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Quasar

Final Attempt to Get Heretic/Hexen GPL'd

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Normally, I don't support online petitions, but this one's well-written and it isn't making outragous demands.

So here's hoping that this works.

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They say money talks, perhaps we could buy the Heretic and Hexen source code from Raven/Activision, re-licensed under the GPL of course.

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Haha, no I don't think that would be possible. I wouldn't mind owning the whole series myself; I'd go make Hecatomb like Romero wanted to do it ;)

But silly fantasies aside, I wonder if a reassurance that no one in this community intends to commercially exploit the sources in any way would help at all. No Doom port has yet been successfully sold, and by extension, I don't think anybody's going to soon make money off of Heretic or Hexen's source code. This is especially considering the fact that the code on its own is of no use -- you need the registered game data to do anything at all with it, and that's not gonna be GPL.

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Quasar said:

I wonder if a reassurance that no one in this community intends to commercially exploit the sources in any way would help at all.

Not really, we'll never really know what anyone in this community intends, so we can't give such an assurance. Besides I doubt they would believe it.

BTW, is it either Raven or Activision (or both) which needs to be persuaded to re-release the code? Which party really owns it?

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Ajapted said:

BTW, is it either Raven or Activision (or both) which needs to be persuaded to re-release the code? Which party really owns it?


That's what I'm unclear on, but the relevant people in Raven at least believe Activision have say. Hence my two-point plan at the beginning of the thread, which Quasar has helpfully kick-started.

Pre-empting any legal questions would still be useful. E.g., what bad things might Activision/Raven be wary of, and why are they not an issue?

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Quasar said:
But silly fantasies aside, I wonder if a reassurance that no one in this community intends to commercially exploit the sources in any way would help at all.

That sounds meaningless because the law would still allow it and a community only really speaks through licenses and such (after that anyone can do what they choose in it). Might as well leave it under the Raven license if that is what is intended. Raven and Activision would still hold full rights over the resources, and the GPL would simply give more freedom for independents to port the game to more systems; and if you can run Heretic and Hexen in more places Raven gets promoted/advertised by enhancing the usability of their two games. And they should be aware that Heretic and Hexen are very likely to be mentioned and to a good degree desired wherever DOOM is possible now with all its ports. More "serious" ports could still be made on a more strictly commercial basis by directly licensing the engine from Raven and Activision, for a closed release of their modification. Wasn't GBA DOOM done that way? I don't see how the GPL got in the way of that commercial enterprise and others, such as the DOOM RPG that uses resources from the classic DOOM games and was started by Carmack but completed by a 3rd party company.

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There simply are none. Any threats to their property that they perceive are either entirely imagined or stem from simple philosophical disagreement with the GPL (ie, that somebody should have the right to be able to sell what they create, even if it's completely impractical that it will ever happen).

If you look at the disparities between the Activision EULA and the GPL, I'd say they're concerned about the following issues:

1. Selling the code for profit.
2. Distributing the code independently.
3. Loss of control of trademarks or franchise-related copyrights.
4. Distribution of the registered game data.

And here are my rebuttal arguments for each of them:

1. Nobody's going to sell the code. 99.9999% of GPLed programs are not sold, but are offered in exchange for voluntary donations. DOOM is not being sold by any DOOM port author. This is primarily because if your source code is open, it's pretty hard to make somebody pay for it when they can get it for free. Also a reinforcement in this case is that it would be illegal to package a source port along with the registered game data, and thus it is nearly impossible, short of creating an entirely new game, to sell it as a working product. Seeing how this would already be possible with the DOOM engine, there's no need or desire to use Raven's sources in this manner.

2. What is the use of releasing the code if you don't want it distributed. This part of the license doesn't even make sense.

3. Trademarks and other copyrights are not included under the GPL, so this issue is irrelevant. Those properties are not a part of the source code and are not addressed in any way by the language of the GPL license; thus they remain, as always, all rights reserved.

4. Also not covered by the GPL. The registered game data is an independent entity not included in the source archives. No one has any right to believe that the GPL would extend to the registered game data. If you want to play Heretic and Hexen, you gotta get it from Raven like always.

Other than those four issues, the Activision EULA and the GPL would provide the same protections.

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I'm neither a programmer, nor a lawyer, but I have been watching the software industry for around 20 years now.

