Final Attempt to Get Heretic/Hexen GPL'd

[Quasar]

But that adds up in the money department after a while. I think that, frankly, it would work best if we unleashed the fury of the community on this. Why don't we have everyone that's willing write their own personalized letters? I'd be happy to provide a form letter that could be customized, as well as the appropriate mailing addresses and recipients' names (a list to which we could add any other people that it might help to petition about this).

[emailking]

If you do all that, I'll certainly spend the (now) 41 cents to mail in.

[Searcher]

Go ahead and write the letter if you have time. There are a boatload of people here that can afford a few stamps. Let them hear all OUR voices.

[funduke]

Quasar said:

I'd be happy to provide a form letter that could be customized, as well as the appropriate mailing addresses and recipients' names (a list to which we could add any other people that it might help to petition about this).

Do it!
Personally, i will sent those costomized letters.

Greetings
Funduke

[Ghostpilot]

DooMAD said:

A single email or postal mail may not be enough. Send the email to both Raven and Activision every month or so. At this point there's nothing to lose, so you might as well be persistent. If that doesn't work, other people can start sending in mail too. Even if they decide not to allow the code to become GPL, the least they can do is give us a response.

Ever seen shawshank redemption?
Send a letter every week.

Post the generic letter text and address here and the community can pitch in sending letters.

Or... would posting of the letter and reciever address violate some law in America? The adress is for the company, right? Not a person.

[EarthQuake]

I actually like the idea of showing up personally and trying to talk with someone. Maybe they don't think you're all serious enough?

[printz]

Wouldn't repeated messaging to a company not intially interested result in a spam report instead of a positive outcome?

[Quasar]

The form letter will be for snail mail, not for email. We're not even certain if these guys ever read their Raven email accounts since we found the addresses on an extinct, orphaned page on their website. People who can't fork over at least 41 cents to send a stamped envelope are clearly not dedicated enough ;)

Update on other fronts. I've gotten in touch with the staff of PetitionOnline and I am now capable of moderating the petition. I had to delete 7 spam signatures that got added recently. The total is now 433 signatures not counting the 7 spam sigs which now say "line voided" (it does not remove them entirely, oddly enough).

I think that the exposure of having a link on gnu.org has gotten us a few more sigs. I'd really like to see that sucker hit 500. I might consider printing the whole thing out and mailing it in a giant box to Raven, since they're clearly too busy to even look at it themselves.

[skadoomer]

Depends. Its not a harassment letter, just one that wishes to inquire more information about why a particular course of action wasn't taken. By responding to the letter in any way, the company would have to say one thing or another about the license.

If enough people take interest and voice their opinion, why wouldn't raven want to correct their mistake? All they have to do is realize one has been made.

[entryway]

Quasar said:

in a giant box

100cm x 100cm x 100cm at least, heh

[Manc]

EarthQuake said:

I actually like the idea of showing up personally and trying to talk with someone. Maybe they don't think you're all serious enough?

I live in Chicago, which is not too far from Middleton, WI. If anyone closer (among other criteria) would like to participate in this, maybe we could get a small team together with some material and talk to someone there. If no one else is willing/able I would be willing to do it myself, and I can do it whenever as my schedule is currently... well let's say it's open. It may or may not bear fruit, but I think it's certainly worth a shot and would definitely add weight to the seriousness of the issue.

[Quasar]

Weird twist. If you have the original distribution of Heretic you will notice that the license agreement which one accepts to install the game clearly states that the legal agreement is between you, the user, and id Software. NOT Raven Software, NOT GT Interactive, and NOT Activision.

What this means is that if there is any legal objection to one's use of the original Heretic binary resources (executable or otherwise), that would need to be challenged by id Software.

How does this change things? I'm not sure.

But I can tell you it's quite unclear how much of Heretic and Hexen that Raven really actually owns. The games were distributed entirely by id. The license agreement was with id Software. The games themselves use id Software's code, and state quite clearly in the credits, "Designed by Raven Software for id Software."

Maybe, just maybe, we are barking up the wrong tree here?

[Searcher]

Perhaps we have been, and maybe the reason that they (raven, et. al.)don't seem to care about it. A rather interesting twist indeed.

I wish we knew an insider at id that could clarify or even give the go ahead. Should we try to re-group and try a few simple information probing emails to the id folks?

edit:typo

[myk]

Quasar said:
What this means is that if there is any legal objection to one's use of the original Heretic binary resources (executable or otherwise), that would need to be challenged by id Software.

What's seems clear is, first, that id Software has disowned (almost) anything it had to do with the games. Todd Hollenshead's reply to sLydE near the start of the thread implies this. Also, I'm pretty sure John Carmack, the only one involved in Heretic in any significant, if indirect, way, other than John Romero (who had the initiative for the two Raven games), doesn't give a rat's ass and wouldn't get involved unless he had to. Second, that Raven managed to release the source in the first place through talks with Activision, who they had to deal with. Third, that Jon's been allegedly in touch with Activision's people for a couple of years or more; if it were so clear this were under id Software's initiative, wouldn't they have mentioned it, redirecting him to id?

