DarkPlaces Dev Forest Hale Corrects Nexuiz GPL Stance 131
Time Doctor writes "There has been a lot of information going around about Nexuiz, the GPL, and what the Nexuiz leadership has done. A new interview has gone up with DarkPlaces developer Forest Hale to set things straight. Quoting: 'The original plan was to contact every developer and relicense the Nexuiz 2.5.2 GPL gamecode sources for this title, to ensure authentic gameplay and return some important features to the community for the benefit of everyone. However this gamecode re-licensing attempt did not go well; with the former developers making claims of violations there was no choice but to re-implement the gamecode from scratch on non-GPL sources. As a result there will be no ongoing code contributions back to the community, and the gameplay may differ more than originally planned. This is a very unfortunate outcome but has no significant impact on development. To make this perfectly clear – the game is being reimplemented from scratch; all they share is a name.'"
CLEAN ROOM re-implemented? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because otherwise, you know, derivative work, and a thousand years bad juju.
Given what they just tried to do, and the casual disregard they had for licensing until they got caught in the act, I'd say the burden of proof lies with the re-implementors.
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Actually, you'd have to go to court to force them to show their code, and compare. (I'd doubt they were willing to disclose by themselves.)
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Exactly how do you see source code from a gameplay video?
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He can see it in the pixels.
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He's got inverse-matrix eyes.
(Cypher: All I see now is blonde, brunette, redhead. )
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> a thousand years bad juju
I also dislike unethical behavior, but I look at it this way:
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For me at least, the whole point of the GPL is preventing people from closing the source in the manner attempted here.
Different people have different reasons for using it, but my own, as I explained before on here is that I expect a payment in exchange for the use for development in some form. I accept payment in the form of code contributions, or I might be willing to relicense in exchange for money. I consider usage by the end users to be value neutral. It's not bad of course, but it doesn't do me a whole
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I see your point and respect your opinion on this. In fact I found your post quite interesting, because it made the whole GPL philosophy thing more clear for me.
Nevertheless, I cannot help but think that your view on the matter is somewhat narrow minded, for lack of a better word. I dislike the GPL because it is not important for me to get contributions back on exactly the same project that I am working on. If I write something that is useful to you, and you write something that is useful to me, then we hav
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Good to know :-)
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Of course, if it's just a feeling of injustice with respect to close-sourcing something open, you should use the GPL. I even share that feeling to some amount, but I reject it for being irrational (and I don't mean to brag about how rational I am because I am not).
It's not like I hate the GPL or anything, I just think BSD licenses or public domain licenses suit my ideals better. But to each his own.
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Why do you think it is irrational?
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Well, because I don't lose anything if someone else close-sources my project. My project is still open, other people can still contribute to it - I have lost nothing.
In my view - if people want to contribute something they will, and if they won't they just won't. After all I don't go around feeling bad about any end-users just using my project because as you said before, its value neutral to me. If somebody else incorporates my source in their closed-source project that is exactly the same to me, it's just
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Ok, then where does the feeling of injustice come from?
This doesn't make sense to me. It's like you're claiming that no matter what you do, people will do whatever they want anyway. But things just don't work this way, for legal reasons for instance
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Well, it's pretty much the same situation with illegal music downloads. There are *some* people who would never pay for a given piece of music - they just wouldn't. I don't want to specify how many people are like that, but I don't think you would disagree that they do in fact exist.
If such a person downloads the music illegally, he has clearly taken something without giving back. I don't think I'd have to explain where the feeling of injustice comes from. I sort of feel the same way about it.
However, if yo
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This is a bad analogy though. With the GPL all of that would be perfectly fine. The only thing that wouldn't
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I knew it was a bad analogy with respect to the legal issues, I even commented on it myself later on :)
About the friendship part: I don't disagree with anything you are saying, my point is simply that you don't keep a ledger where you enter each favor and before you help out your friend you check whether he has been doing you enough favors first. If you've become friends in the first place, odds are that you already have established that the relationship is going to be reciprocal, but as you said yourself,
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Whether a third party uses the project as well is - as you say - of neutral value to me. And I don't see how that changes whether the use consists of incorporation in a closed source product or simple end-user use.
The answer to this is that it does not. Unless you believe that open source code is better for everyone as it contributes something back to the community.
