Seven Kingdoms GPL2 SFX

[Nikita_Sadkov]

I have dumped wav files from Seven Kingdoms:
https://github.com/saniv/free-game-sfx/tree/master/sound/seven-kingdoms

they are GPL2, but I guess you can still distribute them with BSD content inside of a single package.

[raymoohawk]

would you stop it already, how many times do i have to repeat that freedoom is a resource, and it cant be a resource if it keeps recycling stuff from elsewhere

[Doctor Nick]

GPL2 is no-go. It has to be BSD licensed.

[Nikita_Sadkov]

raymoohawk said:

would you stop it already, how many times do i have to repeat that freedoom is a resource, and it cant be a resource if it keeps recycling stuff from elsewhere

Calm down! I thought Freedoom is a replacement wad for Doom. And most games, including Doom, use sfx from cd libraries anyway.

Doctor Nick said:

GPL2 is no-go. It has to be BSD licensed.

But Doom engine is GPL2 licensed, so you already got dual licensing.

[Graf Zahl]

Nikita_Sadkov said:

But Doom engine is GPL2 licensed, so you already got dual licensing.

That's quite irrelevant. You can even distribute a GPL2 engine with proprietary data.

On the other hand, I have no idea in what way the parasitic GPL would infect the rest of Freedoom. Contrary to the belief of 'freedom', the GPL comes with countless strings attached that can easily cause problems for the rest of the project.
Aside from that, the GPL is a very poor license for actual data.

And that doesn't even address the 'recycling' argument that has been brought up. It seems that aside from you nobody wants to use these sounds.

[Quasar]

Graf Zahl said:

That's quite irrelevant. You can even distribute a GPL2 engine with proprietary data.

On the other hand, I have no idea in what way the parasitic GPL would infect the rest of Freedoom. Contrary to the belief of 'freedom', the GPL comes with countless strings attached that can easily cause problems for the rest of the project.
Aside from that, the GPL is a very poor license for actual data.

And that doesn't even address the 'recycling' argument that has been brought up. It seems that aside from you nobody wants to use these sounds.

While the argument about GPL not applying well to data is valid, the use of the phrases "parasitic" and "infect" are classic M$ FUD. Please do not use that newspeak on a forum about FOSS-related activities.

Also, I'll note the BSD license chosen for Freedoom, while perfectly intentioned, has been cited as a reason by some people that they will not contribute, as using their talents to donate to something for free that is meant primarily for community benefit and having it turn around and be sold for profit without attribution on jailed-up iDevices by a zillion different companies is a demotivator. I've argued it'd have done better to at least be CC BY-SA if not CC BY-SA-NC. At least in the former case attribution would be required.

[Nikita_Sadkov]

Graf Zahl said:

That's quite irrelevant. You can even distribute a GPL2 engine with proprietary data.

On the other hand, I have no idea in what way the parasitic GPL would infect the rest of Freedoom. Contrary to the belief of 'freedom', the GPL comes with countless strings attached that can easily cause problems for the rest of the project.
Aside from that, the GPL is a very poor license for actual data.

And that doesn't even address the 'recycling' argument that has been brought up. It seems that aside from you nobody wants to use these sounds.

I doubt GPL is that huge deal for sprites or sfx. And nothing stops you from using GPL graphics to create an indie game, besides your skills.

GPL actually helps Microsoft and other big players, because free software makes it harder to enter software market. Your raster editor should be a priori better than GIMP. You cant just set price lower than Photoshop, to sell it. And if you base your software on GIMP's code, you'll have to release any improvements for free, losing to competition.

I think GPL should have something like timeout, before you're forced to release the source code. That way people investing into free software will have time to earn profit.

[Graf Zahl]

Nikita_Sadkov said:

I think GPL should have something like timeout, before you're forced to release the source code. That way people investing into free software will have time to earn profit.

I think you fundamentally misunderstand the concept of 'free' software.
And if the code is yours, that's basically how things work anyway. Case in point: Doom itself.

