Final Attempt to Get Heretic/Hexen GPL'd

[myk]

Vegeta; anyone can work with the source and do stuff with it. The only problem would be mixing it with Eternity, PrBoom, Chocolate Doom, Doomsday, or other engines under the GPL.

[fraggle]

Csonicgo said:

Honestly ,
we've gotten to the point where we should just admit the license was a mistake and disregard it. Immature? yes, I know... But seriously, the only one that'd bitch is Deep, and even then it'd be pot-kettle. BESIDES, If Activision says anything, we present them with evidence saying that we tried to contact whoever we could. ;)

In copyright, all rights are reserved until they are granted to you. You can't assume anything until the author says you can do it.

In practice, of course, you're never going to actually be sued by Raven over this. But if you incorporate their code into a GPL port, you're technically violating the GPL. As authors of source ports, we don't want to do that. Alternatively, you can take the ZDoom approach and not use the GPL, but then you lose the advantages that being GPL brings. You can't put a project on Sourceforge unless it's properly Open Source, for example. Similarly, Linux distributions like Debian won't include it.

[kooltore]

...so because of the legal obligations of the gpl license and the inability of the parties interested to do anything about it, this is a stalemate.

[kooltore]

Hey, i know a solution to this. Lets wait 70 or 75 years, when copyright expires, and hexen/heretic become public domain, no problem there!

[leileilol]

http://www.gameriot.com/news/4135/New-Quake-Games-and-More/

We took all the code and assets internally into id [from Raven].

Time to bug id?

[david_a]

Uh... He's talking about Quake 4.

[kooltore]

leileilol said:

http://www.gameriot.com/news/4135/New-Quake-Games-and-More/



Time to bug id?

duh

[kooltore]

btw, I'm still interested in finding the owners of the rights to the witchaven I and 2 source code. Someone know where to look? And also, tracking down the source code for powerslave.

[Quasar]

Let's keep this on-topic, please. I have already questioned id about this twice (just Hollenshead, then Hollenshead and Carmack). They refuse to even acknowledge any email I send them. Any efforts we take from this point on MUST be centered around more than just emails.

[kooltore]

Stand outside id offices and form a picket line?

[Quasar]

Funny sprite:

[kooltore]

so i guess this is dead in the water

[andrewj]

I think so. Last night I had an idea: if we could find out who the programmers were, we could contact them directly and ask to re-release their code under the GPL. Problem is, it's not "their" code anymore, working for Raven means their copyright would have been assigned to Raven. D'oh.

Perhaps there is some merit in the idea of bugging the programmers directly, as they would (hopefully) know what strings to pull to get seomthing happening (assuming they were agreeable).

[Quasar]

Chris and Ben work at Human Head Studios. I've already been in contact with them. Chris Rhinehart expressed support and signed the letter, and you'll find his name on it. I never heard back from Ben Gokey; I assume he just decided to let Chris handle it.

That seems to be the most they can do. He told me that they're not close at all to Raven, despite leaving on amicable terms, and that they wouldn't have much influence there.

This is basically a problem of corporate inertia. It's just too easy for them to do nothing and ignore it. The only way to change that would be to annoy the hell out of them, and that could have negative rather than positive effects.

Our next best ideas are to letter bomb the place, or to send someone to visit. I was holding out on the letter bombing to see if the sending someone would pan out. It looks now like it's not going to, so maybe we should go ahead with the letters?

[fraggle]

Quasar said:

Our next best ideas are to letter bomb the place, or to send someone to visit. I was holding out on the letter bombing to see if the sending someone would pan out. It looks now like it's not going to, so maybe we should go ahead with the letters?

I think you should just clarify that by "letter bomb" you mean "send them lots of letters" and not "send them bombs" :-)

[Stealthy Ivan]

Yeah, thats a good idea, send them ton's of fan mail and other jargen, then they might catch on! :P With out fans there would be no games, we have the say here people, we keep them in business...