The GPL (3) is not just about stopping people closing code that was previously open source. It is also about encouraging you to release your code as open source if you use other open source code in your product. This is about the idea that if you benefit from there being large amounts of open source code on the web then you should be forced into giving som
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I don't think we're disagreeing very much with each other, so I'll keep it short. You said:
"why should someone else be able to sell it at a profit and not pass any of that profit on to you?"
To which I reply - why should they not?
(personal profit aside, we all want more money :))
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This question is irrelevant until "why should someone else be able to sell it at a profit and not pass any of that profit on to you?" is answered.
Why? Because if I hold the copyright to a piece of code you want to use contrary to my license, I'm the one who has what you want and makes the rules. It's entirely up to you to produce a convincing reason why I should let you do what you want. I don't really need to provide any explanations. I don't even need to acknowledge
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I certainly don't mean to imply that it's not your right to decide. I'm merely questioning the point in making the decision not to allow it. What do you gain by not allowing it, and what do you lose by allowing it? My answer to both questions is "absolutely nothing" - so what's the point?
I don't want you to change your position, it's your business deciding which philosophy you want to follow. I only want to explain my point of view, I hope you understand it better now.
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Potential code contributions, or money.
Potential code contributions, or money.
It's not nothing. Example situation: Company/Programmer wants to improve on my code.
GPL: Programmer
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True, however for a game, this can be quite limiting as it restricts consoles from being able to play. Good or bad, consoles do move a lot of games and it's a pretty good way to get your games in stores rather than an obscure website that no one knows about (even if it's Free and free).
Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft developer agreements state that no open-source code is allowed, period. This causes
There are other options (Score:2)
Rather than relicensing to proprietary or BSD, an exception can be made to the GPL allowing the game to be compiled with a closed SDK, lots of GPL'd code have exceptions for such cases.
No, problem is on SDK side (Score:1)
No, you didn't understand. The problem isn't on the GPL side, here. It's on the console SDK side (which is why the poster to whom you replied explained that even BSD licensed code is a no-no).
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I'm quite aware of that, and still choose to use the GPL anyway. Also as I said, the number of end users the application gets isn't something that interests me a whole lot.
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By the same token, if I pirate a game for personal use, nobody is "profiting" from my violation of the creators' copyright and license.
How you look at it may depend on whether you contribute to open source projects. It's easy to be unconcerned if its someone else who's having their work misappropriated.
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If the console version becomes widely popular, lots of people will look for the PC version
Why do you assume this?
and find the open-source project, and hopefully learn something about open-source.
Doubtful. The vast, vast, vast majority of people won't know or care that the programs they use are open source. They will know it's a "freeware" program and that's the limit of their knowledge.
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If the console version becomes widely popular, lots of people will look for the PC version
Why do you assume this?
If a lot a people want to play this game (since they know people playing the console versions, or they hear about it on game sites on the web), then it's certain that not all of them will own consoles (or the "right" consoles). In addition, most people don't carry full-blown consoles around with them when they travel, but they often do carry laptops, and I'm sure at least some of those people who like the game on a console might look for a version they could play "on the road".
Re:CLEAN ROOM re-implemented? (Score:4, Informative)
The GPL says that you're free to study the source code for any purpose.
Re:CLEAN ROOM re-implemented? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, what does the GPL actually say, and how does that effect the issue of creating a derivative work?
Re:CLEAN ROOM re-implemented? (Score:5, Informative)
From paragraph 0 of the GPL v2, thanks for the link, btw.
"This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License."
"Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope."
So the GPL doesn't limit your rights for things outside of copying, distro and mods.
Section 4 then steps in-
"You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License.
GPL code doesn't have additional restrictions on it. Once you accept GPL as the basis for your work, you don't get to distribute the modified work with extra terms. So GPL code doesn't have restrictions on things other than copy, distro, and mods. And since it expressly doesn't restrict you in areas other than those 3, you're free to examine and study it to your heart's content.
So there ya go- have fun studying, examining reduplicating the functionality, style and format of the code in question. Just don't copy the code verbatim, or in such as a fashion as to be considered a direct copy.
A reasonable person could see the GPL as encouraging the re-use of ideas, whether by modifying the original code and redistributing it, or by re-implementing those ideas in new code.
