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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”

#251

Post by MaxBarraclough »

_y5hn wrote: post #234
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?…

Ideology fits pretty well, as the term is used in modern times. In case of Linux, GPL is regarded as a good fit. In case of games, it'd be surprising now, to see GPL as a good fit. Open source and GPL are not used predominantly, thus never disrupted much in that space. However, this is based on a kind of hindsight bias as well. In many ways, Free Software is regarded a means by itself: To keep software Free. So the g…

Right. Carmack's goals are clearly not aligned with those of the FSF. The FSF is perfectly happy for Free software to be of no value to those who develop non-Free Software, indeed they actively prefer it that way, viewing all non-Free software as unethical.

Evidently Carmack would rather the Id source releases be of use to as many developers as possible. As he says though, My partners would never have gone for it, precisely because it would have been valuable to developers of non-Free games, who compete with Id.

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

#252

Post by glandium »

hankman86 wrote: post #154
0dayz wrote: post #150

I think that the issue at hand is that there is no middle ground license that is made for the community and for businesses in mind and instead its either one extreme or the other. Also its really annoying people say gpl is some anti corporation license or a license for the community, since Stallman has been explicitly clear its about giving "freedom" to the end user

Actually there is. The LGPL is sort of a middle ground. It still requires you to share changes that you may make to some library. But it won’t easily infect the rest of your stack, so it’s basically the GPL with the viral bits removed.

The LGPL does impose restrictions that can make things inconvenient. Even for (or, dare I say, especially for) free software under other licenses.

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

#253

Post by nextlevelwizard »

pitkali wrote: post #218
fao_ wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dismissing empirical evidence by clinging to philosophical assertions? Small nitpick -- Carmack's assertions are anecdotal, not empirical.

Aren't anecdotes pieces of empirical evidence?

Calling anything and everything “just anecdotes” is HN’s favorite way of dismissing your arguments.

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

#254

Post by renewiltord »

trasz wrote: post #135
renewiltord wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BSD also prohibits some commercial use.

How?

You need to attribute. So commercial projects that do not want to attribute are not permitted to use the code.

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

#255

Post by jasode »

belorn wrote: post #231
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?…

> The best aspects of GPL work didn't manifest Did someone get sued for downloading a copy of a game with the quake source code in it? Did someone release a game with quake code in it, only to go after users for patent infringement? DRM locked devices built on the quake code? A license is simply the condition for which an author allows others to do things for which copyright law make illegal. There is also a culture…

>A license is simply the condition [...]

I don't think reducing it to that actually helps the discussion.

A license/law/policy can't be analyzed via its bare verbatim text. One also has to look at its unintended effects in the real world. Yes, the GPL license has noble intentions but that doesn't mean it's immune from causing actions that indirectly contradict its goal. (Wikipedia article on that phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive)

A license or law can have a stated positive goal or ideal with the text written for that intention and motivation ... but the complexity of the real world may work also against it.

>Carmack does not explain what he wanted out of the license,

To use framework of "perverse incentive" to interpret his tweets..

He wrote: "The GPL virality wound up being a net negative," and followed up with:

>the best aspects of GPL work didn't manifest, but tons of opportunities to just copy-paste-modify were lost due to license concerns. It is possible that some of the source ports wouldn't have been as open, but I'm pretty sure there would have been more total users of the code, likely making the amount shared in the open still greater. I'm still supportive of lots of GPL work, but I don't think the restrictions helped in this particular case.

So in this particular case, he claims that GPL unintentionally caused less openness instead of more. Seems like a textbook example of Perverse Incentive.

Yes, we could get pedantic and say GPL verbatim text mentions "freedom" instead of "openness". True, but many interpret GPL's copyleft reciprocal nature of "I share my code and you share your changes back" as trying to create source code abundance. Carmack is claiming that in his case, GPL's restrictions unintentionally caused less code to be shared.

One can still disagree with Carmack but it's still worth understanding what he's claiming.

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

#256

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

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?…

> Like, I find it intensely frustrating that, when an industry veteran says "I've heard the pros and cons of each approach and I found that in my real-life experience GPL was a net negative", people answer with a 101 on the philosophy of GPL.

You think that's frustrating, try watching an expert talk about economics.

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

#257

Post by oliwarner »

jbluepolarbear wrote: post #208
oliwarner wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Id engines —as well as many other projects— were dual licensed, GPL or Proprietary. If you wanted to make a game with one, it either had to be GPL too, or you paid for a traditional licence. This got Id paid and let modders and the open source gaming community go wild. What's the downside? Carmack's argument about perception, but his view is really about having had more people use his software. I think he's wrong. Br…

I know a lot of game developers that have never messed with Id tech because of the license, so what Carmack is saying makes sense. Yes I’ve read the Id tech code that’s been released but I’ve never thought for one second to use the code because of the license.

What you're both saying is there is licensing ignorance. People read "open source" ignore the small print, get in trouble. GPL isn't special there, EULAs and enterprise software licenses are horrible, but I can understand the broader point that GPL makes you think, and thinking hurts.

The point I maintain is, in Id's position at the time, a MIT/BSD license would have just cost them their engine business. Their code would have been everywhere, but they'd lose the business case for future open sourcing. The net amount of usage would be way down on what we have today.

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

#259

Post by glogla »

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 has net worth of $50 million. Him saying "exploitation by big tech is not a problem, really" is very different than normal person saying it - his well being is not on the line and never will be.

Go ask authors of ElasticSearch or Airflow or whatever the new thing that AWS steals will be.

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

#260

Post by prox »

belorn wrote: post #68
pjmlp wrote: post #40

This part of Carmacks tweets really touches home, > I touched on that recently with the comment about open source culture and game dev; One thing I learned the hard way is how game dev is all about IP, creating business oppportunities, publishing deals, getting the game into the hands of as many kids as possible (while being able to keep paying for the mortgage), whatever APIs get used is a very tiny detail of the wh…

I have made a similar observation in the past. Game development is such a extremely high competitive area that any legal method to save time and use someone else code will be used unless it breaks the core business model. Delaying a release of a game by a few months because developers are re-implementing a xlm parser is not an option. If I remember right, Starcraft 2 by Blizzard uses LGPLv3 code, and the software cre…

What are the implications if you use an engine like Unity or Unreal, since you build upon an existing framework?
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