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“I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

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Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#221

Post by sitzkrieg »

_delirium wrote: post #36
toast0 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He also said in the thread that his partners wouldn't have gone for it, so he may have thought BSD was better back then too, but went with what he could do. Releasing the engine code at all was a big deal back then, and inspired some others to do so, but others sometimes had more restrictive than GPL licenses; GPL is certainly better than a license prohibiting commercial use.

Genuinely curious: have there been any best-selling AAA games released under an open-source license of any kind since Quake 2 was GPL'd? It feels like a huge outlier that any release at all was agreed to, never mind quibbling over which license it picked.

quake 3 :p

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#222

Post by yosamino »

vsw02 wrote: post #181
yosamino wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Developers are users too. They use code. The whole point of the GPL is that the reverse is true as well. If I - the user of the software - wants to become a developer of this software I can only do so if I have access to the source code. That is not "mandating behaviour", if you are the original developer of a piece of software, you are free to take it closed source any time you wish. If you benefitted from having…

You have not understood my point at all. If you think I feel attacked in response to a comment laboriously explaining why two sides have been locked in pointless battle for decades, you’ve taken a point of view from me that simply doesn’t exist. The conclusion you’re drawing, particularly that I have any interest in denying someone rights or that my criticism of GPL implies a wish to harm others’ freedoms, is interes…

I apologize for misunderstanding you. I read you writing of commanding less respect as a developer and being "the second class in this picture" as feeling attacked.

If I am honest, I did not understand your point, then. Your start-off was that the GPL segments between users and developers and disagreeing with that.

What I tried to offer as a counterpoint, is that the GPL does not actually segment between the two, it just mandates that this non-segmentation be conferred at every new iteration of distribution.

What you call "permissive" then is only permissive in the short term, because it precisely introduces this segmentation between users and developers in the long term. If you look at this as a tree structure, it's permissive only to your immediate children, because you are granting them the right to take away this precise freedom from your grandchildren, thus introducing the separation between users and developers.

Or in GNU speak: you are allowing your user/developes to take away their users's freedom 1 and 3, so since there are four freedoms, I will claim that this is at least half the point of the GPL.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#223

Post by drran »

trasz wrote: post #183
drran wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPL prevents this from happening by requiring your competitor to open the code under the same license. For example, Oracle tried to outcompete RedHat by cloning the RedHat Linux into Oracle Unbreakable Linux.

So, without GPL, how would Oracle render RedHat useless with telemetry? And why didn't it prevent the Audacity drama?

> So, without GPL, how would Oracle render RedHat useless with telemetry?

I cannot understand your question.

> And why didn't it prevent the Audacity drama?

It does. See https://github.com/temporary-audacity/audacity

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#224

Post by malka »

PoignardAzur wrote: post #156

I'm very frustrated by some of the answers here and on Twitter. Carmack says: > The GPL virality wound up being a net negative, and more value would have come from BSD. [...] The best aspects of GPL work didn't manifest, but tons of opportunities to just copy-paste-modify were lost due to license concerns. One of the answers on Twitter: > Then what if it's being exploited by big techs and make your work proprietary?…

Carmack works for Facebook. The fact that he is unhappy with GPL is a feature, not a problem.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#225

Post by claudiawerner »

_delirium wrote: post #36
toast0 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He also said in the thread that his partners wouldn't have gone for it, so he may have thought BSD was better back then too, but went with what he could do. Releasing the engine code at all was a big deal back then, and inspired some others to do so, but others sometimes had more restrictive than GPL licenses; GPL is certainly better than a license prohibiting commercial use.

Genuinely curious: have there been any best-selling AAA games released under an open-source license of any kind since Quake 2 was GPL'd? It feels like a huge outlier that any release at all was agreed to, never mind quibbling over which license it picked.

Does Return to Castle Wolfenstein count as a best-seller or a AAA game?

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#226

Post by malka »

PoignardAzur wrote: post #164
malka wrote: post #120

> "but tons of opportunities to just copy-paste-modify were lost due to license concerns". Well, that's the point. GPL is working as intented.