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That it's not an EULA and so I don't even have to accept any terms at all to read the source code, unless there's an exclusive right in copyright law. The only question is whether the work is derivative or not, and if it isn't the GPL can't apply. If it is derivative, the GPL and all its terms does apply but again it's got nothing to do with the GPL per se, just the scope of copyright law. Since they seem to have secured the rights to the name and most of the overall look and feel, that sounds like and uphi
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The FSF does define the freedoms that their licenses are intended to protect here [gnu.org]. The first freedom is to run the program, and the 2nd is to STUDY it. So if the argument ever turns from specific wording to "intent" of the license, I think this is clearly documented.
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A clever tactic. Find the documents but don't read them, just search for a single word and when it's not found declare victory.
It's not like you have to wade through piles of links and judge whether the sources are biased. There's one GPL2 license, and there's one GPL3 license, and if you wanted to make sure you had the right one you could go download the source and snag the license directly.
Did you simply not understand it? Or did you read the preamble and decide you'd let someone else read it to you?
Fo
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I'm willing to bet they'll violate the GPL to some extent, and I'm willing to bet they won't get caught, at least the way things currently stand. Why? PS3 DRM. Theft of artwork is easy enough to prove on a closed console title, but good luck getting a decrypted binary and statically analyzing it to prove portions were taken from the GPLed code, when the platform hasn't been broken yet (no, geohot's partial hack doesn't qualify as a break).
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Unlikely.
First, this project already has garnered an "this game used
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Not if it's encrypted.
No, they're usually encrypted. DRM is security through obscurity, and a big part of the obscurity is not letting potential attackers see any of the code (lest they find vulnerabilities). Case in point: The Wii's security lasted until someone managed to get a RAM dump with decrypted code and keys. At that point you
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Because otherwise, you know, derivative work, and a thousand years bad juju
You don't need a clean room implementation to avoid a derivative work. You merely need to avoid copying protected elements from the first work.
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I don't know anything about this game or the company. Nor do I particularly care. But, outside of some "bad juju" from the slashdot and like minded communities, what is the downside to them? Has there every been anything approaching an actual lawsuit of a company for a GPL violation? Even if a major, major player like EA Sports or whatever came out and used GPLd code to save half the development time on their leatest sports title, what could possibly be done about it other that generalized bitching and whining from the "community" and a (likely small) boycott? GPL is a dog without teeth, and for a small unknown game publisher, it's a dog worth ignoring, I suspect.
The FSF could sue them.
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Only if the FSF owned some of the copyrights.
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While it's true that in general the bigger you are the easier it is to trample on the legal rights of those smaller than you, there have been a few GPL cases where the GPL was indeed upheld.
At least one case in Germany IIRC, and likewise a couple more in the United States.
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Just from my recent memory:
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2009/dec/14/busybox-gpl-lawsuit/ [softwarefreedom.org]
And there was a case won in Germany a few years ago IIRC, though the details escape me.
Sad (Score:1, Insightful)
Money that could have been used to do proper marketing, QA, etc for the game is now wasted on reimplementing it from scratch.
Sad panda :(
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What's sad about it? If platform licensing models like Xbox, PS/3, and iPhone were to catch on, you could kiss open source development good-bye. And there is a big risk that the consumer market will drive us into that direction. We need to fight that any way we can.
And if the GPL makes it more costly to do marketing and QA of software for those platforms, I think that's great. That is exactly what the GPL is intended to accomplish.
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I've got some bad news for you, they have caught on and are more popular then open source models.
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I've got some bad news for you, they have caught on
We can still get fully programmable standard PCs without gatekeepers. One of the reasons for that is because a lot of software can't run on those other platforms. And the GPL helps keep that so.
and are more popular then open source models.
If you believe that, you're a bit out of touch with reality.
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You've got to be kidding me. Console games almost completely crush PC games in market share these days, with the only thing keeping PC games afloat being The Sims and WoW. And that's before you include the iPhone as a "console".
See: http://www.theesa.com/newsroom/release_detail.asp?releaseID=44 [theesa.com]
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I believe he was referring to software, not just game software.
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There are actually quite a few popular PC games besides the Sims and WoW. Most of them are sold via digital distribution however.
I predict Starcraft II will see a large resurgence in PC gaming, mainly because the game is awesome (In Beta!)
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Look at the numbers for 2008. 700 million vs. 22 billion. We're talking orders of magnitude. Even if you say that that ignores online casual gaming and digital downloads, and free games, there's simply no way the numbers could possibly catch up. And there's no metric by which you can convert these numbers from "income earned" to "number of users" that does not still have consoles completely crushing PC games (and the majority of those methods are not easily quantifiable the way revenue is).
