be downloaded and played stable, for people who want everything in one go, but don't have the 10 workdays or so they would need to download and put it all together and make it work themselves

I did not do this by merging this time - as this was quite the dead-end update-wise - but simply by getting a gigantic 650-oxps folder to play together unmodified. With a few frame-oxps included.

So, I can imagine that quite some players might like to have this, and it might not produce problems with incompatibilities as a merger as the old version did, and could be updated by hand with original oxp updates by anyone who used it - but for any sort of release to the community, the licensing issue is in the way here too.

As I have no intention of upsetting people who have greatly contributed to this game and its oxps, this means that this option, for example, won't happen, as I am not wading into some gigantic debate with 300+ people about lots of details again.

So much for reasons that might come to mind.

Lestradae wrote:

...that would be a version of Oolite with nearly all available oxps, obviously except HUD and cheat/fun oxps...

Well, that discounts nearly all the really popular ones!

Lestradae wrote:

but for any sort of release to the community, the licensing issue is in the way here too.

As I have no intention of upsetting people who have greatly contributed to this game and its oxps, this means that this option, for example, won't happen, as I am not wading into some gigantic debate with 300+ people about lots of details again.

So much for reasons that might come to mind.

I'm pretty sure that your particular situation was covered by my "somebody seeking to re-distribute OXPs themselves" comment..

Diziet Sma wrote:

Lestradae wrote:

but for any sort of release to the community, the licensing issue is in the way here too.

As I have no intention of upsetting people who have greatly contributed to this game and its oxps, this means that this option, for example, won't happen, as I am not wading into some gigantic debate with 300+ people about lots of details again.

So much for reasons that might come to mind.

I'm pretty sure that your particular situation was covered by my "somebody seeking to re-distribute OXPs themselves" comment..

Entirely true!

I'm simply a bit frustrated that there seems to be no way to do a OE V2.0 without stepping on toes heavily, and I would only do it in case of consensus nowadays

Diziet Sma wrote:

To my knowledge, nobody has yet compiled such a list, as the uses for same would appear to be rather limited.

Long-term such information will be extractable for many expansions from the OXZ index, since "license" is one of the optional keys in the manifest.plist file. But that's not going to happen until some time after we have a released version which supports the OXZ format, of course.

In the short term... my impression would be that the majority of OXPs are under an CC-*-NC-* license or something more restrictive. As a starting point for the list:
- Dr Nil's are under a very unrestrictive license (though not a particularly formal one). However, you might find that some have been worked on by other people since and the combined work is under a more restrictive license.
- mine tend to be CC-BY-SA 3 (and the only one not redistributable under a DFSG-compatible license is Energy Bomb, which was based on an earlier NC work)
- there are a few other "do what you want with it" license grants scattered around in forum posts for some older OXPs, but I can't remember who and where.

Lestradae wrote: ↑Sun Feb 02, 2014 9:12 am

Well, for example, just for my own use I have, during the last year, been compiling a new version of Oolite Extended - for those who might not know, that would be a version of Oolite with nearly all available oxps, obviously except HUD and cheat/fun oxps, preinstalled - one that can be downloaded and played stable, for people who want everything in one go, but don't have the 10 workdays or so they would need to download and put it all together and make it work themselves

I did not do this by merging this time - as this was quite the dead-end update-wise - but simply by getting a gigantic 650-oxps folder to play together unmodified. With a few frame-oxps included.

Lestradae:

PM's don't notify by e-mail at the moment, hence this post (which should, I hope)!

Did you finish this?

And, were you happy with it?

How big is it?

All the best, Cholmondeley

Hi Cholmondely!

I just now managed to login again after years - my old login email fell to the ravages of time ... but Aegidian has come to the rescue and helped me to get back into my account.

Sadly, nowadays I do not foresee being able to take up Oolite Extended again - even if I wanted to, my private time is so filled with projects that this would only be possible with a dedicated team of co-enthusiasts, which I don't have.

Concerning Oolite Extended, there never was a stable enough version for release - so, at some point I gave up on it. And E:D came along. And I had lost my forum access data (thanks again Aegidian for help, much appreciated!).

So thanks for your good work, keep it up by all means!

Cheers, L

Lestradae wrote: ↑Thu Feb 10, 2022 11:07 am

Sadly, nowadays I do not foresee being able to take up Oolite Extended again - even if I wanted to, my private time is so filled with projects that this would only be possible with a dedicated team of co-enthusiasts, which I don't have.

Concerning Oolite Extended, there never was a stable enough version for release - so, at some point I gave up on it.

Welcome back!

Question: you were working on making some of the star systems more unique.

Did you complete any of this?

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Fri Feb 11, 2022 9:09 am

Question: you were working on making some of the star systems more unique.

Did you complete any of this?

Yes, as far as it went.

My changes to eight star systems (one in each "Galaxy") were to give them Tech Levels from 16 to 18 (methinks 4 or 5 TL16, 2 or 3 TL17 and one TL18), give them an individual "advanced civilisation" background story on their system info screen and place specialised equipment under "buyable", but only there.

The standard equipment buyable and sellable on those TLs I defined as:

TL16 + finished Constrictor mission: Navy Energy Unit
TL17: Anti-Cloaking Device (makes cloaked ships visible on the scanner)
TL18: Cloaking Device

I also put a few special oxp equipment items into this super-range of TL. For example a "Chain Missile Launcher" (would launch up to 30 missiles in a row at an opponent) or, at TL18, some oxp weapon that would make the star of a system supernova - and which would give, at buying, the Commander who owned it an Uber-fugitive rating.

I can look if I still have this if someone wants to reuse it or some similar idea.