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The PS1 Game Spongebob Squarepants: Supersponge Violates the GPL

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Re: The PS1 Game Spongebob Squarepants: Supersponge Violates the GPL

#131

Post by davb »

louthy wrote: post #124
davb wrote: post #114

I'm less interested in the GPL violation aspect, and mot excited to get an insight into what it was like to work on that team, 20 years ago. Minutiae like how to burn a build to CD https://twitter.com/0xGradius/status/1137123492329951232?s=1... feels like a window into the past.

Burning a build CD wasn’t anything special, the PS1 dev kits read normal CDs (didn’t have the copy protection). Burning of any CD was flaky back in the day (lack of decent buffering)

I remember having an old 2x Traxdata drive with almost no buffer - so I certainly lived through the hassle of early drives. It's just exciting to read about other peoples' work flows.

Re: The PS1 Game Spongebob Squarepants: Supersponge Violates the GPL

#133

Post by simias »

gambiting wrote: post #88
haecceity wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it common to leave debug code in production software?

I work on AAA games and we definitely don't leave any debug code in production copies of the games. It's all #ifdef'd out in Retail builds.

Maybe it's less common now that tooling and frameworks are more standardized but having spent quite a lot of time messing with the PSX and its emulators I can vouch that it's fairly common to find debugging code and strings in production versions. Simply using an emulator to enable the debug UART will spew quite a lot of debug infos for some games. FFVII has a "debug room" that you can't normally access but is present on retail copies. I also seem to recall that the PC version shipped with full debugging symbols which gave reverse engineers a field day.

Re: The PS1 Game Spongebob Squarepants: Supersponge Violates the GPL

#134

Post by simias »

dijit wrote: post #93
gambiting wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work on AAA games and we definitely don't leave any debug code in production copies of the games. It's all #ifdef'd out in Retail builds.

I’m always surprised when I see you here but I’m not sure why. Anyway. I can corroborate this. Debug code is /really/ harming performance in AAA games. Also, you want to remove your “cheats” that QC use to skip chunks of the game.

It really depends on what you mean by "debug code". If you mean special versions of the code built with "-O0 -g" (or the equivalent in whatever compiler/toolchain they're using) then obviously that's going to be a problem. If it's just helper methods like "go directly to section X in the game", "spawn any monster" or "if global variable DEBUG is 1 then log this" then that can easily make it in the final product if they're not optimized away in production builds. Those won't seriously harm performance either, just bloat the binary a little (which will most likely be totally negligible since modern games routinely end up using dozens of GB).

Re: The PS1 Game Spongebob Squarepants: Supersponge Violates the GPL

#135

Post by icebraining »

Narishma wrote: post #132
Rebelgecko wrote: post #70

Isn't it fine since they've released the source?

They didn't release the source.

Plus that wouldn't be enough, it'd have to be released under a license with the same rights (lots of source out there is just for viewing, and can't be reused).

Re: The PS1 Game Spongebob Squarepants: Supersponge Violates the GPL

#136

Post by icebraining »

Endy wrote: post #101

The more we harp on license, the less we can actually save. The problem isn't that it's GPL. The p problem is that GPL is as much a part of the copywrong system as any other license. Three years is inordinately long to support an offline game like that, especially a licensed one. And frankly, I think in the license wars, I have to back Nickelodeon over GNU-GPL folks.

You can avoid the requirement to offer it for three years by shipping the source along with the binary. It's one or the other, not both.

Re: The PS1 Game Spongebob Squarepants: Supersponge Violates the GPL

#137

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

pawjs wrote: post #115
dcbadacd wrote: post #16

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.

You talk about software freedom, but I think there's no greatest freedom than being able to use whatever software I want to create something humanity will enjoy.

Yes, of course. It's just that if the software you use (well, incorporate) is GPL-licensed then you also get to release the source code for something humanity will enjoy:)

Re: The PS1 Game Spongebob Squarepants: Supersponge Violates the GPL

#138

Post by NedIsakoff »

vageli wrote: post #85
giancarlostoro wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct and if nobody asks they are fine in doing so. But they must comply if possible. If the code is gone then I am not sure they can be forced to give it.

> Correct and if nobody asks they are fine in doing so. But they must comply if possible. If the code is gone then I am not sure they can be forced to give it. There must be some kind of remedy available in that event.

Money

Re: The PS1 Game Spongebob Squarepants: Supersponge Violates the GPL

#139

Post by simias »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #11

Part of me wants to express the irritation that people being neurotic about the GPL could cost us access to old games like this. I worry that someone overzealous would take down source for an 18 year old PS1 game over it.

Your qualification of "neurotic" is entirely non-warranted IMO. As far as I can see so far all that's happened is that the source code of that game got leaked, somebody stumbled upon Linux code while perusing it and pointed it out.

Besides I think you're being ridiculously alarmist because for one thing archives of the PS1 library (including this game) are trivial to find online, so there's basically no chance for this game to disappear forever and on the other hand if this GPL infringement makes the owner release the source code under the GPL it will make the game more available than ever since it could potentially be ported to any computer you want (although you'll still have to buy the game for the assets).

Now you may argue that having potentially illegal downloads of PSX archives is not the same thing as having some legit source for getting the game, but then I think you're in a catch 22:

- If you think that the owner's IP should still be respected and enforced even though it's an almost 20 yo game, why shouldn't the GPL?

- If you think the GPL shouldn't be enforced because it's an almost 20 yo game, why do you care about the owner's IP?

I'm more of a BSD kind of guy but I really think it's unfair to blame the GPL or its defenders for what is a fuck-up by the original devs. Introducing a huge chunk of GPL code in a proprietary codebase like this is frankly a rookie mistake.

Re: The PS1 Game Spongebob Squarepants: Supersponge Violates the GPL

#140

Post by frou_dh »

davb wrote: post #114

I'm less interested in the GPL violation aspect, and mot excited to get an insight into what it was like to work on that team, 20 years ago. Minutiae like how to burn a build to CD https://twitter.com/0xGradius/status/1137123492329951232?s=1... feels like a window into the past.

Maybe it's a wake-up call for the contemporary prissy developer blogging about coding font ligatures, to learn that whatever masterpiece games they enjoyed in their youth were made in crappy OS using crappy tools and with dodgy coding styles.
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