Subject: Re: [bug#49284] [PATCH] gnu: Add fheroes2

From: Nicolas Goaziou <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 02 Jul 2021 11:11:07 +0200

Hello,

Andrew Tropin <[email-masked]> writes:

> Leo Prikler <[email-masked]> writes:

>> Without a package providing those assets, this is still pretty much
>> "here, go seek out this nonfree software thingy for assets".  This is
>> not to say, that we can never ever ship fheroes2, but I'd personally
>> hold back on it until we can package some fheroes2-data to make it
>> useful without requiring people seek out these assets.
>>
>> This is just my own opinion however, and it's certainly not reflected
>> all over guix source.  For instance, both oshu and stepmania require
>> beatmaps and stepfiles respectively to be useful and ship without them
>> while most of what you'll find online will be somewhat dubious in terms
>> of copyright.  However, both also offer the tools to create those using
>> your own (hopefully GPL-compatible) album collection, so it's not a big
>> problem.  I don't think fheroes2 has that low of an entry barrier to
>> full playability, does it?
>
> Y, probably it's not easy to find free assets.  Still can be useful for
> people, who already have a CD with the original game, but do not want to
> use unfree software or even for people, who would buy it to get resource
> from it.
>
> Feels kinda on the edge:
> On the one hand it can nudge someone to buy or obtain a bundle with
> unfree software inside to extract resources from it.  On the other hand
> it helps not to use unfree software.
>
> I think it's more towards steering people from unfree to free software,
> but I can be wrong.
>
> Anyway, I trust your expertise on this topic and will accept your
> descision to hold it back if you think it's necessary to have
> fheroes2-data created/packaged first.

I agree that's it is already very easy to play this game without the
package: it has platinum support on Wine. Therefore, I don't think
adding it to Guix would force people to use non-free software.

I don't think developers of this engine created it just to play this
game, either. It is first and foremost an opportunity to learn, and to
share knowledge. As such, it belongs to Guix, IMO.

More pragmatically, it is free, and it requires little maintenance. I'm
in favor of including it.

Regards,
-- 
Nicolas Goaziou