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License Info for Atari 8-bit Taipan
-----------------------------------
The legal status of this is quite murky. The original game is still
copyrighted, though quite a few clones of it have been made for
various platforms over the years with no complaints from the copyright
holder (whoever that actually is).
This Atari port includes font and graphics data ripped straight from
the original Apple game, plus more font data ripped from the Atari 800's
OS ROM.
The Linux port of taipan, according to its .lsm file, is GPL (version
uspecified). It's very obviously a derivative work of the Apple
BASIC version, so I'm not sure it was really legal to release as
GPL. But it's been out there for decades unchallenged... My C code is
definitely a derivative work of the Linux port, so it's GPL also. The
assembly code and host tools (convfont, mkcart, etc) are my own work,
and I release them under the GPL (version 2).
I'm not sure how to handle binary redistributions. Most people are
just going to grab the taipan.xex file and use it, and it'll end up in
various Atari archives. If I *don't* provide a binary, *nobody but me*
will ever play this game (seriously, there aren't a lot of Atari 8-bit
gamers who also would know how to set up a build environment for cc65,
or even be interested in trying).
Since the Atari is such a limited platform, I can't really include
e.g. clickable (or even copy/pastable) links pointing to the
source. Including the text of the GPL in the binary is impossible,
or at least impractical: the GPLv2 license is around 18KB in size, or
approximately half the usable memory in an Atari, or 2/3 the size
of the existing Taipan binary.
I hate to be this way but... I'm going to just allow binary
redistribution, unless/until the author of the Linux Taipan C game
complains about it. And when he does, I'm going to ask him if he
actually got permission from the author of the Apple BASIC version to
release his derivative work as GPL.
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