To Raven and Activision: GPL Heretic and Hexen

I am a free software supporter and have no problem with the GPL. Most of the projects I release under the GPL are for hobby and I gladly release the source because I hope others can learn from it. One of the main reasons the GPL was written as it is was so that you can take code and give code in return. How many commercial software companies do you see doing this?

Anarkavre said:

How many commercial software companies do you see doing this?

How many open source companies are making money :P

I dont think the bill to run places like sourceforge.net is $0 , so obviously something is working somewhere. Besides that, open source software doesn't automatically mean free. Why look at Doom and Quake - you can do whatever you like with the code, you still have to buy the game.

SourceForge.net receives money from sponsors by advertising. They also accept donations.

Best of luck, Quasar`, be sure to keep us posted.

Scuba Steve said:

How many open source companies are making money :P

a lot.

a few major ones you'll recognize are RedHat, and Novell.

There are also a lot of varied-size businesses that pay employees to make better the FOSS software they use.

even so, by merely using FOSS, you make money because of productivity.

keep in mind that "Open Source" does NOT mean "free"

Sun Microsystems has also embraced open source. The entirety of Java is going GPL now.

But java sucks.

kooltore said:

But java sucks.

In your opinion maybe, java has many uses and saying it "sucks" is just silly.

But it's true. It's bloated slow shit. Use C# instead.

kooltore said:

But it's true. It's bloated slow shit. Use C# instead.

This has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Please refrain from trolling. You have been warned of this in other mediums.

Graf Zahl said:

Some companies are so scared of this clause that they even prohibit the use of any GPL'ed software on their computers. This is not a joke. I have strict orders from my employer to completely avoid using GPL code for work related purposes - and even if this just means using small useful tools. They rather spend insane amounts of money before they risk 'contaminating' anything they do with it - even if this is complete nonsense. So yes, I am not a big fan of the GPL in its current form. It has caused me a lot of trouble at work.

Out of curiosity, where do you work? Or if you don't feel comfortable saying so, what kinds of things does your employer work on?

Whoever they are, they're dumb. The GPL is absolutely unambiguous about the output generated by tools. Unless such output contains a significant portion of the tool's source code (and unless the tool excepts this, as do bison and flex), then such output is *never* covered by the GPL.

If this were not true, all programs compiled by gcc would automatically be GPL. This is clearly not the case.

Whoever they are, they should invest in better lawyers; ones that can actually read would be a good upgrade.

Quasar said:

Whoever they are, they should invest in better lawyers; ones that can actually read would be a good upgrade.

My guess is that they don't have any lawyers.

Software is a pretty dangerous business to be in without at least some kind of counsel. But I could understand a small firm not being able to retain it.

The company I am working for produces cell phone games and maintains a cell phone game development kit.

And that's where they see the problem. We have to distribute this development kit to countless external developers and despite the wording of the GPL our oh so brilliant lawyers want to completely reduce the risk of 'contamination' so they simply prohibited any use of GPL'ed stuff that might get in contact with this thing.

Needless to say that we all consider this lawyer a bona-fide idiot but being just a subsidiary of a larger company we can't get rid of him.

Yeah. In the event you did include GPL tools in the kit, it would suffice simply to also include the source code for them. As it is well known, the GPL does not apply through mere aggregation, so it cannot "leak out" and infect any custom tools. Lawyers are lawyers, though :)

Graf Zahl said:

The company I am working for produces cell phone games and maintains a cell phone game development kit.

And that's where they see the problem. We have to distribute this development kit to countless external developers and despite the wording of the GPL our oh so brilliant lawyers want to completely reduce the risk of 'contamination' so they simply prohibited any use of GPL'ed stuff that might get in contact with this thing.

Needless to say that we all consider this lawyer a bona-fide idiot but being just a subsidiary of a larger company we can't get rid of him.

Nobody told him about Java going GPL? <g> Yeah, it does suck, but I can completely understand how stuff like that goes down in that kind of environment.

Quasar said:

LGPL is automatically a dual license, btw. You are allowed -- in fact required -- to relicense the code under GPL if you integrate it directly into a GPL program.

Er.. no. You can do this (LGPL clause 3) but you aren't required to. The LGPL and GPL are compatible, so there's no requirement to change it to GPL.

Back on topic (even though we are talking about GPL), what is the current status of this raven/activision licensing debacle?

RTC_Marine said:

what is the current status of this raven/activision licensing debacle?

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=653074#post653074

fraggle said:

Er.. no. You can do this (LGPL clause 3) but you aren't required to. The LGPL and GPL are compatible, so there's no requirement to change it to GPL.

Well, what I read said "You should change the license to GPL when including the library directly in a GPL program." I guess should is a little vague :P

So, if this effort is successful, would the code be licensed under the GPL v.2 or the upcoming GPL v.3?

kooltore said:

So, if this effort is successful, would the code be licensed under the GPL v.2 or the upcoming GPL v.3?

Hopefully the former.

Is there any reason for that?

v2.0 in order to allow immediate compatibility with all source ports without requiring them to upgrade to 3.0 -- upgrading to the next GPL version should be done at the discretion of individual port authors, and not forced by something like this.

OK, so, yeah, I hope 2.0 is applied, and well, most likely it'll be anyways, since it's the current one, and 3.0 is still way off in the future, and for the compatibility stuff. So, Quasar, have you been able to send the snail mail forms yet?

Come to think of it, it's interesting, whether new ports, and even new games are released under the gnu public license, whether they will choose the 2.0 or the new 3.0 when it's released. AFAIK they are somewhat compatible, right? There won't be much incompatibilities between them both, unlike the compat problems with the doom license, and the gpl 2.0. Would you say, anyone , that id software will release the source code of doom3 in 2008-9, under the gpl 3.0?

Eternity will probably move to 3.0, because I object to software patents and to the growing practice of using hardware CRC checks to lock out the custom versions of free-software firmware.

"the growing practice of using hardware CRC checks to lock out the custom versions of free-software firmware."

Yea, sorta what TIVO does, right?