Freedoom being sold on Apple's App Store

Hi all, long time visitor of Doomworld, first time poster.

I was browsing Apple's App Store the other day, and noticed that an uploader named MOALAB LLC is selling three games using Freedoom as a base- as in only the levels and title screen have been changed.

Dooms Knight:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dooms-knight/id413213284?mt=12

Doomed Heretic:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/doomed-heretic/id418071557?mt=12

and Doomed Freedom:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/doomed-freedom/id417913942?mt=12

Dooms Knight has a free 9 level demo replacing Knee Deep In the Dead, which I downloaded. It comes with a very slightly modified version of the Mac OS X build of PrBoom. I'm not exaggerating with "very slightly" either- only the exit taunts and level names are changed, the cheat codes are the same as Doom's and Episode 1's endgame text is completely unaltered from the 1994 original. Looking through the contents of the .app archive also reveals prboom.wad.

Link to Dooms Knight's Free Demo:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dooms-knight-lite/id435411322?mt=12

These games are available for both Mac OS X and Apple's iOS devices, the latter I'd bet uses the source code for the iPhone Ultimate Doom port that John Carmack released.

In any case, I figured this should be brought to the Freedoom team's attention if it hadn't been already.

One last link: Moalab LLC has a website located at:

http://www.moalabllc.com/

Is this even legal?

It is completely legal to sell the Freedoom IWAD as long as the terms and conditions of the COPYING file are included with it.

However, it is illegal to distribute GPL-licensed executables (like PrBoom and the iPhone Doom port) if any of the freedoms in the license (freedom to copy and distribute, freedom to alter the source, etc) are not granted to end users. However, the terms and conditions of the App Store require that end users are denied some of these freedoms. The copyright holders of the GPL-licensed software being used for these apps could get them removed from the App Store by notifying Apple that Moalab is violating the terms and conditions of the GPL.

BondEar said:

It is completely legal to sell the Freedoom IWAD as long as the terms and conditions of the COPYING file are included with it.

However, it is illegal to distribute GPL-licensed executables (like PrBoom and the iPhone Doom port) if any of the freedoms in the license (freedom to copy and distribute, freedom to alter the source, etc) are not granted to end users. However, the terms and conditions of the App Store require that end users are denied some of these freedoms. The copyright holders of the GPL-licensed software being used for these apps could get them removed from the App Store by notifying Apple that Moalab is violating the terms and conditions of the GPL.

I own some copyright in prboom (an almost negligibly-small amount). I may persue a removal.

Those maps are definitely OBLIGE-generated.

It's perfectly legal as long as they include the Freedoom license and abide by its terms. Rather pointless considering you can just download it though.

Jon said:

I own some copyright in prboom (an almost negligibly-small amount). I may persue a removal.

Haha, it'd be a heck of a thing if id's own iPhone Doom port ended up getting pulled for being based off PrBoom and ultimately id's own GPL source release.

EDIT:
OK I read the article posted earlier (didn't read that far up at first) and it seems the GPLv2 IS incompatible with the Apple i* license.

Very interesting.

Maybe we should save this to be our ace-in-the-hole when Zenimax comes trying to mess with source ports. A little tit-for-tat goes a long way sometimes in securing a negotiation.

I myself own a large deal of rights in PrBoom, as it contains many code segments from the Eternity Engine, some of which are adopted verbatim.

RjY said:

Haha, it'd be a heck of a thing if id's own iPhone Doom port ended up getting pulled for being based off PrBoom and ultimately id's own GPL source release.

I haven't looked into the current situation too closely, but iD released the source for their engine when they released iPhone Doom. I think the issue now is the newer apple store terms forbid you to do certain things that conflict with the GPL they didn't before, but as I say, I haven't looked too closely.

Jon said:

I haven't looked into the current situation too closely, but iD released the source for their engine when they released iPhone Doom. I think the issue now is the newer apple store terms forbid you to do certain things that conflict with the GPL they didn't before, but as I say, I haven't looked too closely.

According to the Eben-Moglen-approved FSF interpretation, Apple's EULA tacks itself onto any license that the software has, and this makes it intrinsically incompatible with the GPL, via the "no additional conditions/restrictions" clause, even before you start considering what some of those conditions are (limitations on number of installs, devices on which the software can be installed, need for an Apple developer key in order to run modified versions, etc.)