The complication that I can see is that, if id Software does have clear claims to the stuff (on the other hand they might have handed it all over to Activision privately in documents we never saw), then maybe Activision would possibly be reluctant to do anything just in case it could cause issues with id Software (their business partner).

So, I'd say, that, unless Jon or someone can clear this up, what needs to be done is to hit the breaks for a bit to, instead of mailing with the intention of asking for the GPL release, contact id Software and Activision merely asking them who to talk to, considering (and presenting) your finds. Todd may have said what he said, but it might not be unwise to ask him what the situation is considering your finds (that the original release documents made id Software responsible for the games.)

It is possible that the game may be in a situation where no one will want to risk doing anything about it, though, but it might not be if everything is clear enough to them (id, Raven, and Activision).

[Quasar]

Well it's too late to take the indirect approach. I already emailed Todd Hollenshead outright requesting an exception to the reverse engineering clause of the Heretic & Hexen release EULAs. He hasn't written back yet, but since it's the weekend I'll wait and see what happens.

EDIT: Still no response as of 2:32 Monday. These people really need to work on their public relations skills.

[Quasar]

Still no reply, so id's a dead end. They're simply unwilling to deal with us no matter what. It would be simple for them to make some calls and help get this straightened out, or to just grant us the reverse engineering rights, but I suppose expecting such a small effort is still too much, even given our community's years of support.

[RTC_Marine]

We could start a "Boycott Id Software" campaign :P

[printz]

RTC_Marine said:

We could start a "Boycott Id Software" campaign :P

You're suggesting us all not to play Doom at all for awhile? That's kinda mad. Or to abandon Doom2 for Freedoom? That's also vexing. I don't want to fight snakes and foreign soldiers...

[fraggle]

I think it was a joke.

[Quasar]

Not playing Doom wouldn't bother id at all. Not buying any of their new games might, though, if enough people joined in. Of course, boycotts are rarely successful.

[kooltore]

Yes, stop buying id software products would get their attention, but how big of an impact would the entire doom community have in sales figures compared to the giant pool of id software buyers? hmmm

[fraggle]

kooltore said:

Yes, stop buying id software products would get their attention, but how big of an impact would the entire doom community have in sales figures compared to the giant pool of id software buyers? hmmm

Nobody is seriously suggesting a boycott of Id. It would be pointless, ineffective and make no sense whatsoever.

[kooltore]

...so any news on this ?

[Csonicgo]

Honestly ,
we've gotten to the point where we should just admit the license was a mistake and disregard it. Immature? yes, I know... But seriously, the only one that'd bitch is Deep, and even then it'd be pot-kettle. BESIDES, If Activision says anything, we present them with evidence saying that we tried to contact whoever we could. ;)

[myk]

Csonicgo said:
Honestly, we've gotten to the point where we should just admit the license was a mistake and disregard it.

The license of the game and the license of the source code aren't the same thing. While the license of the game was included in the source package, causing confusion, the authors said when they released the source what you can do with it; use it for exclusively noncommercial projects (which excludes GPL stuff, which can be used commercially).

Also, the negative to what you're suggesting comes from both the copyright holders and anyone going by the GPL (i.e. the coders of the projects concerned about the licensing). Neither wants to see the differently licensed code mixed.

If Activision says anything, we present them with evidence saying that we tried to contact whoever we could. ;)

What do they care if we attempted to contact them or anyone, and how would it stop them from sueing for copyright infringement if they saw a case for it?

You can make many assumptions about the situation of the source (who's in charge of it or whatever), but to use it in GPLed projects is something you can't validate from any point of view with a clue.

[kooltore]

Why not hire a lawyer, or ask someone who has a friend who is a lawyer and ask him--her about copyright licenses. Have them contact activision and-or id.

[emailking]

For one, they don't have to respond just because they're contacted by a lawyer. The only place they have to respond is in court, which means you're suing. And secondly, who's going to pay? Just to talk to a lawyer about an issue you have is typically a couple hundred bucks.

[kooltore]

Then I guess this is a lost cause. Nobody cares, apparently. Not carmack, not activision, not raven, not anyone.

[Quasar]

A lot of people care, including John Romero and the guys at Human Head Studios. There's just nothing they or any of us seem to be able to do.

[Vegeta]

This will surely sound like a sacrilege for some, but I think that as they sistematicaly ignore us (they could at least be gentle enough to say no), I think we should do the same and work with the code without the license. They just don't give a fuck otherwise would answer with a no. If you think you could have some fun working with it, go for it.