Youth Protection Act (YPA) and Free Software: Discussion
[German]
On July 11 2003 a discussion was organized in the city hall of the Karlsruhe
Conference Center as part of the LinuxTag, to raise voices about the
development of free games in the context of the YPA and also about licensing
models.
Participants
The audience consisted of about 40 persons, of whom 30 stayed until the end.
The panel was made up of a member of the Linux gaming news site holarse.net,
Kai Blin from the WorldForge project, Bernd Ritter from Holarse as well, Josef
Spillner from the GGZ Gaming Zone (that's me), and Fred Andresen from Linux
Magazine.
Mr. Schäfer (Entertainment Software Association Germany) did not appear,
unfortunately.
Photos
(Source: holarse.net)
Results
It was found out that the current bill is insufficient for free games, due to
its ignorance of the business model (especially the budget of the developers)
of free software, and its focus on products (as compared to an evolutionary
software development cycle) in general.
Yet the YPA does not exclude the rating of free games by a non-commercial
entity, thus the foundation of such an organization might very well happen.
Furthermore, licenses for free graphics and models are needed. Neither the
Clarified Artistic License nor the GFDL are suitable for these areas.
One condition mentioned was that the length of the license should be similar to
the BSD clauses to not threaten away potential graphics artists.
A problematic 'gray zone' might even be the current state of commercial games:
Where's the border between a patch fixing a bug in the network code and one
which replaces disappearing characters with bloody monsters?
Both the participating developers of free games and the exhibition visitors
developing small commercial games had their opinion strongly against the YPA in
its current format.
It was confirmed though that a change might require several months when
applying for the normal modification procedures.
Back to the JuSchG page
Josef Spillner,
14.07.2003
