Final Attempt to Get Heretic/Hexen GPL'd

[deathz0r]

Sign me up:

Dean Joseph <deathz0r@odamex.net>
Project Administrator with Odamex

[kooltore]

...good letter, but any chance Raven/Activision will read it?

[leileilol]

There's only one way to find out

[Quasar]

The letter is not finished yet. Do not contact Raven or Activision on our behalf; we will do this when we are ready.

[kooltore]

So when are you going to contact them?

[Quasar]

Umm. Not everyone has even had a chance to sign it yet. I have emailed various port authors over the past 3 days, and most of them have not replied yet. I am also collecting the email addresses and news submission pages of various sites on the internet.

[Quasar]

Update:

The letter is now up to 22 signatures. We are currently awaiting responses from programmers in the Vavoom, zdoom, and Doom Legacy projects. We will wait a few more days in order to make sure everyone has had time to receive the messages.

I have also gone out on a limb and contacted the three founding members of Human Head Studios who migrated from Raven and who worked on Heretic and Hexen and thus may feel a personal connection to this matter:

* Ben Gokey (programmer)
* Chris Rhinehart (programmer)
* Shane Gurno (artist)

We'll see if establishing contact with these guys can get us anywhere. If they would lend us their support, this would add an enormous amount of momentum to this effort.

[kooltore]

Wow, you contacted the human heads former employees?

[EarthQuake]

I'm impressed by the effort you're all pouring into this.
I hope for the best, and good luck.

[kooltore]

Yes, me too, good luck with this effort.

[Mordeth]

James, if you think it could help you may put my name under that letter too.

[chilvence]

Did you not get a reply from Skyjake yet? Because I can nudge him when he's next on irc.

[Quasar]

No replies from the Vavoom or zdoom team so far. Doom Legacy's email is apparently broken (or I was given a bad address), although Hurdler signed the petition.

On the upshot, Chris Rhinehart from Human Head Studios, one of Hexen's two programmers, has signed, and has offered to help see if Carmack can be brought on board. This is going places now.

[Torn]

I signed up too as "Kim Bach"

[Graf Zahl]

Quasar said:

No replies from the ... zdoom team so far.

Maybe that's because ZDoom doesn't gain anything by a GPL'ed Heretic/Hexen source? ;)

Anyway, you can put me on the list as well:

Christoph Oelckers (chr.oelckers@elocom.de)
Programmer GZDoom

[smite-meister]

Quasar said:

Doom Legacy's email is apparently broken (or I was given a bad address), although Hurdler signed the petition.

Is the petition separate from the letter?

If so, you can add me to the letter as well (and Hurdler too, I suppose):

Ville Bergholm <smite-meister ### users.sourceforge.net>
Programmer, Doom Legacy <http://legacy.newdoom.com/>

[Quasar]

Graf Zahl said:

Maybe that's because ZDoom doesn't gain anything by a GPL'ed Heretic/Hexen source? ;)

Anyway, you can put me on the list as well:

Christoph Oelckers (chr.oelckers@elocom.de)
Programmer GZDoom

A point which I made in my letter to Heit, but countered with the fact that the rest of the community does, a community of which zdoom is an important part. Thus, zdoom's support is meaningful regardless. Its lack of support would feel a bit like a slap in the face IMO. Thanks for your support ;)

[Quasar]

Alright. The letter is now effectively complete, with all the signatures from this thread and from the zdoom, Legacy, and PrBoom-Plus ports. We are now waiting on possible word from John Carmack. Chris Rhinehart assured me that he has contacted him to see if he wants to be involved. I'll probably give that a couple days at least, so we're probably looking at the letter going public this weekend.

[Lüt]

Oh hey, me me me!

I dunno what you'd put me as though. DWF admin? Mill project leader? A couple other private projects I could finish once this goes through and Heretic finally has linked portals? (That's the big one really.) Not sure I wanna use TI since the site's been in limbo for a few years and the "active" team is pretty much just me.

[QuiescentWonder]

You've been Dugg again, hopefully more people will Digg the story this time:

http://digg.com/gaming_news/Petition_and_Letter_to_Raven_Software_to_make_Heretic_and_Hexen_Open_Source

It's screwed up on this board and no matter what has a space in the URL for some reason, sorry, here is a TinyURL link: http://tinyurl.com/2wl2my

[grubber]

If you're interested in my sign, here it is:

Jan Cholasta <grubber.x@gmail.com>
drdteam.org Administrator,
Programmer (? - various stuff - ZDoom Community Build, bits in official ZDoom, ZTerrain)

[Chaindude]

As an "oldschool" Heretic/Hexen DM player (and current mapper), I couldn't help but not look at this thread. The level of diligence and dedication is something to commend you guys on, and hope this initiative fulfills its goal :).

-Chain

[Quasar]

Lüt said:

Oh hey, me me me!

I dunno what you'd put me as though. DWF admin? Mill project leader? A couple other private projects I could finish once this goes through and Heretic finally has linked portals? (That's the big one really.) Not sure I wanna use TI since the site's been in limbo for a few years and the "active" team is pretty much just me.

I need your contact info before I can add you. Real name mainly. Sorry I forgot what it is; I knew once.

[fraggle]

Quasar said:

I need your contact info before I can add you. Real name mainly. Sorry I forgot what it is; I knew once.

Steve Dudzik

[Crimson Wizard]

Quasar said:
No replies from the Vavoom or zdoom team so far.

Okay, okay, here's one from Korax Heritage team which uses Vavoom; hope I will be allowed to have my signature there among all those serious people :)

Ivan Mogilko <ikm_spb@yahoo.com>
Korax Heritage team game programmer <http://www.korax-heritage.com>

[Lüt]

Quasar said:

I need your contact info before I can add you. Real name mainly. Sorry I forgot what it is; I knew once.

Oh haha, sorry I thought that was pretty common knowledge. What fraggle said, and I'll probably use dudzik@doomworld.com for this one.

[Mago]

Please sign me up, the Hexen community isn't that big and it's great something like this is going on.

Magno Scavone
2D "Artist", Korax' Heritage Team ( http://www.korax-heritage.com/ )
magno.scavoni@sapo.pt

[kooltore]

..is there time still to send signatures? If so, i would like to add mine, though I'm not a programmer, or an mod creator. Well, I'm making a mod, but not for doom, but wolf3d

[Quasar]

We'd prefer that you sign the petition if you're not involved in a major project :)

EDIT: I got some bad news from Romero. He says he contacted id and Raven about this a few months ago (apparently when he was earlier contacted by somebody in a conversation stemming from this thread) and said that neither one seemed to know whose responsibility it actually is to relicense the code. This may mean that nothing's going to get done, but as I said to him, we'll have nothing to lose by trying. He didn't seem keen on signing the letter, BTW. Unfortunate.

EDIT 2: Romero has better news now. According to him he now has a friend working in id's biz dev department and he's going to contact them. What a crazy day.

[kooltore]

Hey, this isn't related to these efforts, but it's similar in that is about a game's source code. I'm trying, like you guys are, to find out whether the source code of the old build games Witchaven 1 and 2 can be released under the gpl, so work can be done on them. But the problem is, no one knows who owns the copyright to those games to contact them. The company that owned the rights, Intracorp, went bust and apparently no one knows who owns the rights to those games. The source code is available, but I'd prefer if the owners of it would release it under a proper license. Does anyone have any idea what to do to track the owners down?

thanks