Talk:Freeciv

message: If anyone knows the answer, I think it would be very valuable (and encyclopedic) if this page explained the copyright issues involved in Freeciv.
Currently this page simply says:
:: Freeciv is a multiplayer, turn-based strategy game for personal computers inspired by the commercial Sid Meier's Civilization series. Released under the GNU General Public License....
I think this sentence makes two claims that may be false, and certainly need some sort of justification to avoid being POV
: The claims are absolutely correct; what makes you think otherwise?  Copyright issues regarding Freeciv have often been discussed (primarily on the Freeciv mailing lists) but without a clear statement that is ready for inclusion into this article.  Please see www.freeciv.org, forum.freeciv.org, or the freeciv-dev mailing list archives for further discussion. Rp (talk) 12:16, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Freeciv vs. Civ:  copyright issues? 

message: "Inspired by"???  No, Freeciv is Civ.  In fact, I would argue that Freeciv is closer to Civ 1 than Civ 2 is to Civ 1, and nobody says that Civ 2 is merely "inspired by" Civ 1.
Edit: I have changed it to say Civ 2. This is as Civ 1 uses a top down view and Civ2 and freeciv use isometric
:Freeciv's default tileset is indeed isometric, but it fully supports both top-down and hexagonal layouts as well. Fact is, before v2.0 the default and only view was the top-down one. I for one still prefer playing the game with this view. --Himasaram 01:09, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's unclear to what extent making use of another game's rules and conceptual elements constitutes copying in the sense of copyright law.  Freeciv is most certainly free of literal copying: all source code and data elements (e.g. artwork) was created specifically for Freeciv.  Some additional material available on the website does reuse pre-existing material, but always with the explicit permission of the original creator. Rp 12:00, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name 

message: "Released under the GNU GPL..."  By what right?  If Sid Meier owned the original copyright, then he would have had to relinquish these rights in order for Freeciv to be under copyleft.
What I am writing here is partially speculation (and that's why I haven't edited the main page).  Can someone who knows the true story please clarify?
And one final nitpick.  The opening sentence says that Freeciv is "for personal computers".  As someone who spent three years in grad school playing Freeciv on the Unix machines in our math department, let me assure you that Freeciv is far more widely used than just on the PC market.  This probably needs to be revised as well. — Lawrence King (talk) 07:58, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The first question is very complex and has been discussed for over a decade with no definite answer so far (search the mailing lists or the web forums for old discussions). As for the second question: The source code and artwork that are released under the GPL are all original, created by the Freeciv developers. It is completely unrelated to Meier's work. --Himasaram 09:08, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  In general I think games are not covered by US copyright, except for the verbatim copying of text or pictures: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html Thue | talk 09:41, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Those names are all real-life historical concepts. Hardly copyrightable. --Himasaram 00:34, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Meier's and Avalon Hill's Civilizations are two radically different games. What got Meier into trouble was IIRC only the use of the trademark Civilization. --Himasaram 00:34, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Licence 

message: Someone has added a notability tag to this article but hasn't explained his reasons for doing so.  I just found this article but I can't seem to figure out why that tag was put there, since there seems to be plenty of third-party documentation of this game (one source I just added).  What do you all think?  If he (or someone else) doesn't explain his reasoning within the next few days, the tag should be removed.71.231.87.53 (talk) 16:56, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It's no longer there.  I plan to pull the call for more citations as well; it's been there for ages and it's unclear why. Rp (talk) 16:07, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

text: It's a well-known open source gaming project that's older than some of our editors. It gets 574,000 Google hits. Call me cynical, but I somewhat doubt there's no reliable sources among all those hits from the last 13 years. Rebecca (talk) 17:27, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: 30,000 downloads per month don't add up to notability, I guess.  What will? Rp (talk) 21:56, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Sources, which shouldn't be at all hard to find given the above facts. Rebecca (talk) 09:33, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I tried, and inserted what I found, but it's not so easy to determine what User:Marasmusine will consider good sources. Rp (talk) 07:23, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Significant coverage in reliable third party sources is what is needed. This is standard for almost all topics across wikipedia, but most specifically software. Has it been mentioned in game magazines in a non-trivial manner? How about something on wired? anything at all? "Well known" is subjective and doesn't pass notability at all.--Crossmr (talk) 03:49, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Coverage in game magazines is unlikely, because they are targeted at flashy commercial games.  Freeciv is somewhere halfway such games and chess.  Even if it were covered there, it wouldn't add to its notability to any significant extent, because the distribution of such magazines is much smaller than the distribution of Freeciv itself.  The game has received decent coverage in Linux magazines over the years. Rp (talk) 18:57, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

text: Is this APC magazine link any good?  (I've never heard of the magazine.) Rp (talk) 19:02, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Not terribly, its covered under trivial coverage. Its just a small blurb listing the game and its features. Unless top x lists actually devote some coverage to the various items in their list beyond a quick quip, they're not generally considered significant coverage.--Crossmr (talk) 09:21, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