If getting the source released under the GPL depends on Activision giving their blessing, you might as well not waste your time.

I don't know exactly what level of control Activision has over the original source code, but my guess is that since they published Heretic II and Hexen II, they now "own" the franchise and everything associated with it. Large software companies like Activision NEVER give away ANYTHING that they own the rights to.

It doesn't matter that people won't make money from it. It doesn't matter that they won't lose any money on it. It doesn't matter that those programs are no longer of any value to them. It doesn't matter that releasing the source under the GPL would garner them good PR and help boost interest in the franchise. What matters is that they probably own the rights to it, and trying to get them to give that away is going to be harder than trying to get blood out of a stone.

Forget releasing stuff under the GPL, what prior product has Activision ever even allowed people to download for free? I'm not talking about making it public domain, or releasing the full source, I'm talking about just making a game available for a free download, while retaining full copyrights to it. You can download the first two Grand Theft Auto games for free from RockStar Games's site. How many old Activision games can you legally download for free? NONE. Is there anyone that thinks Activision would lose money if they allowed people to download the original MechWarrior for free?

Unlike smaller software companies and developers, Activision has become a huge, faceless corporation and corporations never give away the rights to anything they own. You can try whatever arguments you want, but the most you'll get (if you get any response at all) is a reply stating "For legal reasons, we can not do this at this time", which is corporate-speak for "Your request was forwarded directly to our legal department, who instantly rejected the idea of relinquishing the rights to something we own. As such, your request was not even considered by anyone in authority and even if it had been, they would have followed the lawyers' advice and refused your request anyway."

All Activision cares about is money. That's the bottom line. They won't even consider something unless it makes money for them. Releasing the source under GPL has no value for them. Offer to buy the rights to the source and they'll be happy to talk to you. Of course they'd want a ridiculous amount for it, far more than the actual code is worth, simply because that's the way things are done in the corporate world.

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Rekrul said:

I don't know exactly what level of control Activision has over the original source code, but my guess is that since they published Heretic II and Hexen II, they now "own" the franchise and everything associated with it. Large software companies like Activision NEVER give away ANYTHING that they own the rights to.

Hexen II source code was released under the GPL (according to the Wikipedia entry). Hexen II was developed by Raven and published by Activision.

Maybe the best tactic is simply "if you can do it for Hexen II, why not do it for Hexen I".

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Rekrul said:
Forget releasing stuff under the GPL, what prior product has Activision ever even allowed people to download for free?

At least the Heretic and Hexen sources themselves, as long as you mean "free" in the "you don't pay" sense.

All Activision cares about is money. That's the bottom line. They won't even consider something unless it makes money for them. Releasing the source under GPL has no value for them.

Again, then why did they release the sources in the first place? If they cared to release the source, and that is done for the image of the company and its promotion, they may well consider how to optimize that action further, as the current form of the release does little to encourage giving the game a solid "community backing". It basically depends on the guys (or ladies) sitting at Activision making the decisions, plus any possible convincing suggestions they might hear.

They care about money? Yes. Always directly and on a short term exclusively? Not necessarily, especially if it doesn't cost them any money.

They might not relicense ever, but not even trying due to speculation on our part would certainly be a waste of a possibility, especially if it does not cost us any money either, and not much time.

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The GPL isn't about relinquishing rights. It's about giving other people a share in them. Anyways, it was NOT a good post and I don't think we need a bunch of naysaying. It may be true that Activision won't budge, but it's also true that if they won't, it's really *dumb*.

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Activision actually is a pretty good company. I've talked with Ken Love of Activision back when the ATARI community was helping with Activision Anthology. They aren't the big bad wolf like they appear to be. I'm sure If you can get in contact with Activision they would be more than happy to help out. I will see if I can get in contact with him. Wish me luck. :(

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Yeah, if Activision were so terrible, we wouldn't even have the source release that we do have, and if we wanted to support Heretic and Hexen in DOOM ports, it would need to be done completely through reverse engineering and emulation, as has been done with relative success for Strife.

