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Nexuiz Founder Licenses It For Non-GPL Use
King InuYasha writes "Nexuiz founder Lee Vermuelen, along with several other core developers, have licensed the Nexuiz name, Nexuiz.com domain, and DarkPlaces engine to Illfonic in a deal to get Nexuiz on consoles. However, the kink is that the engine has been licensed for non-GPL usage. That is, Illfonic has no intention of contributing their code back to the main GPL Nexuiz project. As a result, Nexuiz has been forked into a new project called Xonotic. While the main Nexuiz site doesn't mention that Illfonic has no intention of contributing back, the Xonotic project FAQ explains what's going on. Additionally, the Xonotic project states that Illfonic 'may be in violation of the GPL as most contributors to the Nexuiz codebase have not relicensed their work for inclusion in a closed-source project.'"
The people who contributed their code to Nexuiz under a Freedom license have every right to be pissed if their code is then sold off against their wishes. If the Nexuiz developers want to do so then stop stealing and re-write what isn't yours. The GPL isn't a charity to be exploited - it is a philosophy that says cooperation enriches everyone. If you don't agree with GPL code: DON'T USE IT and write your freaking own. Leaches.
Shh.
...that the situation with the licensing isn't all that clear. There _might_ be GPL violations. No prove yet afaict. I'm part of the Xonotic project anyways. And moving away from alientrap was the right thing to do. The project is more open now. No single point of command, etc..
As far as I know (IANAL, IAAAC) the legality of this depends largely on one thing: did the code contributors reassign their copyrights to Nexuiz / the code maintainer, or did they retain it?
Without John Carmack and LordHavoc (Darkplaces engine developer) giving permission, they're in a huge mess. I wonder if they are using anything slurped up from other Quake engine projects? Even if the submitter of the code signed off, doesn't matter if they aren't the original author.
Relicensing your code is fine, doing it to others... Well, people get in trouble with that with stolen commercial code as well as GPL. It's dishonest, no matter who it's done to, if it's not done with permission (either direct from all authors or through the terms of the license), they're opening themselves for a world of hurt. And destroying their reputation, as well.
If the only thing that is truly being closed up is the interpreted gamecode and they are developing new artwork, there's nothing to see here...
As a person who follows gaming pretty closely, I have no idea what this is or why anyone should care.
Especially the part where it says they are relicensing code contributions without the consent of the contributors.
cat
If you wanted true freedom you shouldn't've used code licensed under the GPL. The GPL's interpretation of "freedom" is freedom for EVERYONE, not just for YOU. So while you have free use of the code in question, everyone else has free use of any changes you may make to it. The idea is that if we leave it up to peoples' good wills to ensure freedom, we'll all live in slavery, so we'll legally force everyone to let everyone else be free. Seems to be working out OK.
How? It is just like if someone gave away popcorn for free and they are now charging them ten cents. They were the producers, they can change the licensing terms. Anyone is free to do what the GPL allows for the GPL'd licensed source but for the non-GPL'd you follow the proprietary license.
Only for the code you own yourself. If others contributed, you have no right to relicense that part of the code - you need their agreement that you can do that.
One different than the one I do. Because your freedom seems to come with restrictions.
Freedom always comes with restrictions if it is just and equal, because your freedom to do something often implies a restriction or cost for me. The GPL ensures that all the contributors have a common set of freedoms, but those translate into restrictions as well.
The Apache and BSD licenses ensure that all the contributors have a different set of freedoms, and a different set of limitations placed on them.
How? It is just like if someone gave away popcorn for free and they are now charging them ten cents. They were the producers, they can change the licensing terms.
Sure. IF they were the producers.
But what if I gave YOU butter for free, but under a license (i.e. the GPL) which improves your popcorn. And you in turn gave it away for free along with the popcorn you produced. (which is allowed).
Then you decide to start charging 10 cents for the popcorn, and are still including my butter. That's not ok. It violates my license.
