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GameCube Tunneling Software Rivals Clash
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a Warp Pipe website posting, in which the creator of the GameCube tunneling software alleges that "members of [planned GameCube tunneling alternative] Xlink community have exploited the fact that our source code (previously open source) is still sitting our SourceForge CVS servers." The confusing allegations, eventually shown to be unrelated to the Xlink creators, have ended in the Warp Pipe code declared closed source and removed from SourceForge. However, the Beta of the Warp Pipe online-enabling software for the GameCube, which "...will support residential DSL and Cable broadband with either a router or 2 NIC setup", is still due before the end of the year.
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cvstarballs/cubeonline2 3-cvsroot.tar.bz2
Not entirely. See TuxRacer for at least one example of something going closed source. That open source version must remain open source (provided it was something like GPL, and not just a "you can look, but don't touch"-type deal).
However, the copyright holder can do whatever they want with the code, and later versions can be relicensed as they want. For another example, if someone wanted to make a closed-source game based on the Quake source code, they could negotiate another licensing agreement with id, even though the code is GPLed.
In short, if you are the copyright holder, you can have code released under simultaneous licenses. The "viral" quality of the GPL only holds for people who aren't the copyright holder.
this project wanted to move to closed source model and Xlink noticed that they either forgot to close up or couldn't close up their public source on sourceforge. so Xlink could use the code for their product. nothing wrong with this in an opensource model however someone screwed up by leaving the source available on sourceforge.
It should be noted that XLink wasn't involved at all, someone simply posted a link to the code in the sourceforge CVS on XLink's forums because the WarpPipe people were deleting the link from their own forums. XLink never used their code, as they simply used the code they had already had for their XBox software, with some minor modifications to work with the GameCube.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Just for the record, Xlink didn't do ANYTHING. A member of Xlink's forum (kinda like you and i are members of slashdot) did it, and posted in their forum about it. This makes xlink about as guilty as slashdot would be if you got arrested for drunk driving tonight.
I took a look -- it's crazy.
3 /WarpPipe/
One group seems to have written this 'Warp Pipe' tool, using Sourceforge infrastructure, declaring it under a BSD license (as far as I can make out from the comments) when they set up the SF project.
Another group then starting working off that (supposedly open-source) codebase. The first group are not happy about this, and have decided it's now proprietary and want to remove rights to use that code.
(Either that, or they think users of a BSD-licensed package needs 'express written consent of Warp Pipe to repackage or redistribute in any way'.)
Apparently, they didn't *actually* specify license terms in the source; but they must have claimed an open-source license in order to use Sourceforge. So at some point, they were a little 'unclear' about the license.
All very amateurish...
BTW, the sf.net project page is still there: here's a link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cubeonline23/
And CVS: http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/cubeonline2