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id and Valve May Be Violating GPL

Posted by Zonk on from the can't-we-all-just-get-along dept.

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."

6 of 399 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Does this mean by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Redundant

    John Carmack understands perfectly what the GPL is all about, and surely nobody needs to be reminded what a huge contributer he is to open source and open standards. Certainly an oversight and public humiliation is not in order. I agree, especially as he apparently just confirmed at QuakeCon that also Doom III engine (aka id Tech 4) will be made Open Source at some point in the future, and eventually also the new engine they are working on right now - id Tech 5. We wouldn't want to piss him off so that he won't Open Source them after all, would we? ;)

    Anyway, I don't think he personally had anything to do with this incident.
  2. Intentional? by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 0, Redundant

    DOSBox's download contains the GPL in COPYING.txt. So it was intentionally stripped out by iD...?

  3. Violating The GPL!?! by icedcool · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Rabble rabble rabble rabble.

    --
    Most people aren't thought about after they're gone. "I wonder where Rob got the plutonium" is better than most get.
  4. Re:Well spotted! by Ash-Fox · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Steam applications all include some copy protection code that involves communicating with the main Steam.exe program: this is most visible in games that weren't designed for Steam, such as Defcon or one of the Popcap games. Like them, Dosbox must have been modified to include this copy protection code.
    What if the resulting binary is just produced from another binary. Such as those done by exe compressors, anti-reverse engineering protectors etc?

    --
    Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
  5. Re:Well spotted! by Ash-Fox · · Score: 0, Redundant

    But it may not matter, as the evidence strongly suggests that the Dosbox code has been recompiled with some Steam API calls.
    Has it? Where is this evidence that it isn't just a binary produced from a exe wrapper utility to integrate it into Steam etc?

    Why would Valve make a binary modifier to install Steam code in a game, when they can just recompile it?
    I think may Valve have made various options for developers and publishers to use to integrate games into Steam. I was theorizing on the concept if it was a exe compressor/protector and so on then there isn't any new sourcecode to publish.

    It would be nice to hear from a Steam developer, either Valve or 3rd party, but I imagine this stuff is under NDA.
    Agreed.
    --
    Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
  6. Re:Offtopic, rant about license whores by Ash-Fox · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Do you see Microsoft attacking stupid little lapses in following the license when no harm is done?
    Yes.
    --
    Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.