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What are the violations? The twitter post just states that GPL was violated, but no evidence offered. Edit: I'm looking at it on mobile, and the only link seems to be a self referential link, not to anything of substance.
I wonder if this will impact game archival efforts. Companies may be less likely to permit release of old source (or more likely to take action against those who do release source) knowing legal issues like this may be inside. Is there a statute of limitations here? Could the owner the violated code sue? What happens it they succeed, monetary compensation?
The most likely outcome is not a chilling one: they comply by releasing their code officially under a compatible license, and hope they don't upset anyone else by doing so.
I wonder if there’s an ML approach that could be used to fingerprint binaries compiled from GPL code. Then I wonder if that could be used to justify discovery / win a suit. I have no idea how this would work, but it strikes me as plausible?
Does this mean that any GPL project could reuse source code from this game, under the logic that it all inherently must be GPL licensed? I'm pretty sure the answer is "no", but I'd like to know why, it makes logical sense...
Now the makers of this game and the copyright holder for the GPL work might end up reaching a settlement where the game engine is released under the GPL. (I know of one case of this happening: a Japanese visual novel producer, Leaf, released their engine as used in several games e.g. Kusari . As a result of this there's an open-source engine that you can use to play those games on linux). Equally they might end up reaching a different settlement that involves e.g. withdrawing the game from distribution (this happened with the Wii ports of some classic SCUMM games - they used ScummVM in violation of its license, but could not release their code under the GPL without violating the conditions of the Nintendo API they were using).
What are the violations? The twitter post just states that GPL was violated, but no evidence offered. Edit: I'm looking at it on mobile, and the only link seems to be a self referential link, not to anything of substance.
If you read the full thread they took the vsprintf() implementation from the Linux kernel circa year 2000.
I guess this comment is now a) vsprintf and b) a gpl violation, too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The archivist in me loses this fight, I feel general adhering to software freedoms is more important and the greater good compared to a single game.
A "single game" is unlikely to be affected. Many games are likely violating the GPL, and it's likely that if there are takedowns because of it, there will be a chilling effect on future source code release. Are you really protecting software freedoms if it ends up, in fact, discouraging the process of freeing more software?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm pretty sure the answer is "yes" if the violation is true and the game has been distributed. Tit for tat.
IANAL but I don’t think this is true. A person or company that violated the GPL would void the permission granted to them by violating the license and would be liable for having done so. But it would take a court ruling to decide what that means for the parties involved. For example, the court might give the violating party the choice to either release source, OR to keep the source closed but to financially compensat…