Doom Legacy is Illegal

[RestlessRodent]

It has come to my attention that Doom Legacy back in 1997 and 1998 used code from Quake. Now if you are asking how is this possible since the source was released in 1999. For those of you who do not know, the Quake source was leaked by a bunch of people. Now since that the source code is illegal, anything using that source would be illegal also. Me along with a team of anonymouses have determined that the a portion of the code in Doom Legacy is a carbon copy of the Quake 1.01 source code. Most notably is the console system, which includes the console itself, console variables, console commands, and other things related to it. Comparisons have been made between Doom Legacy 1.25 and the Quake source and it has been determined that they are exact or near exact matches. Some differences are the way the functions are named, for example the console variable system in Doom Legacy uses the CV_ prefix wheras Quake uses the Cvar_ prefix. Most of the white space and comments match except for a select few. For example, in the Quake source (as seen from Hexen 2) in Cvar_RegisterVariable, the error message reads "Can't register variable %s, allready defined", however in Doom Legacy it's "Variable %s is already defined". Now you may see that those do not match, but if you look at the comment above you will see that both Quake and Doom Legacy have the same comment "first check to see if it has allready been defined". So far, most of the violations are within the console subsystem but more have been spotted outside in the Video code for example.

Quake 1.01 and Quake 1.09 have major differences and what is seen in Quake 1.09 is not seen in Quake 1.01 whereas Quake 1.01 stuff is seen in Doom Legacy but is not seen in Quake 1.09 or Hexen 2 but not as much as Quake 1.09.

Despite all of this, this makes ReMooD illegal also, sadfully, but this will be fixed.

The other part of the team (not me) figuring this out would like to remain anonymous, so if any names should appear, please erase them.

[kristus]

Uhm. It's no news that Legacy is illegal. It's been labeled as GPL for years in spite of it using Heretic code. So stating that it had more parts that were illegal, really doesn't make any difference.

[RestlessRodent]

kristus said:

Uhm. It's no news that Legacy is illegal. It's been labeled as GPL for years in spite of it using Heretic code. So stating that it had more parts that were illegal, really doesn't make any difference.

Doom Legacy despite being that illegal, was using the Heretic source code which was released but under a different license which violated the license. Also with Heretic it changed the license which was illegal. However, Quake 1.01 is illegal in the sense where possessing it is a crime (I don't own it).

[Csonicgo]

kristus said:

Uhm. It's no news that Legacy is illegal. It's been labeled as GPL for years in spite of it using Heretic code. So stating that it had more parts that were illegal, really doesn't make any difference.

I believe it does if someone wants to actually use this code. With this revelation, how can one trust any of the code?

[kristus]

It doesn't, because it was already obvious you couldn't trust the code.

[entryway]

First of all, Legacy is unusable outdated crap. So its illegality has no importance. Hardly there will be a person who will want to use its code.

[Graf Zahl]

entryway said:

First of all, Legacy is unusable outdated crap. So its illegality has no importance. Hardly there will be a person who will want to use its code.

Don't forget that Remood is based on Legacy so obviously for GhostlyDeath it is important.

[NightmareZer0]

Naked Snake said:

Pointless drama is awesome!

Hahaha. My thoughts exactly. Thats what source code legallity rants are to me.

[entryway]

Graf Zahl said:

Don't forget that Remood is based on Legacy so obviously for GhostlyDeath it is important.

The first things Ghostly made with Legacy are removing OpenGL support (should returns in 2015 or something) and some other Legacy goodies. I have tried to run phobiata.wad with remood. Better to say that it does not work at all. Glitches, slowdowns and 1 fps freezes for a long period that's all I saw. Then I have tried doom2.wad map01 and there are tons of glitches too! and it's still laggy as hell, unplayable. Sorry, but doom2.exe with DOSBox is 10x better then ReMooD. Hence, the sense of deriving from Legacy eludes from me. Ghostly is mad with the choice.

[Vermil]

How does your opinion of Remood relate to what you were quoting?

[entryway]

Vermil said:

How does your opinion of Remood relate to what you were quoting?

it relates to what is quoted by quote

[Vermil]

I don't personally care for your port (i.e I don't use it), but you don't see me basically saying that it shouldn't exist becuase I don't use it, do you.

[printz]

Vermil said:

but you don't see me basically saying that it shouldn't exist becuase I don't use it, do you.

I believe he was criticizing the bugs.

[entryway]

Vermil said:

I don't personally care for your port (i.e I don't use it), but you don't see me basically saying that it shouldn't exist becuase I don't use it, do you.

Why do you think I force you to something? It's just a point about 'illegality' of Legacy (and ReMooD to some extent). Illegal outdated unusable crap is still crap and nobody will care never. And this illegality is known for decade. In that way, the sense of this topic exactly is trying to draw attention. Obviously, Ghostly is a troll.

[magicsofa]

entryway said:

nobody will care never.

Yeah ain't nobody wants no stinking crap!

