Re: question about licenses in relation to games ...

[Darel Finkbeiner <darelf@crafton.net>]

On Fri, 08 Jan 1999, you wrote:
>> Would any of the GNU/GPL/etc licenses forbid putting an ad
>> banner within the code from which money would be generated?
>> So then the game itself would remain free, as in it would
>> not
>> be bought or sold, but profit off the game would be solely
>> from the ad banner.  Its a little hard to describe what I'm
>> getting at.  The freeware version of webferret does what I
>> am describing,
>> http://www.ferretsoft.com/netferret/download.htm
>
>That's actually an interesting way of doing it.. though I think it would
>be easier if you had a server that hosted the game.. such as battlenet and
>when you logged in you got hit with a short spam of some company for 5
>seconds.. or soem crap like that.  It might be hard to update in the
>actual code.  You could name the home planet of the alien after the
>company sponsoring it and change that on a daily basis or something.. 
>
>I can't check out ferret.. (no windows boxes anymore) so I can't tell
>exaclty what you mean.  
>
>-mike

the PKZip for windows does that very thing.  (not that it is GPL, but still a
viable way to generate money.)