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Minetest Mods

ryry - almost 2 years ago -

I have been playing the Minetest version we have in the repo's and that all works fine, but adding some extra game mods on a private server seems to be suggested in order customise etc, however, I am sure that unverified mods present potential issues of free software (if they aren't and or contain non free artwork etc) and security (malicious acvtivity etc) so would want to avoid them. Now there is a a mods team and they host these on github at https://github.com/minetest-mods, and debian also seemingly packages for debian users. So firstly, is there any way in which Libre compatible mods could be available for parabola users? And secondly (espcially if we can not have them in the repos) would it be better to avoid mods all together (my current thinking) or to use ones which are compatible but vet them myself? (this is really just a can I have some advice what the best practice would be part of the question).

Lastly, the in game contentdb recommend mods and games, which both the github page and debian https://wiki.debian.org/Games/Minetest#Install_and_enable_mods ,say that not all are not necessarily freely licensed, so would that mean that the current version in parabola, is at risk of recommending non-free software or add-ons and thus might need to be removed/blacklisted anyway?

Many Thanks to whoever replies
ryry


Replies (4)

RE: Minetest Mods - ryry - almost 2 years ago -

I had a look on Trisquel and it turns out they have mods packaged, So I was wondering given they are another FSDG compliant distro and the files are just lua, configs and pngs, it should be possible verify the packages then copy over the mod to the minetest server running on parabola arm/x86 etc. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Ry

RE: Minetest Mods - bill-auger - almost 2 years ago -

the short answer is yes it should be possible to use those mods, if they support the same minetest version that parabola has - they probebly do

the shorter answer is "try it and see"

the long answer is that anything in debian main is libre by debian's definition (the DFSG); and probably libre by the FSF's definition (the FSDG) - debian's standard for games and artwork is actually more strict than the FSF's - it is closer to parabola's definition of "free culture", which the FSDG does not require as strictly - if trisquel has those packages, it it most likely because debian packages them in the main (libre) repo - most trisquel packages are the identical debian packages

what i can not say is how well debian packagers adhere their own standards, or if trisquel scrutinizes those game/art packages, as much as parabola would want to - and i must specify "want to", not actually does - there are so many games and art packages, and their usefulness-to-maintenance ratio is so low, that scrutiny is not an optimal use of the limited time we have available - please do this if you are so inclined - maybe parabola can adopt some of them

RE: Minetest Mods - gap - almost 2 years ago -

Minetest is a TPPM (third-party package manager), which means it uses non-Parabola repos which are not necessarily compliant with the GNU FSDG or the Parabola Social Contract, and as such may contain proprietary software or proprietary media.
The short-term solution would be to disable this functionality, and the long-term solution would be to start compliant repos and patch the TPPMs to use them instead.
See #1035.

For the time being whilst TPPMs are packaged in the Parabola repos and themselves use dubious third-party repos, my advice would be to make sure what you are installing is genuinely libre.
I currently use this manual workaround for Cargo, Cabal, Stack, and vim-plug.

In general, anything which connects to the network has the potential for pulling in proprietary software or media, so be careful what you download.

RE: Minetest Mods - penaiple - over 1 year ago -

AFAIK minetest's ContentDB ("the default repo") allows nonfree packages to some degree, but minetest blacklists them by default which you can manually change if you want to, as explained here https://content.minetest.net/help/non_free/
I think this should be fine, considering that it's a blacklist you can bypass if you really wanted to, just like parabola's your-freedom you can just uninstall to forcefully install proprietary packages.

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