[Quasar]

entryway said:

Obviously, Ghostly is a troll.

I'm going to come to his defense on this point alone and say that I firmly do not believe there was any trolling going on in this thread, it's just an announcement of something that was discovered last night with regard to this Quake source leak business. Because it relates to an active source port, it is therefore of interest to people who might use it, or portions of its source code.

[fraggle]

entryway said:

The first things Ghostly made with Legacy are removing OpenGL support (should returns in 2015 or something) and some other Legacy goodies. I have tried to run phobiata.wad with remood. Better to say that it does not work at all. Glitches, slowdowns and 1 fps freezes for a long period that's all I saw. Then I have tried doom2.wad map01 and there are tons of glitches too! and it's still laggy as hell, unplayable. Sorry, but doom2.exe with DOSBox is 10x better then ReMooD. Hence, the sense of deriving from Legacy eludes from me. Ghostly is mad with the choice.

A quote from GhostlyDeath himself:

<@GhostlyDeath> Supposidly making a port off Boom would be more rational than choosing Legacy
<@GhostlyDeath> where in reality, Legacy does not suffer from some of the Boom flaws
<@GhostlyDeath> The Boom code is a mess

[myk]

I guess one should be suspicious in general now when perusing Legacy code... "use at your own risk".

entryway said:
Obviously, Ghostly is a troll.

Heh, working on a source port seems like a rather bizarre and contrived way to troll. There are much easier ways to do it. And the post he made is at least interesting. We knew Legacy has license conflicts but not the detail that it appears to include leaked Quake code.

Vermil said:
you don't see me basically saying that it shouldn't exist becuase I don't use it

If you ask me, he seems to be expressing that he doesn't understand why someone would use Legacy as a base, due to the issues he states, not that it's worthless because it doesn't fit his needs.

[Graf Zahl]

fraggle said:

A quote from GhostlyDeath himself:

&lt;@GhostlyDeath> Supposidly making a port off Boom would be more rational than choosing Legacy
&lt;@GhostlyDeath> where in reality, Legacy does not suffer from some of the Boom flaws
&lt;@GhostlyDeath> The Boom code is a mess

Very interesting. So in order to avoid some messy code he chose a port that's even more messy...

Frankly, if I wanted to start fresh today I'd either use PrBoom or Chocolate Doom as a base to work on - but never ever Legacy.

myk said:

I guess one should be suspicious in general now when perusing Legacy code... "use at your own risk".

License conflicts nonwithstanding, that has been my impression with Legacy for the entire time I've been working with the Doom source. Again, nothing new here...

[Csonicgo]

This should have been exposed 10 years ago when legacy was still somewhat relevant. As of now, it's just a warning and a factoid.

Wouldn't this also affect SRB2, that sonic fangame based off legacy code?

[Quasar]

Frankly all source ports have their messes, especially the early ones. Comparing them is apples and oranges. I'm still cleaning up BOOM stuff in EE, and will be doing so for years to come, more than likely.

[printz]

Graf Zahl said:

Very interesting. So in order to avoid some messy code he chose a port that's even more messy...

Maybe he wants to fix it?

[Graf Zahl]

I have had some 'fun' with Legacy code, too, years ago. My conclusion was that the only way to fix it is to replace all its original code with one from other ports.

[Vermil]

I think every port authour thinks that every port other than there own is a mess.

[Gez]

Including their own, actually. ;)

[Graf Zahl]

Indeed. There's no such thing as a non-messy Doom port. There's just those which are messier than others and normally those can be identified by being unstable and buggy.

[RestlessRodent]

entryway said:

Ghostly is mad with the choice.

What do you mean "mad with the choice"?

Everyone here seems to be on a train that only says "Why would you make a Doom Legacy source port? Legacy shouldn't even exist!". It's my choice to base a Doom port off something, people bitched at Odamex because it was based on CSDoom, which like legacy was badly out of date, old, and buggy. Also, both CSDoom and Legacy are dead which means there can be no more changes to it really. If you based it off something new then everyone would want you to drag in all the new changes even if they are against your project goals and such. Plus, there are more Boom and ZDoom ports than Legacy ports. I didn't want ReMooD to be the same as other ports.

[Cjwright79]

Sounds like you've worked out the letter of the law pretty well, but wouldn't Carmack ultimately be the guy who decided whether to pursue charges? Which would be completely contrary to his character.

[Mr. T]

Are you going to use the code from the GPL Quake source?

Legacy was always my favorite port back in the day, especially for playing stuff like GunX lol

[RestlessRodent]

Cjwright79 said:

Sounds like you've worked out the letter of the law pretty well, but wouldn't Carmack ultimately be the guy who decided whether to pursue charges? Which would be completely contrary to his character.

I talked with Carmack and he said that it should not be a problem since it's being used in a GPL source port.

Mr. T said:

Are you going to use the code from the GPL Quake source?

Legacy was always my favorite port back in the day, especially for playing stuff like GunX lol

I have decided to rewrite it and keep it compatible.