I don't see how. Working as intended would be "And then the gamedev landscape is dominated by open-source tools because you can't make closed-source tools in-house without giving up on the ecosystem." This is very much not the case today, the market is dominated by closed-source engines (sorry Godot). Seeing as that scenario didn't come to pass, the only result is a net loss of games that could have been made (or mad…

I m sure it is a net loss for people who could have benefited from free work indeed.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#227

Post by pjmlp »

trasz wrote: post #188
pjmlp wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playstation OS is based on FreeBSD, there is nothing to upstream into Linux. If you want to talk GNU/Linux, then we can switch to Android and ChromeOS, which have indeed done several contributions, in fact many of those left out weren't accepted.

So, as you can see, there's nothing to gain from GPL in this scenario: the choice is between Sony not upstreaming their changes because they don't want to (BSD), or not upstreaming their changes because they couldn't use your code in the first place (GPL). With Android, Google wanted to give their changes back, so they were able to use GPL-ed code. They would give the changes back without GPL too. You can see that wi…

Nope, you are missing the whole picture in order to frame your argumentation.

Several Google contributions were taken, just not 100%.

One notable contribution was cleaning up the kernel from all VLAs, the fortifications of several modules, some cleaning outcomes from clang compilation support.

Or the ongoing efforts to allow Rust drivers.

With Sony there were 0%.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#228

Post by simion314 »

drran wrote: post #200
simion314 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>your project, your project automatically has to become GPL licensed, whether you want and realize or not. This is not exactly true, GPL is not magic that automatically re-licenses your code behind your back. What actually happens is your are in violation of the GPL , one way to solve the violation is that you re-license your code (so you have to do it, it is not happening behind your back automatically). I am not aw…

Few cases are listed here: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Migrated/GPL%20Enforcement%20Cases .

But from a quick check those are the reverse of the OP implication, in this cases someone takes a big GPL project and inserts a small proprietary thing on top , I would like to see an example where someone had a bit proprietary project, a dev inserted 5 lines GPL code and a judge forced them to GPL everything.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#229

Post by scrollaway »

malka wrote: post #224
PoignardAzur wrote: post #156

I'm very frustrated by some of the answers here and on Twitter. Carmack says: > The GPL virality wound up being a net negative, and more value would have come from BSD. [...] The best aspects of GPL work didn't manifest, but tons of opportunities to just copy-paste-modify were lost due to license concerns. One of the answers on Twitter: > Then what if it's being exploited by big techs and make your work proprietary?…

Carmack works for Facebook. The fact that he is unhappy with GPL is a feature, not a problem.

You're doing pretty much what the GP calls out.

The kindest reading of your comment is that you absolutely don't understand who Carmack is. Understandable; "Industry veteran" is quite the understatement, after all. But maybe don't start immediately assigning employer intent to people who have field experience on what their licensing decisions from long before their current employment led to.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#230

Post by ClumsyPilot »

elevader wrote: post #157
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"there is probably the option of negotiating a different license for your use." I feel most people don't understand that their projects are unbillable and "negotiating" is not an option. If you project is avaliable through AWS/GCP console I could "pay" at my discresion. If there was a clear price and billing details, I can email my boss and get it authorised If something needs to be negotiated, we have to get senior…

I'd guess that most simply don't care as this is really just an issue for the company, not the author. If the project is licensed with MIT/BSD it still isn't really likely that the company will contribute/donate/whatever. So I'd argue that companies not wanting to negotiate doesn't really change anything for >90% of OS projects, they would not gain anything with a more permissive license either.

Companies certainly are to blame, but most OSS projects need support and I want to support them, but they make it impossible.

Why do you want to negotiate? Large corps are burocracies. I can only get mine to donate to a registered charity, is your project one? To pay a bill is easier.

There are few people that have authority to negotiate and their time is expensive. If they spend two hours to "negotiate", they are charging a pile of money the company could have paid you instead.

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