Doom Legacy Wiki License

Anybody know what the official license is on the Legacy Wiki? According to Doom Wiki, it is "not GFDL". Who's in charge of this sucker?

I need to know because I either want the license changed explicitly to something that allows use of the article text under GFDL, or I want the FraggleScript documentation that I wrote for Eternity and therefore own (which comprises at least 90% of the FraggleScript documentation currently up on the Legacy wiki) taken down. I have never given permission for any of my writing to be used under a non-libre license and I'm not going to start now.

Sorry to be an ass, but it's a matter of principle to me.

SLydE is providing the hosting so the ultimate responsibilty should be his. He mightn't know what the wiki's licenced under but shoud be able to take that content off-line until the question's been answered.

It looks like there's no license at all, actually, making it what, public domain?

Also, it does incorporate some elements from the Doom wikia (it's old enough to refer to it as the Doom wikicity) so it should be made GFDL as well just to be compliant -- it would be simpler than deleting everything, and I don't think anyone would object.

Gez said:

It looks like there's no license at all, actually, making it what, public domain?

This is a common misconception about copyright. If rights are not specifically granted, then it means they are withheld.

Grazza said:

This is a common misconception about copyright. If rights are not specifically granted, then it means they are withheld.

You mean you infringed my copyright by quoting my post? Oh shit, I infringed yours as well now. Let's agree not to sue each others, okay? :p

Quoting is okay if it's fair use, but quoting the preceding post is just spammy, except to highlight a particular part :p

That reminds me that Doomworld has a clause (Submissions) where it reserves the right to make use of anything posted here. The author should still have rights to it (which is the unconditioned standard), but so does "Doomworld". This would also mean that the site staff can reuse a user's material in various ways, representing the site.

EDIT: I posted about this concern on the wiki Copyrights talk page over there.

The wiki is mostly maintained by some complete tit called DooMAD who knows nothing about licenses and such. It's probably entirely his fault.


...

Oh shit.



In all seriousness, though, we obviously didn't intend to withold any rights or steal claim to anyone's content. Sorry Quas.

So how do we stick a license thingy on it? I'll bug SLydE about it when I see him next.

Yeah, I imagined it wasn't in bad faith.

All you need to do is note what license it's under on your copyrights page. If you select the GFDL you can provide a link to the license page at the Wikipedia (linked to in the talk page linked to above). In that case you could use the Doom wiki Copyrights page as a base, with any corresponding changes due to any differences (such as not being on Wikia).

Later you can go about checking whether some content may be incompatible (usually stuff used without permission), and fair use notices may apply for some non-free stuff, of course.

Right, I've quickly slapped a copyright page up. Let me know if there's anything wrong with it since I honestly haven't a clue.

Also, do we have to have one of those little GFDL logos in the bottom corner?

Various sites don't have that banner (haven't seen it on the Wikipedia). It's optional. You might prefer to link to the page at the Wikipedia instead of the one on Wikia, because the one on Wikia contains a link to Wikia copyrights on the top, which wouldn't apply to the Legacy wiki, while the one on Wikipedia doesn't. Or better yet, to the one at the GNU site:

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html

DooMAD said:

The wiki is mostly maintained by some complete tit called DooMAD who knows nothing about licenses and such. It's probably entirely his fault.


...

Oh shit.



In all seriousness, though, we obviously didn't intend to withold any rights or steal claim to anyone's content. Sorry Quas.

So how do we stick a license thingy on it? I'll bug SLydE about it when I see him next.

Thanks. I may have come off as more pissed off than I really was. I just wanted some kind of provision made so that sharing between the Doom and Doom Legacy wikis could be reciprocal. I noticed Doom Wiki content had been copied to the DL wiki, but the Doom Wiki itself had a notice that stated you could not import material from there. I didn't feel this was right, especially when I saw that my old FS docs are still in use (which I am completely cool with as long as the license is appropriate :)

DooMAD said:

Right, I've quickly slapped a copyright page up. Let me know if there's anything wrong with it since I honestly haven't a clue.

Also, do we have to have one of those little GFDL logos in the bottom corner?

You don't *have* to have one, but you can put one on the page if you want.

Good to see that this was resolved quickly and without any problems :-)

Quasar said:

Thanks. I may have come off as more pissed off than I really was. I just wanted some kind of provision made so that sharing between the Doom and Doom Legacy wikis could be reciprocal. I noticed Doom Wiki content had been copied to the DL wiki, but the Doom Wiki itself had a notice that stated you could not import material from there. I didn't feel this was right, especially when I saw that my old FS docs are still in use (which I am completely cool with as long as the license is appropriate :)

Perhaps you haven't quite got over the Heretic/Hexen source thing being resolved and are looking for a new fight or something :-)

The real challenge now is whether you can get the Strife source code released and GPLed.

Pretty sure the issue with Strife has been that the source code was lost, probably in the flames of Rogue's going-out-of-business process. A discussion between Kaiser and the principal programmer of Strife seemed to indicate that the issue wasn't unwillingness to release, but a complete inability due to the code being lost.

The best we can hope to do is emulate Strife AFAIK. All of the frame and mobjinfo data is easily available, and the codepointers have been reimplemented by three largely independent teams (although the ZDoom source, being indirectly derived from reverse engineering products, might technically have some really weak licensing issues for use with GPL ports...) Between these three and the ability to do empirical testing, there should be very little problem in getting Strife support done to within 99.9% accuracy. The goal of demo sync might not be possible, but is probably also largely pointless since there's not exactly a gigantic body of Strife demos out there to watch.

Quasar said:
A discussion between Kaiser and the principal programmer of Strife seemed to indicate that the issue wasn't unwillingness to release, but a complete inability due to the code being lost.

Seems so.

Well, there could be a small chance someone has a backup with Strife source code somewhere, and either doesn't want to release it, or is completely unaware of it.

Not to mention it'd probably be difficult for said hypothetical person to release it legally.

I've sent an email to (what I presume to be the email address for) Peter Mack, who was the other programmer on Strife alongside James Monroe. If anyone has the source it will be him.

It would be great to see the Wolf3d source code re-released as GPL.

Ajapted said:

It would be great to see the Wolf3d source code re-released as GPL.

Email Carmack. He was quick to say yes when I asked about the setup.exe source.

Yeah, I bet he wouldn't mind doing it. And he may not have done so already simply because no one seriously asked or gave him a sound reason, such as that it would then be compatible with his other GPL releases, license-wise.