: Unfortunately, Walnut Creek cannot legally publish the contents of the
: IF archive without checking each program and each game for its licence
: to see if it may be legally distributed (and it may not, unless it has a
: licence to say so). In cases where a program has a licence that does
: not explicitly allow commercial redistribution (I am presuming that the
: Walnut Creek project is a for-profit project) Walnut Creek will have to
: contact the author and negotiate a licence agreement.
Well, Walnut Creek seem to have managed so far without getting into
trouble. I think it would be a good idea to have a permanent snapshot of
all the I-F that has been collected.
: In fact, almost none of the material on the IF archive has a licence
: permitting commercial redistribution. "The Magic Toyshop" is one such
: (beging released under the GPL), but I'm not sure there are any others.
: Worse still, much of the material on ftp.gmd.de comes with NO LICENCE
: WHATSOEVER, which means NO PERMISSION TO COPY IT, except under ordinary
: copyright law (which basically means, copy it for your own personal or
: academic use, or quote it under fair use guidelines).
: For example, Mark Howell's ZIP interpreter has no licence, which means
: that anyone who has downloaded it (including me) is probably breaking
: the law! We all know that Mark doesn't mind, but there's nothing to
: prove that.
You could argue (pretty convincingly) that uploading to an archive
constitues agreeing to distribution of the material. Just because there
is not written evidence does not mean an agreement does not exist.
Anyway, I'd let Walnut Creek make the CD.
David