Re: [GNU-linux-libre] Adding some scummvm game(s) to the "List of software that does not respect the Free System Distribution Guidelines"

[John Sullivan]

On Sat, Jun 10, 2023 at 05:29:48PM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote:
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> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> 
>   > I agree, and removing the engine from distros seems like a great way to
>   > make doubly sure people don't write any free games for it.
> 
> What an exaggeration!  Writing a free game is a lot of work.  The
> small preparatory task of getting and installing ScummVM would hardly
> discourage anyone who is prepared to do that work.
> 

Says who? If I have an hour to sit down and work on something, I would
like to spend that hour working on the thing, not downloading and
building dependencies, and then the next Friday when I have an hour, I
have to see if the dependencies are updated, and rebuild them manually.
And dependencies interrelate -- one of the main reasons we have distros
in the first place. Manually maintaining some things on a system while
other things are packaged is a notoriously fraught thing to do.
Packaging is an important and valuable convenience that eliminates a lot
of yak shaving.

The discussion here is dismissing the relevance and importance of this
*private* software. This is the dangerous path you go down when banning
software from endorsed distros just because it doesn't have released,
packaged free software for it. This private software could be released
in the future as free -- but even if it isn't, facilitating private
software experimentation and development is a free software value.

The question needs to hinge simply on the *is there a recommendation of
nonfree software from this package?* question. And with Scum, there very
well might be -- does the VM and its documentation talk excitedly about
the nonfree games and direct users to how to get them? Probably. *That*
is a recommendation. Endorsed distros would then need to modify that
stuff if they wanted to ship the VM, and that would make sense to me
given the current criteria. But saying the absence of published and
shared free extensions/plugins/whatever and the presence of proprietary
extensions/whatever means that a free thing that is already packaged
should be unpackaged makes no sense to me.

> Is using ScummVM a good way to go about that?  It seems to be used for
> supporting existing games that were written to use that particular
> scripting language, implemented initially with proprietary software.
> If you are developing a new game, your choice of scripting language
> is up to you.
>

I think so, but I'm not sure. I didn't think the FSF was in the business
of judging whether this is a good way to write a game or not. This may
be a niche thing either way -- these are not super popular proprietary
games anymore either. But I don't see why people who appreciated these
games before and now know about free software might not also be
interested in working on free games to share, or even just free bits to
play around with on their own to learn. The state of free software
gaming is terrible, and many of us are still playing free software games
from 30+ years ago. So purging any working free game framework just
because it doesn't already have free games for it seems like a bad idea
to me, anyway.

-john