text: I am sick of games being picked on by Wikipedia editors simply because they are free software. There are thousands of commercial game articles with no citations, or are stubs, but simply because they where once able to be bought in stores they are somehow considered "notable". These strict notability policies are going to be the death of Wikipedia. I don't mean to be rude, but this policies like this have caused a back-lash and have turned many strong Wikipedia supporters against it. Something which would help is if these people who tag these articles as not notable had to go through the same detailed justifications that people who have to defend articles do. That would at least be fair. Comrade Hamish Wilson (talk) 20:36, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: This is not a game magazine, but it is a fairly prominent publication: http://m.linuxjournal.com/article/4683. Comrade Hamish Wilson (talk) 20:39, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: If there are commercial games without citation, bring it up at those pages. Each article stands on its own. Its being picked apart because notability hasn't been established, not because its a "free game". Don't try to insert bias where none exists. It doesn't need to be from a game magazine, it just needs to be significant coverage in reliable third party sources. Was this article in the print version of Linux Journal or online only?--Crossmr (talk) 09:21, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

text: I want to reiterate that Linux Journal (or any other magazine on Linux or computer games) has a much smaller circulation than Freeciv itself, so it's a bit ridiculous to consider its mentioning Freeciv as a validation of the relevance of this article.  Of course the requirement for independent evidence of notability is important, but paper just doesn't work very well for this type of subject. Rp (talk) 16:31, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Depending on the online source, it can convey notability as well. If wired ran an online article, or gamespot/ign did a special on it, etc. Has it ever won any notable awards?--Crossmr (talk) 01:01, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think Freeciv ever won any awards.  Rp (talk) 14:49, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

text: Freeciv does occur in interviews, e.g. I have seen comments on it from Sid Meier. Rp (talk) 14:49, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: That falls under the whole trivial coverage again. I've got to wonder where some of you looked for sources? Did no one think to check google news? There are 238 results there. Some of them don't convey notability. Google sometimes indexes things like blogs, and minor sites which aren't terribly notable in their own right. But some of these sources might be usable: The Star, Mac Observer, Jerusalem Post those were all on the first page. You might want to go through, filter out the name drops, trivial mentions and forum/blog stuff and see what is left. Those three, if they all turn out to be reliable sources, should be sufficient to cover notability. But more sources are always better--Crossmr (talk) 01:58, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmmm ... no I didn't check Google News.  Thanks! Rp (talk) 09:24, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

text: BTW Google Books has some useful references as well. Rp (talk) 09:26, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

text: PS: that list is more useful after  - can anyone tell me what in that list, if anything, would count as independent evidence of notability?  To me, Freeciv is far more notable than any of these publications. Rp (talk) 17:22, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I can tell you that a case study in The Art of Unix Programming chapters 6 and 7 settles all "notability" questions forever. Thanks for the link. 89.204.138.103 (talk) 13:20, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: It has been in the article for quite a while; I just moved it to a separate Publications section and added a few more publications that use Freeciv in one way or another. Rp (talk) 16:23, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: JFTR, 89.204.x.y=82.113.x.y=dunnoob –Be..anyone (talk) 13:43, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notability 

message: "The graphics in Freeciv are in some respects less advanced than in Civilization II"
I for one really doubt this, at least judging by screenshots. The source linked refers to some old version of freeciv(download-link is to 1.81 or something), and I dont believe that it is appliable to current versions.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.167.107.251 (talk) 15:26, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree; rewrote it. Rp (talk) 13:10, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Less advanced graphics? 

message: I greatly enjoy the paragraph listing many of Freeciv's best-known players, but I'm afraid the personal details must be removed as a violation of privacy, and I'm not sure it has much encyclopedic value without them. Rp (talk) 23:19, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Player details 

message: "and optionally hexagonal tiling (like in Civ V)"
This text is particularly funny considering Freeciv had hexagonal tiling years before Civilization V. It also had simultaneous play TCP/IP support years before Civilization. Does Civilization even have IPv6 support?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.240.13.100 (talk) 22:33, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fun stuff 

message: Proposal to merge the Freeciv.net article into the Freeciv article received.  Your comments are invited below. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 07:39, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Somebody did this, thanks. For Freeciv Greatturn I suggest the same procedure. I'm often pissed by allgedly "unencyclopedic" deletions, but Freeciv Greatturn does not need its own page while Freeciv struggles to be better than a stub. –89.204.139.186 (talk) 14:08, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: How can this article be made 'better than a stub'? What sort of information would you like to see added? Third-party publications about the game are rare, so it would be difficult to add much without being accused of NPOV, original research, or triviality. Rp (talk) 09:08, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

text: An officially registered Internet Port number 5556 qualifies Freeciv as one of the 65,535 most important things in the Internet.(kidding) –82.113.98.76 (talk) 07:06, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Merger proposal

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20130320062203/http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz:80/research/gameai/projects/GA%20in%20FreeCiv.pdf to https://cs.auckland.ac.nz/research/gameai/projects/GA%20in%20FreeCiv.pdf
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090103220500/http://www.free-games-net.com:80/games/freeciv.shtml to http://www.free-games-net.com/games/freeciv.shtml
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thread_title:  External links modified 

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I have just modified  on Freeciv. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: It doesn't appear the external link to the website is correct, when I clicked on it, my browser informed me the encryption ceritificate was wrong. Additionally, when I look up freeciv, the top result is a different website ending in the same .org suffix. JohnWarosa (talk) 05:49, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Came to report the same certificate warning, but I think the issue is that the URL on this page has https://freeciv.org when search engines just link to http://freeciv.org. I'd change it but wikipedia editors can often bite your head off for making changes so I'll just report it here. 2400:4050:AF64:600:CC9E:D37:93F1:33B6 (talk) 02:47, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  External Link