I wouldn't have wanted to try to write a polyobjects implementation without at least having seen Raven's first, though. Sheesh x_x

I think we should probably stress in our current efforts that we are grateful for what we do have. It's just not in a very convenient package :/

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Quasar:
I wouldn't have wanted to try to write a polyobjects implementation without at least having seen Raven's first, though. Sheesh x_x

In that case you might be interested to have a look at Doomsday's implementation of polyobjects which is in fact entirely new GPL'd code written by skyjake. Well, the engine side code is new at least.

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You could always reinvent heretic/hexen without looking at the source code, like how randy put strife support in zdoom

Would be quite alot of work I'd imagine

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RTC_Marine said:

You could always reinvent heretic/hexen without looking at the source code, like how randy put strife support in zdoom.

*I* could do that, e.g. add heretic support to EDGE and keep tweaking it until it converges to a good approximation of the original game (and *never* looking at the real source code). Many people would say that my heretic support sucks, not close enough to the original, but I could live with that.

None the current heretic/hexen ports can do this. There's no way to prove that anything they replace is not derived from the original code. And those developers are "tainted" by the original code, seeing they have worked with it over a long period of time.

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leileilol said:

Hopefully i'll revive the dead FreeHeretic project once this actually happens; I still have the files!


If we had GPLed source to work from, the freedoom project would be very happy to embrace the freeheretic project as a sister and share the same sf.net resources / build system, if you were interested too.

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Ajapted said:
There's no way to prove that anything they replace is not derived from the original code. And those developers are "tainted" by the original code, seeing they have worked with it over a long period of time.

I haven't looked at the "reimplementing" code (nor likely have the skill to do so properly), but if it is really "rewritten" it is as safe as Freedoom is in regard to DOOM. The claims Activision and Raven can make over their work are for the most part literal. Otherwise you wouldn't have so many programs nowadays that look so much alike and basically do the same things.

Maybe they could (also try to) make a fuss over the lump names (especially the full set) in the IWADs? If so, that would affect any engine using the resources. Plus any utilities, heh. That reminds me that the Raven license talks about "Program Utilities" that are part of the game, with which you can make "New Game Materials". Hello? My copy of Heretic seems incomplete! But there's probably where whoever wrote the license tried to interpret or claim what I said above (that the copyright holds sway even over utilities made for the game).

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The EULA put in with the source is just Activision's standard EULA, the same one that comes with their games -- right down to clauses talking about written materials, user mods, reverse engineering and decompilation (how the hell do you decompile or reverse engineer source code???), etc.

It is clear from this that first off, this license is not meant for nor is it suitable for source code, and second, whoever put it on it was just doing their standard routine job. It was slapped on, in my opinion, and to poor effect.

If Hexen II is indeed GPL, we need to use this fact to our fullest advantage. There's no reason why they would GPL Hexen II if they were purely unwilling to consider the license as some people have suggested. The more I think about that, the more I think that the EULA has persisted just out of the inconvenience of changing it. My pre-GPL'd package should make a difference to this end, because it is ready to be distributed at the exact moment we receive word that it's legal to do so.

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No. I've been waiting for a consensus to be reached on what should be done. Jon says he has been working on this for a long time, so I don't know what his current plans are. I have transfered my GPL'd version of the sources to him, so I'd assume he intends to do something with them.

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Ok, I had an existing email exchange with Hellchick at Raven about this. How about I re-open that exchange with a short mail explaining what we've done. Any objections?

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If it's just going to be an invitation to read this thread, I doubt it'll go anywhere. Most professional game people don't feel they have the time to visit things like this. If you intend to summarize on the other hand, it might be hard to keep to a reasonable length and cover everything that's been brought up. There have been an awful lot of good points made so far :)

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RTC_Marine said:

You could always reinvent heretic/hexen without looking at the source code, like how randy put strife support in zdoom

Would be quite alot of work I'd imagine

Not exactly. Randy probably violated the license by reverse engineering - disassembling - at least parts of the code.

(For the US for sure) This process is actually the same as "looking at the source code".

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Hah, are you honestly suggesting that Randy Heit ran a disassembler or decompiler on the Strife executable? Ridiculous. That's like saying Lee Killough disassembled the Doom alpha to determine the Lost Soul's behavior, and I can tell you with a resounding NO that he didn't do that. He determined it using Mo Slo and trying to count frames and by carefully observing all its behaviors.

Do not try to turn this thread into another flame war. It is too important, and I will not hesitate to excise any posts I don't want here.

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