Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Buying the rights to proprietary programs to free them

[Fabio Pesari]

On 02/05/2016 11:34 AM, Koz Ross wrote:
>
> I believe that *theoretically* this is possible - assuming whoever it
> is is willing to sell under those conditions. It'd certainly be
> something I'd support - financially if needs be - especially if we're
> also releasing the assets behind the software in question. There are
> quite a few older games that I wish were free, and it's possible that
> this approach could actually get us a free equivalent much more
> efficiently than a reimplementation.

I think the FSF could get the copyright assignment, handle the
fundraising (since it can be trusted as an escrow between those who
donate and the company) and make sure that legally the code and assets
are 100% libre and there are no catches (trademarks could be an issue,
same for NDAs).

I think it's a lot cheaper (in terms of both time and money) to free
existing programs than develop our own from scratch, in some cases. This
applies to games in particular, since they are also art and can't really
be replicated.

There is a lot of software out there which is considered "abandonware"
and distributed at zero cost (and technically, illicitly). We could buy
that for cheap sums, for starters. We could even buy the rights to
entire catalogues - that's not unheard of, why should EA be able to do
it and not the FSF?

It is important to tell them that they can still sell the programs
commercially, so they wouldn't have to lose any source of income.

So if someone sells a game on a service like GOG, they can still do it
after we buy the rights to it (Steam might be an issue, since it's DRM,
but it does allow DRM-free games, even if running the proprietary Steam
client is required to download them).