And let's not ign
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I don't know to be honest, but 95% of the PC games I've purchased in the past 3 years have been via steam or some other digital distribution source.
get your quotes straight! (Score:2)
And let's not ignore the fact that the original quote was "open source models"
The "original quote" talked about software in general, not just games.
And you can be certain that open source software has made a big contribution to keeping desktop machines general purpose and programmable.
(If your interpretation of a statement contradicts the facts, you should realize that often the problem is with your interpretation, not with the original statement.)
Digital Downloads and things (Score:3, Insightful)
The PC market is much bigger. The problem here is that is moving to digital, where is invisible to the usual metric systems. Also is "multishape", games like FarmVille get 80 millions. How much million play most console games? on the PC, you have to count webgames, flashgames, casual games, indie games, open source games... not everything shows on a phisic shop, since most are online transactions.
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There must be something wrong the those sales stats. I simply don't belive the 29.1 million units number of pc games. I mean the sims alone should have beaten that with >100 millions sales worldwide.
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The "100 million sales" Sims data is over the course of like 9 years.
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Console games almost completely crush PC games in market share these days,
You're absolutely right that for games, consoles with their restrictive licensing models are widely used. My point is that that isn't the case for desktop computing yet and we need to keep it that way. The GPL is one way of doing that.
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How hard will it be for them to stop it running of they havent signed the digital cert?
Technically? Easy. Legally and from a business point of view? Nearly impossible. They'd lose a huge amount of software for their platform, among other things because such software licensing is incompatible with the GPL.
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They could have just kept the codebase open... If the console companies didn't demand closed source. I think the blame lies with them, not the people who expect the GPL to be followed.
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Agreed. At least with Xonotic most people have a chance of being able to pronounce it correctly.
"Nexeeus" my arse.
the problem are Xbox and Sony (Score:1, Interesting)
The only reason the GPL version of Nexuiz can't be used on Xbox and Sony is because those platforms have draconian licensing requirements.
The fact that the GPL makes it impossible to deliver the code on those platforms means it is working as intended. As an open source developer, I have no interest in supporting those platforms; if those kinds of platforms catch on, all software development is in deep trouble.
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if those kinds of platforms catch on, all software development is in deep trouble.
Yeah, I heard that video game thing might not be a flash in the pan after all...
Just kidding. Point well taken. :)
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I've got some bad news for you...
General purpose, programmable machines without gatekeepers are still the primary way people compute at home and at work. We need to keep it that way.
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How the hell did this get marked troll? This is true and anybody who actually *likes* computers has a vested interest in keeping it this way.
"To The Community for the Benefit of Everyone" (Score:2)
I've no doubt that will work out just fine. It always does.
Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's just going to be another uninspired, derivative, run-of-the-mill arena shooter you played to death 10 years ago.
Maybe Linus sould get critiziced for "making anoth (Score:2)
I mostly agre... Is true, this type of gameplay was popular 10 years ago.
Nowdays? no soo much.. and on the console is almost nowhere to be seen.
People is free to make whatever want, and this type of comunities want Quake3-like games, so thats what you get. If you don't like that, get a compiler and make a fork.
Dual License? (Score:1)
RTFA (Score:1)
Essentially, they tried that and it didn't work. Hale doesn't have copyright on all the code in current GPL Nexuiz, and wasn't able to obtain it from all contributors. IANAL, but as I understand it the rule of thumb is that you can't re-license something if you aren't the copyright holder.
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In version 3, sort of, but it's to do with people contributing code based on patents owned by them. Basically, if I own a software patent and contribute some code falling under the patent to a GPLed program, I grant the licensees of that program "a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free patent license under the contributor's essential patent claims, to make, use, sell, offer for sale, import and otherwise run, modify and propagate the contents of its contributor version".
The only mention of relicensing is
Why keep the name? (Score:1)
If it already has replacement art and audio, and now it appears will have replacement code as well, at what point does it stop being the same game? Nexuiz may be popular by FOSS game standards, but realistically I don't think it's popular enough that the branding will give the console releases any significant head start. If anything, now that their original dual-licensing plans have been foiled (regardless of whether that is for better or worse), IMHO they would be better off distancing themselves from th
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"Slow-paced bullet-oriented shooters" (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting comment LordHavoc makes about the state of console gaming.