[raymoohawk]

quasar, share alike and non commercial would make the project totally useless. share alike would make it so that people that want to use our resources cant mix them with other licenses, and non commercial would make it so that games using it cant be sold. and nikita most games can get away with using sound libraries because they are not trying to be resources

[Nikita_Sadkov]

Graf Zahl said:

I think you fundamentally misunderstand the concept of 'free' software.
And if the code is yours, that's basically how things work anyway. Case in point: Doom itself.

There are different points. But my point is that license should be an instrument of making profit for producers and consumers.

[Blastfrog]

Nikita_Sadkov said:

license should be an instrument of making profit for produces and consumers

What?

[Nikita_Sadkov]

raymoohawk said:

quasar, share alike and non commercial would make the project totally useless. share alike would make it so that people that want to use our resources cant mix them with other licenses, and non commercial would make it so that games using it cant be sold. and nikita most games can get away with using sound libraries because they are not trying to be resources

You can mix GPL, BSD and CC-SA images, as long as they are loaded as separate resources files. Say Wyrmsun (a project to make open source Warcraft 2 like game) uses GPL, share alike and BSD resources, yet authors still sell it on Steam.

Sodaholic said:

What?

Sorry. I mistyped "producers".

[raymoohawk]

that still doesnt change the fact that we are trying to be resources. we need to have sounds from scratch to be a resource and all you do is point to things that already exist.

[Blastfrog]

Nikita_Sadkov said:

You can mix GPL, BSD and CC-SA images, as long as they are loaded as separate resources files.

And thus doesn't apply to Freedoom since the IWAD is all one file.

Nikita_Sadkov said:

Sorry. I mistyped "producers".

No, I mean what you were saying doesn't make any sense in general. Licenses exist to dictate terms of use and distribution, it has nothing to do with profit. And how exactly do consumers profit? Consumers spend.

[Graf Zahl]

Nikita_Sadkov said:

There are different points. But my point is that license should be an instrument of making profit for producers and consumers.

In that case, choose a license that suits your needs.
But don't use code that comes under a license that doesn't.
Those who release their code under the GPL certainly do not want their code to be used in other people's closed source projects and that should be the end of this discussion.

My personal issues with the GPL are not what it does to the code it's licensed under but that it wants to impose itself on all code that comes in contact with GPL'd code. And that's also the reason why many commercial software makers are scared shitless of GPL'd code - because they may not even give the impression that they may have based their stuff on GPL'd code as that'd disrupt their business model quite effectively (and this is definitely fully intended as such by the FSF.)

Nikita_Sadkov said:

You can mix GPL, BSD and CC-SA images, as long as they are loaded as separate resources files. Say Wyrmsun (a project to make open source Warcraft 2 like game) uses GPL, share alike and BSD resources, yet authors still sell it on Steam.

I just underlined why this disqualifies anything under the GPL from being used in Freedoom.

[Nikita_Sadkov]

Sodaholic said:

And thus doesn't apply to Freedoom since the IWAD is all one file.

AFAIK, IWAD is a directory file. It preserves filenames. So you can insert a GPL and AUTHORS files into it.

Sodaholic said:

No, I mean what you were saying doesn't make any sense in general. Licenses exist to dictate terms of use and distribution, it has nothing to do with profit. And how exactly do consumers profit? Consumers spend.

Consumers spend to make profit. You buy food to have enough strength to do your job tomorrow and earn money. Same way developers license game engines to make money of selling them.

[Graf Zahl]

Nikita_Sadkov said:

AFAIK, IWAD is a directory file. It preserves filenames. So you can insert a GPL and AUTHORS files into it.

Wrong. If you combine these sounds with the maps and all the other assets in one package that's supposed to be used in its entirety this goes beyond 'mere aggregation' and automatically puts everything in there under the terms of the GPL. Which is clearly not what the makers of Freedoom want.

Nikita_Sadkov said:

Consumers spend to make profit. You buy food to have enough strength to do your job tomorrow and earn money. Same way developers license game engines to make money of selling them.

... none of which has any impact whatsoever on using the GPL. Some open source software is even financed not by selling the software itself, but by selling support for it - which is perfectly legal.

