id Resolves DOSBox/GPL Issue

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday August 7, 2007 @09:22PM from the and-they-all-lived-happily-ever-after dept.

The British Gaming Blog is reporting that id Software has successfully resolved the minor issue it had with DOSBox, regarding older PC games being sold on Valve's Steam network. "The problem is all fixed up now with the proper licensing text in the game's readme. Developers working hand in hand with smaller application authors is not all that uncommon; SCUMM has worked closely with point and click masters Revolution and LucasArts to improve compatibility with their games, and hopefully this trend will continue so we can experience more old classics in the future."

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Re:Source by Anonymous Coward · 2007-08-07 21:50 · Score: 5, Informative

According to "wd" on the Dosbox forum (link):
Binary file comparison shows that they are using the 0.70 release executable and added a wrapper. Means they did not modify the sources, just for clarification.
So Valve have added a launcher program to a vanilla Dosbox binary, a bit like UPX. They haven't modified any GPL source code, or even recompiled Dosbox. Whether this is still a GPL violation is a question for Eben Moglen and the other FSF lawyers, but the senior Dosbox developers are perfectly happy with the situation now, so it probably won't be pursued further.