Honestly, attempting to bring a fast-paced shooter like Nexuiz to a console is going to fail and fail miserably - there is a reason "slow-paced" shooters are more popular on consoles - fast-paced shooters require a fast and precise control mechanism (mouse + keyboard), console control mechanisms are neither of these. (Which is why I don't play console-based shooters.)
Not really (Score:3, Informative)
In my opinion there is no way to consider that this deal was morally right, there was people who were contributing code on a daily basis for *years*, the least you will expect is to get some sort of notification if someone is about to make money out of your hard work [alientrap.org]. In other words what they done is just stealing.
And of course they must rewrite the whole Nexuiz codebase now, that's the only way for them to prevent getting sued. Not to mention that after the deal was made public there was no dialog *at all* between Lee Vermeulen (the owner of Nexuiz) and the developers, there was no attempt at all to fix what they done (again, stealing), mostly because you actually need to talk in order to fix things.
That was the very reason because the Xonotic [xonotic.org] project was born, we as developers just can't trust Alientrap (which is only Lee Vermeulen) anymore.
It's sad that LH now makes it look like thanks to the unreasonable (ex)developers of Nexuiz now there will be no improvements flowing back to GPL Nexuiz. I don't know you but I'm getting used to his bursts of insulting statements.
"all" they share is the name... (Score:1)
Isn't this one of the main bones of contention though? The www.nexuiz.com URL no longer takes you to the GPL project it used to, it displays a page about Illfonic's new console game and there's a tiny link in the corner of the page that takes you to the original project page!
Couldn't they have used a different name for what is, essentially, a different game?
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Isn't this one of the main bones of contention though? The www.nexuiz.com URL no longer takes you to the GPL project it used to, it displays a page about Illfonic's new console game and there's a tiny link in the corner of the page that takes you to the original project page!
Couldn't they have used a different name for what is, essentially, a different game?
Sure, but why? The nexuiz name has brand recognition and so they can use that to help make the console game standout amongst other, similar games.
Which brings up an interesting point on the GPL - while the code is free the name may not be; resulting in an a FOSS project creating a valuable brand that then can be taken private. A rather novel way to get startup funding; I wonder when someone will want to extend the GPL to include the project name and any associated marks?
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This style of game doesn't sell well on the consoles at all. Unreal Tournament has real brand recognition, and it was an utter failure on the consoles. People have moved on from run-and-gun deathmatch.
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It has brand recognition within the open source community. It isn't going to have heavy brand recognition within the general console community.
As far a how much brand recognition means vs. codebase - look at Ethereal/Wireshark. The trademark for Ethereal didn't follow the lead developer, so the "main" branch became Wireshark. I'm not sure what, if anything, the owner of the Ethereal trademark wanted it for, but they either haven't bothered to actually do anything with it, or utterly failed, because Ether
Shocking!!! Shocking!!! (Score:2)
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
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I am deeply disturbed that you got two laughs/year out of timedoctor.org
So to be clear: (Score:2)
Nexuiz as it exists (GPL cross platform FPS, v 2.5.2) will continue to be developed by the community.
The 'new' Nexuiz is a closed source, re-implemented version of GNexuiz that only shares the name and the 'style' of the original.
Correct?
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Nexuiz as it exists (GPL cross platform FPS, v 2.5.2) will continue to be developed by the community.
The 'new' Nexuiz is a closed source, re-implemented version of GNexuiz that only shares the name and the 'style' of the original.
Correct?
For the most part. Most of the Nexuiz developers have left, forked the code and started Xonotic, as the previous Slashdot article (linked in the summary) says. With the core developers gone it is likely that GPL Nexuiz will fade away.
Love the Anti-GPL rhetoric (Score:2)
I wanted to contribute back but the license requires me to! Would you please allow me to not give anything back so I can start to generously contribute back?
*sigh*...happens every time someone complains about the GPL...
Read Bullshit (Score:2)
If they are cloning the game from scratch fine. Wish they could come up with their own ideas and game designs.
But I read bullshit in this. There's no need to share the name if the product is completely different. What's the point? NO matter how you look at it there is no real major points. Change the name already and move on with their new venture.
Re:GPL freaks (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair those freaks were the contributors who wrote the code under the expectation that the codebase will remain free throughout all revisions. When I intend for my work to be used in ANY project, including closed source ones I mark it PD, not GPL.
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'the codebase'? I don't know why you would have that expectation.
You can have that expectation with regard to your own contributed code if you contributed that under the GPL license.