[Nikita_Sadkov]

Graf Zahl said:

... none of which has any impact whatsoever on using the GPL. Some open source software is even financed not by selling the software itself, but by selling support for it - which is perfectly legal.

"Selling support" is a horrible idea, because it implies that software should be made hard to use, buggy and prone to breaking. Instead of selling once a good copy.

Although that is common business practice in Russian IT, where programmers setup time bombs, so that client will have to pay more, when it breaks.

Similarly, we have software as a service nightmare, where client has to pay $30/month, instead of purchasing say Photoshop once for $300. And you cant use it, when Internet fails, meaning your subscription money go to waste.

Graf Zahl said:

Wrong. If you combine these sounds with the maps and all the other assets in one package that's supposed to be used in its entirety this goes beyond 'mere aggregation' and automatically puts everything in there under the terms of the GPL.

So Wyrmsun breaks law? Because they combine it inside of a ZIP archive. And it is "supposed to be used in its entirety".

[Graf Zahl]

Nikita_Sadkov said:

"Selling support" is a horrible idea, because it implies that software should be made hard to use, buggy and prone to breaking. Instead of selling once a good copy.

That's nonsense. It also shows that you have no idea what kind of people actually use such software. What kind of people, do you think, use this software? Yes, right! That's regular workers without any deeper understanding of the subject matter. They need support even for trivial problems.
And that's why in the business world this is a quite common business model.
Most of the money isn't made by selling the software as a product but a service for the product (and that of course includes support, and in that case Open Source becomes irrelevant.)

Nikita_Sadkov said:

Although that is common business practice in Russian IT, where programmers setup time bombs, so that client will have to pay more, when it breaks.

That's criminal activity, not legitimate businessbusiness.

Nikita_Sadkov said:

Similarly, we have software as a service nightmare, where client has to pay $30/month, instead of purchasing say Photoshop once for $300. And you cant use it, when Internet fails, meaning your subscription money go to waste.

Yeah, that's the new Cybermafia - either pay or be locked out, sadly all legal...

Nikita_Sadkov said:

So Wyrmsun breaks law? Because they combine it inside of a ZIP archive. And it is "supposed to be used in its entirety".

Depends.
If it's just a collection of resources, it constitutes aggregation, which is legal.
If all resource files in there use mutually compatible licenses, it's also legal.
But if only one of the resource files has a 'no commercial use' clause, it is not legal, because that affects the GPL'd stuff in there.

And Freedoom definitely does not want to enter this area. It wants to use a clean license that doesn't try to extend its reach to any derived products (which is a huge 'gotcha'.) The GPL is plain and simply not right here, and that also means excluding GPL'd resources.

I also think that by now it has been made abundantly clear that there is no interest in using this stuff. It's not going to happen, no matter how persistent you are.

[RestlessRodent]

Freedoom under the GPL would be rather bad because the GPL covers code far better. Instead of the GPL, CC-BY-SA would be a better selection for pure data.

Nikita_Sadkov said:

"Selling support" is a horrible idea, because it implies that software should be made hard to use, buggy and prone to breaking. Instead of selling once a good copy.

It does not imply that at all.

The selling support is really where the support team helps you out to do things because the user is most likely lazy or does not want to deal with things such as configurations. Also when there are problems.

If there is software where they intentionally break it so you have to buy support packages, then do not use it.

Nikita_Sadkov said:

Although that is common business practice in Russian IT, where programmers setup time bombs, so that client will have to pay more, when it breaks.

Any software, free or not, if it has such time bombs then it is bad software to begin with and should not be used to begin with.

Nikita_Sadkov said:

Similarly, we have software as a service nightmare, where client has to pay $30/month, instead of purchasing say Photoshop once for $300. And you cant use it, when Internet fails, meaning your subscription money go to waste.

Do you have many people who refuse to use open source software because they did not buy it?

[fraggle]

Nikita_Sadkov said:

they are GPL2, but I guess you can still distribute them with BSD content inside of a single package.

In that case we can't use this in Freedoom. All submissions must be BSD licensed. Thanks anyway for the suggestion.