[entryway]

The only good idea is personal visit IMO

[stphrz]

fraggle said:

I think you should just clarify that by "letter bomb" you mean "send them lots of letters" and not "send them bombs" :-)

Too late. The FBI has Quasar in custody. Any replies/posts emails you see from him from this point on are being made by an undercover operative.

:tinfoil:

[leileilol]

entryway said:

The only good idea is personal visit IMO

You can't do that from your chair :(

[kooltore]

...as Quasar said, it's very easy for them to just sit on their asses and do nothing. What if someone offered them money? I mean, not to be cynical, but thats about the only way these corporate asshats move anyways. Maybe if the community did some sort of drive to collect funds to get enough cash to offer raven or whoever owns it for the source code. Just fan letters and a personal visit wont do it, since letters will probably just be forwarded to the trash bin, and personal visits to the waiting room with a ticket number 10000000000.

[printz]

Why all this crazy need for GPL when I see ZDoom and JHeretic out there functioning almost identically to the original program?
You can copy code from Heretic and say you base your program on ZDoom or JHeretic.

[VinceDSS]

printz said:

Why all this crazy need for GPL when I see ZDoom and JHeretic out there functioning almost identically to the original program?

lol, no

zdoom and doomsday are so far from the original heretic ... they dont feel the same and can't play original recordings either ...

[Quasar]

Actually the problem is that they're not far enough at all. Most of zdoom's Heretic- and Hexen-derived code is obviously just that. I don't know if they've also tried to come up with their own stuff and just been hampered by the fact there's only one way to do it, or not.

Besides, there's the whole issue of that being intellectually dishonest, and of it exposing any subsequent users of the code through the GPL to potential (however unlikely) litigation, which is irresponsible and is contrary to the spirit of free software.

The best solution would be a relicensing of the code, which would be simple for them to let us do. They're just being lazy for all I can tell. Easier to ignore than to make a phone call and get permission to re-release some crusty old code.

[myk]

Quasar said:
Actually the problem is that they're not far enough at all.

That's something else, though. They're too much like the originals in literal code, but too much unlike them as far as exacting functionality is concerned. While it's possible to make a purist port using the released Raven sources (or fix up one of the existing ones, like wHeretic), those may need a good deal work from the ground up and would leave out all the GPL friendly coders, since the more "purist" Doom code trees that would be suitable for such a base are under the GPL. Thus only the release of the source could do away with both issues (code too similar in one respect, too different in another).

Besides, there's the whole issue of that being intellectually dishonest, and of it exposing any subsequent users of the code through the GPL to potential (however unlikely) litigation, which is irresponsible and is contrary to the spirit of free software.

Perhaps supposedly GPL-ready alternative code suffers from that problem, from being evidently derivative, as well as most likely failing to be really purist.

[DaniJ]

zdoom and doomsday are so far from the original heretic ... they dont feel the same

Do feel free to point out what has changed in the gameplay/controls/ai etc of jHeretic compared to the original and I'll happily seek to rectify the situation.

...can't play original recordings either

Wait, there are Heretic demos now? :P

[myk]

DaniJ said:
Wait, there are Heretic demos now? :P

Aye. They're relatively recent, for the most part, because Heretic's demos were kind of broken, ending before the tally screen like in Doom v1.2, but a while back (at least a couple years ago) vv made a hack for the binary that allows complete demos like in Doom.

[DaniJ]

You learn something new every day. I didn't know that.

Not that the existance of Heretic demos recorded using a hacked exe means we are any more likely to support them in jHeretic. As I'm sure most people are aware, Doomsday has replaced DOOM's cruddy demo code completely.

[myk]

DaniJ said:
Doomsday has replaced DOOM's cruddy demo code completely.

No crud, no cheese.

[david_a]

myk said:

No crud, no cheese.

You eat dirt cheese?

[myk]

david_a said:
You eat dirt cheese?

Crud as the variant of curd, which is the main component of all yummy cheese lumps.