But if - and I'm not saying that's what THIS company did, but none of the sources seem to be particularly unbiased in this - a company decides that they want to make a version of the product under a different license which is incompatible with the
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That's the thing - the original troll poster is calling that 20% "GPL freaks ruining everything".
Let's face it - this is about the only way it could have worked out. It's not like Mesa where the contributors agreed to a relicensing because it was from GPL to another open-source license - it was an attempt to take a GPL work closed, and if I were one of those contributors, I would have been in that 20%.
It is too bad that the licensing for console SDKs prevents them from ever being used for a console port of
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Let's face it - this is about the only way it could have worked out. It's not like Mesa where the contributors agreed to a relicensing because it was from GPL to another open-source license - it was an attempt to take a GPL work closed, and if I were one of those contributors, I would have been in that 20%.
It appears that Hale was intending to contribute some of the changes/improvements from the console version back to the community in the event of a successful relicensing. However since the relicense attempt didn't work out it looks like any improvements that result from the necessary rewrite of code that can't be carried forward will not be contributed back to the GPL version.
While the original contributors who were unwilling to relicense their GPL contributions were well within their rights, making a stink about violations merely as a result of being asked about relicensing does sort of come across as skulking about whilst croaking "My precioussss!!! Filthy, tricksy Hale-Bagginses tried to steal my precious."
So Hale *says* they are going to contribute back *some* of their changes to the community in an effort to get the developers to play ball and give away the rights to their code. Does this really sound like a good deal to you? That's the whole point of the GPL, you get to use the GPL'ed work in exchange for not locking your contributions to it down when you distribute them. Why would someone give up the legal protections on their work in exchange for a vague promise that an unspecified amount of changes w
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If 20 % of the code could not be relicensed, then that 20 percent has to be re-written from scratch in a clean-room style.
Anything else, and the contributors of that 20% should cry foul.
Remember, if there's one line of proprietary code in the linux kernel, Microsoft can cry foul. Why not expect the same for people in the closed source world?
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Remember, if there's one line of proprietary code in the linux kernel, Microsoft can cry foul.
The Linux kernel does contain proprietary code in it in the form of firmware blobs. And Microsoft couldn't say shit unless it could be proven to be their own code and they didn't allow redistribution and use of said code.
Absolutely - but they shouldn't cry foul if... (Score:2)
Absolutely - but they shouldn't cry foul if indeed the code from those 20% -was- re-implemented in a proper manner.
Basically, if I contribute to a GPL project and then later on somebody manages to convince the other developers to allow them to re-license the code, then I shouldn't throw a hissy fit going "If I knew you guys were going to allow it to be re-licensed, away from the GPL philosophy, I would NEVER have contributed my code!"
I could, and some developers *might*.. but, again, there's no real -expect
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they choose gpl, they gather the contribution under the premises of making it better fir everyone in the community, then try to change the licence and keep the proceedings for themselves going after xbla and ps3n - it was obvious that contributors who originally put their effort in the "community" are now pissed at them bagging their work up and chang
Re:GPL freaks (Score:5, Informative)
using the term "Free Software" is implying that someone sides with the FSF and GPL over other open source licenses.
No, the term "free software" implies the four freedoms [gnu.org], nothing more, nothing less. There's lots of pubic domain and BSD-ware which is called free software (eg. Chromium, Postgres, BSD itself). If you're trying to draw a line between free software and open source, the line has already been drawn [gnu.org].
Re: (Score:2)
Pardon me, but I just have to laugh at this gem that manages to claim that "free software" is so much clearer than "open source software"
However, the obvious meaning for the expression open source softwareand the one most people seem to think it meansis You can look at the source code.
The term free software has two natural meanings, one of which is the intended meaning, so a person who has grasped the idea of free speech, not free beer will not get it wrong again.
I just have to ask, why? Free speech is a permission to express yourself, like how the is the GPL different? Can't you express yourself under any open source license? And most speech isn't very copyleft-free, under the Berne convention everything copyrightable is copyrighted unless specifically released. About the only good thing it does is say that it doesn't mean free as
Re: (Score:1)
I prefer Warsow as well, bit I see it as potentially having a similar problem to Nexuiz. The ownership of the game name is under the control of one person, and while the code for the game is open source, the media is under a more restrictive license. (The reason for this license is that some media contributors were unwilling to have their work under a share-alike license, so the dev team was forced to adopt the current license to appease them.)
This means that should the owner decide to sell off the game l