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spellcast for Debian
--------------------
Spellcast is a classic game of might and magic for the X Windowing
System. Two or more wizards duke it out with spells, summons, and
plain old poking with fingers. Good for hour[s] of fun.
Currently, Debian provides two binaries of this game, the normal 'spellcast'
or 'spellcast1024' is the game adapted to be run in 1024x768 or greater
displays (remember that old UNIXes had these displays and the original
version was written for these), and also 'spellcast800' for displays
with a resolution of 800x600 or better.
Work is needed to be able to have one only binary, maybe by rewritting
spellcast to use newer graphic libraries (like gtk). Feel free to contribute.
FAQ:
1.- Spellcast will not work when running on Debian woody!
This is because the default behavior for X is to not listen for tcp connections.
You must remove "-nolisten tcp" in /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf or
/etc/X11/xinit/xserverc, depending on how you are launching
your X session.
NOTE: Please be advised that this opens up a potential security risk in your
system.
2.- Why isn't spellcast GPL the main author says it can be distributed
for free?
Some sites, like linuxbert (see
http://linuxberg.inter.net.il/games/strategy_license.html), say that
Spellcast is GPL when in fact it is not.
The answer is more complex than you would imagine. It all boils down to
the original author of the spellbinder game, Richard A. Bartle, who
asks any derivatives who states in http://mud.co.uk/richard/spellbnd.htm:
"None of these products are commercial, which is just as well: I retain
full rights to the game, and if any commercial incarnation appears then I
want a royalty! I have no objection to people implementing or running
derivatives of the Spellbinder so long as they make no money from it,
though. Of course, if you are interested in publishing the game
commercially, email me a proposal! "
Andrew Plotkin acknowledged Richard Bartle's demands and the README file
states (available in the /usr/share/doc/spellcast/copyright file) that
derivative works or source code cannot be sold without permission.
This affects not only spellcast, but a number of derivatives of the
original spellbinder game (some of them are listed at the author's webpage):
* Firetop Mountain (a Pbem implementation) at
http://www.gamerz.net/~fm/ which holds a specific license that does not
hinder commercial use (FM Public License at http://www.gamerz.net/~fm/LICENSE)
* spellcast at Sun's Jave games-forge
https://spellcast.dev.java.net/, which holds a BSD license
*'Spellcast: Deathmatch' a reimplementation with Java applets at
Sourceforge (http://spell.sourceforge.net/) which is GPL but has an
annotation for commercial use which
obviously does not make it GPL, http://spell.sourceforge.net/README.txt
* "Spellcast", the X window version package in Debian
(http://www.eblong.com/zarf/spellcast.html)
* wxSpellcast, a portable version (wxWindows) written by Dennis
Taylor (http://www.funkplanet.com/spellcast/), using the same ambiguous
"free" license from the X implementation.
Of course, the original author of Spellbind can limit the use of the
original game (if trademarked) and of writing of the original rules.
But implementations of this game really don't need to be limited
for non-commercial use, it's just that some authors have accepted
Richard Bartle limitations on use. It is enlightening to read
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=contactinfo/legal
which provides the legal information from Wizards of the Coast,
the provider fo the Magic The Gathering (R) game. The game is patented
and, so, they can limit implementations of the game. Spellbinder, however,
is not patented and thus, no implementation can be hindered by the
original author as long as no of his original work is copied (like,
for example, if the original rules were included verbatim in the
implementation)
Ben Gertzfield <che@debian.org>,
Wed, 23 Sep 1998 18:43:26 -0700
Javier Fernndez-Sanguino Pea <jfs@computer.org>
Sun, 19 Oct 2003 11:57:15 +0200
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