I need some clarification for the dev FAQ

[heisenberg]

Hi all!

I need some clarification about one thing in the developer's FAQ, partly because english isn't my native and I'm not 100% sure I understood it right.

The answer for question "Can I use the Project Aon edition of the books to create my software?" is "Yes, but if you do, you must host your files on the Project Aon website exclusively. Otherwise, if your software doesn't contain the books directly, then you can host your software wherever you choose." What does "contain the books directly" means here exactly? Does it mean if a file contains a large enough portion of the book's text, even if in a slightly modified state (something like Common Navigation File), in a password-protected zip file [just for clarification: the xml file is compressed into a password-protected zip, and this zip is embedded into the dll], then it can only be hosted here and nowhere else?

Thanks for your answers
Heisenberg

[beowuuf]

Yes, I believe the text of the books must be hosted by Project Aon.

[Doomy]

The Project Aon License, granted by copyright holders such as Joe Dever, gives Project Aon exclusive rights to host these works. No other website has the legal right to host this content. Visitors to the Project Aon website are entitled to download the books and other works to be found there, but not to distribute them (for example, this forbids people from trying to sell the Project Aon texts on eBay, as has been tried in the past).
So that is why, if you were to write a program that contained material you had downloaded from Project Aon, it would have to be hosted on PA rather than somewhere like Sourceforge.

The other option is to create software that is designed to use PA content but doesn't include it. As your users are entitled to download things from PA for personal use anyway, you can design a program that goes to the Project Aon website and automatically downloads what it needs. Such a program could safely be hosted anywhere.

It's a bit like how anyone can legally host an emulator so long as it doesn't include the system BIOS.

[Taryn]

Off-topic, but I've noticed that emulators tend to be rather inconsistent...Commodore 64 emulators usually include the operating system, but not Apple II emulators, for instance.

[Dave]

[quote author=doomy board=generalsoftware thread=1496 post=24819 time=1231890389The other option is to create software that is designed to use PA content but doesn't include it. As your users are entitled to download things from PA for personal use anyway, you can design a program that goes to the Project Aon website and automatically downloads what it needs. Such a program could safely be hosted anywhere.[/quote]

That was my original intent with the Seventh Sense program. And it still sort of works like that - it downloads the books directly from PA, and stores them on the hard drive of the user. Before the user can actually start an adventure, they must click an "I agree to the license" button at the end of the license page. Hosting my project on Aon allows me to use other licensed artworks (like the logos) that I couldn't otherwise.

[heisenberg]

Thanks for the replies. Now I need two more things to know.

First, if my program would be modular enough that all projectaon-related stuff (the images and the contents of the books) can be separated easily from other parts of it (like gui, the rules that make use of the contents, etc.), then can I only upload here the PA-related data and keep other parts of the program elsewhere, or must I upload every file containing anything that's related to things covered by PA license too (meaning here the general and book-specific rules that's been programmed separately from the above), or basically everything that's needed to actually use these things?

And second, I understand I must use an open source license for everything I upload here. Could you tell me which licenses can I choose from? Because most licenses I know of (Apache, GPL, LGPL, BSD, MIT, MPL, CDDL, CPL, OSI) contains a right of free redistribution of the thing, something I cannot allow as I have to comply to the PA license, which doesn't grant me any kind of redistribution right - so technically by using eg. a GPL license with these parts of a theoretical program, I would violate the PA license.

[alderaine]

We recommend hosting anything related to Lone Wolf on AON. It provides numerous benefits, not least of which is the legal protection.
AON generally requires that any programs being written against AON material have source code hosted on AON and available to AON staff - this is so that if the utility becomes popular, and the author is no longer able to maintain it, we can pick it up. This is not enforced in the early days of experimentation, but we would be looking to enforce it for larger projects such as Dave's.
You can rebrand the AON page in any way you need to - there are some pretty snazzy examples out there if you scout around. You can also link either to the page, or directly to the files, from any other site.

Any open source license is acceptable - as noted above, the "open source" requirement is more so that AON can pick up the project if needed. Being fully open source is helpful in general, but we respect that not all programmers work that way.

Redistribution of the software is not prohibited - only redistribution of the book content. As long as the book content is hosted ONLY on AON, and the source code is eventually available to AON, the code/executables can be hosted anywhere (NB - as Dave points out, book content includes icons, images, etc.)

[heisenberg]

I think I understand now. Thanks for the help.

[Dave]

alderaine, I sent you a PM a bit ago... I don't think you've seen it yet.