Source code license question

So, I've been quietly working on CocoJag in the background, which is a modified version of Chocolate Doom trying to emulate the Jaguar version's behavior as closely as possible.

I don't really know that much about licensing, but I'm unsure of its compatibility with GPL. It states "Under no circumstances shall you commercially exploit the Software.". While I have no intention of commercially exploiting anything at all, it seems to be in conflict with GPL's stance that you have the right to exploit it commercially. In another section, it states "you may use portions of the Source Code, such as particular routines, to develop your own software, but may not duplicate the Source Code". I've only been copying definitions and other parts of the code where they differ from the PC version's code, and even then, I'm trying to retain as much of the original PC code as possible while keeping the same behavior as Jaguar Doom so that it can function as intended while trying to tread on this license as little as possible.

I've also been editing the existing PC code (parts with slightly different structure than the Jaguar version's, such as the status bar code) to have the same behavior (such as alignments and such) without directly copying any code from the Jaguar source itself. Should I continue this approach with the rest of the code and avoid using the Jaguar license, or are the Jaguar license and GPL actually compatible so that I would not need to do this?

Sodaholic said:

I don't really know that much about licensing, but I'm unsure of its compatibility with GPL.

Compatibility of what with the GPL?

Of that: http://www.atariage.com/Jaguar/archives/DoomSource/

That's just the original Doom source license; it is not compatible with the GPL (neither is it free software nor open source). I would guess that nobody is really going to care if you treat it as GPLv2-or-later as the PC Doom source code was relicensed later on as, but I would take the safe side and try to email someone at id and see if you can get the license officially changed to GPL.

chungy said:

That's just the original Doom source license; it is not compatible with the GPL (neither is it free software nor open source). I would guess that nobody is really going to care if you treat it as GPLv2-or-later as the PC Doom source code was relicensed later on as, but I would take the safe side and try to email someone at id and see if you can get the license officially changed to GPL.

What you'll more likely get is Carmack's patented "I don't think anybody will care what you do with it."

chungy said:

try to email someone at id and see if you can get the license officially changed to GPL.

That's what I was considering, but I'm worried that they wouldn't respond or even read my email.

Quasar said:

What you'll more likely get is Carmack's patented "I don't think anybody will care what you do with it."

Chances are Zenimax isn't going to give a crap, but I still want to make sure that it's "defacto" legal, as I don't want it to be rejected from any hosts, nor do I want the community to take issue with it.

Sodaholic said:

That's what I was considering, but I'm worried that they wouldn't respond or even read my email.

johnc@idsoftware.com usually responds.

Sodaholic said:

Chances are Zenimax isn't going to give a crap, but I still want to make sure that it's "defacto" legal, as I don't want it to be rejected from any hosts, nor do I want the community to take issue with it.

I doubt most of the community will take issue with it as long as it's the DSL->GPL direction you're trying to go.