Freesound Forums
OpenSFX: Libre sounds for OpenTTD
Started August 7th, 2021 · 1 reply · Latest reply by deleted_user_9642645 3 years, 3 months ago
Hello, everyone. A few months ago, I decided to rework the sounds of OpenTTD, a libre transportation game.
Before 2021, many sounds in OpenSFX (the sound pack of OpenTTD) were unfortunately under non-free licenses incompatible with free software although the goal of OpenTTD was always to be free software. This bugged me.
In particular, many sounds were under the ancient CC Sampling+, a license with a very problematic history, it is incompatible with free software.
That's why I decided to rework the sounds and replacing them with libre ones. The replacement sounds were also mostly taken from Freesound.org, and with a bit of editing I finished the task in about 2 weeks.
Other OpenTTD contributors also joined in on the fun, but for more technical work (non-sound related, basically programming and cleaning up various technical files, making the build system work again so releases are possible, and so on).
I also was asking around Freesound.org for permission to pretty-please change the license. I only succeeed for like 5 times, other requests were rejected or unanswered. I already gave a personal thank-you noticed for every original sound author. Also, not all sounds were under Sampling+, a few sounds turned out to be already libre, so I didn't have to change them. It still was some work to get it done.
There are ca. 73 sounds in OpenSFX in total. This includes environment sounds (birds, sawmill, wind), vehicle sounds (trains, trucks, airplanes) and more.
We happily released OpenSFX version 1.0.0 on 13 March 2021, with 100% libre sounds.
And that was the short story of how OpenSFX got "liberated"! 
OpenTDD link: https://www.openttd.org/
OpenSFX link: https://www.openttd.org/downloads/opensfx-releases/latest.html
Old discussion thread: https://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=85815