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id and Valve May Be Violating GPL
frooge writes "With the recent release of iD's catalog on Steam, it appears DOSBox is being used to run the old DOS games for greater compatibility. According to a post on the Halflife2.net forums, however, this distribution does not contain a copy of the GPL license that DOSBox is distributed under, which violates the license. According to the DOSBox developers, they were not notified that it was being used for this release."
No. It means that they violate copyright law because they didn't conform to the GPL terms. If it's true, they are illegally distributing the software called: DOSbox.
It doesn't mean any code of the old DOS iD games has to be released. Only modifications they might have made to DOSbox will have to be made public.
It's due to the work of the DOSbox creators that VALVe and iD can sell their old software and people can enjoy it. Yet the DOSbox creators don't get any credit for their work. And that is a major shame.
Valve/iD already updated the games with the required files. Old, incorrect news.
Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain.
The only time you'd need to contact the developers is if you want to get an alternative license. Quite often people will release code under GPL and also be prepared to release it under alternative licenses, perhaps for a fee.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The third option, which isn't usually available when you screw up with non-free software, is to apologise really fast and comply with the GPL*. Although there are no guarantees free software developers are usually nice folks who can overlook a mistake.
It is one reason why all the 'viral' fud about the GPL is so annoying (not that it applies to this case, as there is no derivative product, but it usually rears it's ugly head in these threads). All the GPL does is give you an Option Three which isn't usually available - you would be in court for damages instead of sitting across a table from a bunch of altrustic techies seeking a negotiated solution.
*Historically stopping distribution and rewriting the offending module usually is an option too, depending on how antagonistic you were before admitting your mistake.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
No, it would only require them to provide the source for their modified DOSBox.
The GPL is clear that using a Free program to execute or operate on proprietary data leaves the data under its original ownership and licensing.
- Nick
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
Yeah, I went to his keynote Friday night; there were a lot of technical questions, and at the same time a lot of questions about steam, etc. At one point someone asked him about porting Doom to Steam and he flat out said "wow, that's pretty cool, I hadn't heard about that yet, but it seems neat".... He's very much on the research side of things and made it very clear that while he's still the posterboy for iD, he has very little control or even desire to muck about with marketing and corperate politics, though at the same time he also said that they were very proud of their decision to ultimately open source everything, and have made many design decisions in the past that have limited them because they wouldn't then be able to open source fully at a later point (he also pointed out that at some point in the future, iD tech 5 would become open source, too).
+5, informative.
moox. for a new generation.
I'd hardly call id or Valve pretty big companies. Valve currently lists 104 employees, and id only 34.
You can't win, Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Bullshit!
"Open Source" can mean one of two things:
In neither case does it mean "public domain," which is what you're thinking of.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Just downloaded the pack. It's using a modified, binary-only dosbox. They have added the license and thanks.txt back, however, it still is infringing.
I copied dosbox.exe to a seperate directory, and it complained about missing SDL dlls. Using stock SDL dlls, it says "Failed to find steam". As such, they are distributing a modified binary-only version of a GPL application. Given the distribution has already happened, they are legally obligated to distribute the source code to the steam "stub" present in their dosbox application. Failing that, they are guilty of some serious copyright infringment, and statutory damages can be huge.
I suspect it wouldn't look good in court having a very large, well-known software company stealing code from little guys, and using it as the foundation for a significant commercial project. This also makes it look willfull, as opposed to accidental infringement. Furthermore, given iD's technology licensing platform, which includes significant GPL distribution, they would have a hard time claiming ignorance.