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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."
I can get a copy of the source for Half-Life 2?
What, me worry?
Valve/iD already updated the games with the required files. Old, incorrect news.
Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain.
Yes. It's not like iD has released anything GLP before.
Oh, wait...
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
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
It hasn't even been a working week even before the people who gave us great things like the GPL'd quake 1/2/3 source got jumped on for slighting you trolls.
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> Now I may be wrong on which license DB uses
It uses GLP v. 2.
> it would mean that both DOSBox and the game shipping along with it would be required to release source code.
No. They have not embedded DOSBox into their own code, so the GPL "virus" do not touch their code and do not apply to the games. They are however required to distribute (or offer to distribute) the source code for DOSBox.
--
MiniMax
Small oversight by (on id's part) a hugely prolific developer of GPL'd software. Easily corrected and pushed out to clients straight away.
Attacking John Carmack for this precipitately is basically irrational. It also stinks of divisive trolling.
The man's licensed (a great deal of) his own software under the GPL, for goodness' sake.
They could have complied with the GPL easily, by bundling the DOSBox sources (or a notice saying that they would be supplied on request for a reasonable fee). Or, they could have developed their own DOS emulator.
This is not a GPL violation, it's a copyright law violation. They distributed a product that they did not have the right to distribute. I wonder how well they would take it if the DOSBox team decided to distribute Half Life 2 to a few thousand people - probably not very well. The fact that there was a non-discriminatory license available for free is irrelevant. A proprietary software company decided not to respect the copyrights of a piece of software, and distributed it without a license. Considering Valve's fondness for DRM, I wonder if they subscribe to the 'if it's not bolted down' philosophy...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Steam now has a reason to be ported to Linux. A lot of the new id games added to Steam play natively on Linux, there are others that use DOSbox, which conveniently works on Linux as well. If Valve ports Steam to Linux... it'd open the door for Linux users to easily buy and play these games, and I'm sure enough people would such that it makes business sense for them to do it.
The old games are largely written in x86 assembly language. They do not use libraries for interacting with the machine, they issue DOS system calls and [video] BIOS calls directly. Porting them to other platforms would effectively mean re-writing them. You could add an abstraction layer, replacing the low-level calls with library calls, and then write a library that would translate these into something higher-level. Or you could use a generic version of this; a DOS emulator. Doom and Quake were written in a mixture of C and assembly, and the assembly often had fall-back routines. Quake had an abstraction layer long before the open source release, with VESA, DirectDraw, X11 and OpenGL versions.
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Only modifications they might have made to DOSbox will have to be made public.
Please let's get away from this thinking that you can automatically patch up a GPL violation by releasing your modified source code later.
When you violate the GPL, you immediately lose your license to the GPL'ed code and you are liable for your past and future license violations. You cannot make up for that past violation by coming into compliance, and you cannot restore your license to use the code under the GPL license by coming into compliance.
What that liability entails is something that you can negotiate with the authors about, and if you don't reach an agreement, it's for the courts to decide. Theoretically, if the GPL violation is egregious enough, a court might well hand control over other corporate assets, including unrelated software, to the author of the GPL'ed software.
Many GPL authors will be nice and permit you to remedy past GPL violations by coming into compliance, and they may also grant you permission to use the software under the GPL. But all of that is at their sole discretion.
The worst judgement that can be brought against a GPL violator is an injunction preventing further distribution. The GPL does not have any provisions to deny the license to those who have violated it, and so any violators can simply rectify their procedures and continue.
Thus, the GPL *does* allow you to fix problems retroactively.
They're not required to do subsection a), which you quoted, just one of the three. But since they may just be including as opposed to selling Dosbox, subsection c) may well be acceptable. A lot of GPL'd software comes without the source -- many Linux distros don't include the source, either, but you can still get it. I'm pretty sure my copy of Ubuntu didn't come with source code, and I don't recall seeing an offer to get the source code during the install (but then who pays attention to license terms during an OS install?).
It does if you want to be listened to. Talking bollocks because everyone else is talking bollocks only ensures that they'll treat you like they do everyone else.
Talking sense when everyone else around you has none is more likely to get you somewhere.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
And this sort of thing is the reason companies are afraid of GPL. Back in reality, silly things like this are ignored because someone notices the mistake, fixes the problem, the authors of the original software are fine with it because it was a silly mistake that MADE NO DIFFERENCE TO ANYONE OTHER THAN PEOPLE PRETENDING TO BE LAWYERS. On the other hand, now big companies that could help make GPL'd software more common to the everyday user are now more afraid of using it. Why should they, its cheaper to pay for commercial software than to deal with all the bad press that can come from an honest mistake made by a bunch of raving GPL fanboys. Yes, I'm more than slightly annoyed with this kind of license bullshit.
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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.