You are allowed to change the license and re-license the stuff YOU produce, but in this case, and in most oss projects, the individual contributors retain copyright, and as a result the project 'founder' cannot simply relicense it, because he only owns copyright on his actual code. He can change its terms, but not the terms of contributed code. Separating the two is not easy, and the end result may not be desirable... like popcorn without butter.
It's definately possible to prove that ALL nonapproved contributor code was removed, but it's going to be EXTREMELY difficult (see the AT&T/BSD legal battle...). In theory possible, but I think this is going to wind up becoming a very interesting test of the GPL.
"This why Id Software can release the quake source engine as gpl AND a different license." - That's a MASSIVE difference, as the Quake source engine was developed as closed source and then later released as GPL - it's easy for iD to prove that all "non-GPL" derivatives were based on a "pre-GPL" code tree.
Similarly, if LordHavoc had done 2/3) from the get-go, it might be possible.
However, taking this same approach with a code tree that has been GPLed for close to a decade is going to be a completely different story.
Also, what's the history regarding licensing of the content (artwork, levels, models, etc)? - These are all clearly "new" developments that have little to no traceability back to the original iD release, since the original content of Quake was NOT covered in the GPL release. Have all content contributors approved this?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
You have less freedom under the GPL to do what you want with code. And you gain the ability to tell others what they can do with the code under the GPL.
Neither of these is a proper subset of the other, so it's difficult to say you have "less freedom than under the GPL".
My point was the author of the comment called the GPL license a Freedom (italics theirs) and it is not a license of freedom, like all licenses, it's a license of restrictions.
The GPL is only a freedom license when compared to closed-source license. Compared to other, freer licenses, it's really concerned about creating a commons than it is about freedom.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I never understand this argument. People always talk of freedom without personal pronouns, which makes the argument moot. There's no such thing as 'freedom', there's only my, your, our freedom. The BSD protects someones freedom pretty damn totally, and the GPL protects everyones freedom at the cost of basically not allowing you to distribute binaries without source. Trying to compare these in 'freedomness' is moronic: it's literally comparing apples and oranges.
Now I don't know if 'freedom' is shorthand for either of these, but if it's a measure of importance (which is more important, my or our freedom) I'd argue our freedom is more important (thus, the GPL). Just like how one mans ability to rule himself (monarchy) is less important than our ability to rule ourselves (democracy), even if it is at a small cost (I actually can do less than a king).
Oh. Do you not believe you are free unless you have the right to keep slaves, then?
Bruce Perens.
You are confusing freedom and sovereignty, as no doubt are others in this discussion. Your sovereignty is reduced if any action is not available to you. Sovereignty is a one-to-many relationship, freedom is maximized to the extent that all persons are free and that persons are not allowed to act as sovereigns over the rest. Thus, law providing fairness, for example the sharing implemented in the GPL, both increases freedom and limits a sovereign.
Bruce Perens.
Agreed. The GPL is not free, it's ultra left-wing communist.
We can argue about degrees of freeness, but the fact that there were debates about the use of drivers (wireless I think), from BSD into Linux, I think it is fair to say there are restrictions implied in BSD too.
Note, I think it is 100% fair to say that BSD is more free for the recipient than GPL.
Right, BSD licensing does not give the freedom to license BSD code under a different license just because you make modifications to it. No license allows that, so you can't really call it a restriction. You can license your own modifications under any license you like however, unlike the GPL.
http://astutehosting.com/
"Freedom" is a heavily overloaded word, and you have to be clear about the usage. You seem to be either confused, or intentionally using the word out of context.
I do not know how heavily overloaded "freedom" is, but I do know that the GNU project has redefined "freedom" so that they get all of the cachet from using the word, yet none of the particularities of, you know, letting something be free.
After all, if GNU definition was so blindingly obvious, GNU wouldn't have a track record of obsessing and telling everyone else what it means.
BSD license is true freedom.