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.
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.
This situation suggests that it would be to the advantage of interactive
fiction authors who don't mind other people making a profit from their
work to put their games/programs together under a single licence which
gives permission for commercial distribution, so that people wanting to
sell CD-ROMs or put the games on commercial bulletin boards can
recognise which games permit this.
It seems to me that there is an obvious reformulation of the GNU General
Public Licence which would achieve this. I would suggest something like
this:
Licence for "GAME"
Terms and conditions for copying and distribution
1. This program, referred to herein as "GAME", is copyright (c) YEAR
by AUTHOR. The terms and conditions in this licence applying to
"GAME" apply equally to any output produced by "GAME". Each
licensee is addressed as "you".
2. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of "GAME" in any
medium.
3. You may charge a fee for the act of transferring a copy.
4. You may not copy, modify, or distribute "GAME" except as
expressly provided under this license.
5. You are not required to accept this license, since you have not
signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to
distribute "GAME". This action is prohibited by law if you do not
accept this License. Therefore, by distributing "GAME" you
indicate your acceptance of this license and all its terms and
conditions.
6. Because "GAME" is made available and licenced free of charge
there is no warranty for "GAME".
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
-- Gareth Rees