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

[Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli]

On Tue, 13 Jun 2023 21:32:29 -0400
Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> Sorry, the meaning is not clear to me.  Whan you say "the way to go
> would be", tu cherces à réaliser quel but ?  Quand tu dis, "make sure
> that", est-ce que ça signifie "établir le fait que des programmes
> libres tournent déjà sur Scummvm", ou est-ce "développer des
> programmes libres qui ont besoin de Scummvm, s'il n'y en a pas
> encore"?
I mean, making sure that any kind of existing free program (a full
featured game or a hello world) can run inside ScummVM.

If I take Guile instead of scummVM if I copy the following lines in
hello.scm and run 'guile hello.scm' I've a valid existing free software
program that runs inside Guile:
> (display "This program is released under the CC-0 license\n")
> (display "Hello world\n")

But nobody is able to provide a similar proof for ScummVM because
providing that proof requires substantial work, and it could turn out
that it require a huge amount of work that include reverse engineering
file formats (by reading the scummVM source code and trying to produce
valid files for scummVM), or trying to build software that is
complicated to build, etc.

So because of that we don't even know if the "private programming" use
case that was advocated by John really works without substantial
effort.

So unless a proof is produced that somehow it is possible to run free
software in scummVM, the only use case of scummVM are either running
nonfree software or running software of unknown freedom that would
likely be mistakenly understood as free instead of "unknown" by users.

We also have an additional problem that I didn't know about when
writing the mails you quoted: to run a modified version of existing
programs or to write your own you might need to patch ScummVM to add the
checksums of the binary you produced.

Denis.

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