Reactions about 'Official stance on how ...'

[lurker]

I'm not talking about SD at all here, I'm talking about making a mutator of a free pure to turn it into commercial pure, using only your gpl code updates.

[Argh]

Well, no, I wouldn't want that. But if the only difference between them is some code, then I guess I deserve whatever happens. It's like releasing a demo for a game, that's actually the complete game, but with a switch in a text-file that you can easily turn off. Sure, it's violating your EULA, but how are you supposed to deal with it, if the engine CRC, etc., are all the same?

So long as people desync when they try to play the "demo" and the "retail" version together, no matter what code they load, I don't really care, tbh. I know Spring's check is really weak, and so that may mean they just need a file with the right name or whatever to pass, but there's very little I can do, besides hope that somebody gets that fixed at some point.

[lurker]

If they have the same content and the same code after archives combine the sync should match, shouldn't it?

[Argh]

Yes, they should. IDK if it actually works that way, though. I haven't tried syncing a "mutator" with a version where the code has all been shoveled into the "official"- I would have thought that the presence of modinfo.tdf / lua would be enough to cause desync, tbh. But if "demo" and "retail" have identical content, there's pretty much nothing I can do about whether they sync. Not worried about that- if people are releasing the bits that differ, to make them sync again, then that's just straight piracy, and if caught, then there's the usual hell to pay. I suspect, gamers being what they are, if there's going to be any serious piracy it'll be torrents of the full game including the installer and everything else, though, or at least the complete SDZs.

Most people are too lazy to hand-assemble a "kit" that would make them have the official version of something, though. It's probably not even worth bothering about.

[lurker]

They desync; spring isn't smart enough to handle it. That's where the crc32 engineering comes in, to get the identical files to actually work identically.

[SwiftSpear]

The only problem I see here is that if people build commercially valuable code, they may become extremely reluctant to ever release it at all. That said, if they don't, they can't build anything other than private demos, so perhaps that isn't terribly important, except in the realm of shaders and other areas where the GLSL code concerned is more easily portable. I think that's just a tradeoff that must be accepted, though.

That problem is universal to GPL. And honestly, it's not so much a problem as it is philosophy. The commercially valuable code is the code that in all honesty SHOULD be being GPLed. It's like a charity organization saying "I was supposed to buy these starving people food but food was expensive so I bought them nails instead". They are investing something of value because they believe it is the right thing to do, even when a valueless alternative might be easier.

I personally believe that all costless copyable medium should be free, code, music, art, games, whatever. I'm aware that not everyone agrees with me there, but that's my philosophy and I have good reasons for forming that opinion. The argument isn't so much weather I'm right or wrong, ultimately, it's a matter of opinion, and in regards to this project our stance had been effectively decided for us long before I, or really any others of us, had gotten here. There's really not much point in arguing that point now.

[Argh]

That problem is universal to GPL. And honestly, it's not so much a problem as it is philosophy. The commercially valuable code is the code that in all honesty SHOULD be being GPLed.

Meh. People gotta eat. Same with "all art should be free". If all art is free, no good art gets made. Even the Communists paid their artists pretty well.

SJ gave Spring away under the GPL mainly because I don't think he thought he could take it commercial. Dunno, it's always been a bit of a mystery to me, and he's never talked about it since.

Me and a few other people begged him to do so at the time. I didn't start that one, but I was certainly there.

If I'd known what horrors would result, I'd have asked for LGPL instead. Just like if I'd known better, maybe I wouldn't have proposed Lua as the secondary scripting language, back in the Dark Ages. But I don't have a time machine.

[SwiftSpear]

Like I say, complicated issue that really more deserves to be in a philosophy textbook than a forum thread.

[lurker]

Patronage. And for software, you have people and companies improving the things they use themselves.

So, argh, what's bad about lua?

[smoth]

I am happy we have an official word, hopefully it will cut down if not end those stupid gpl threads.

[Argh]

So, argh, what's bad about lua?

Not much, now that I have half a clue. I suspect I would have been happier with something more like C, though, it took me a lot longer to figure it out than I expected, mainly because of struggles with tables. Not a biggie at this point. I just asked for it because DoW was using it and I figured that it was the future. Probably the right call, I'm sure we've picked up people who had some experience with WC III... but we'll never know whether we could have created something different.

[==Troy==]

If you agree, then why are you crapping all over the other thread?

author don't give permission to manipulate it.. i mean, is possible that none notice that an ammo limit to the gundam bot was the perfect way (at least in my newbie opinion) to give
the game the real appeal of zaku vs mobile suit war..

Was the question.

My answer was :

Yes you can modify the code, since it is under GPL, and you can ignore the license of gundam. (if it was not GPL)
No it does not mean that you can modify artwork or use the artwork for your modification.



How does that NOT comply with the current statement Tobi made?

[Argh]

That's completely in line with what Tobi said. However, I read the rest of that thread, and it looked like there was a fair amount of confusion about what you actually meant, because of the "do whatever you want to" part.

Heck, Lurker and I had to exchange, what? 8 posts to make my feelings about the minor wrinkles clear- and stuff like "why aren't you using the torrent system", "what is your stance about using modified source to change the behavior of your official releases" are minor issues compared to the big ones- i.e., who really controls our content, can we sell things we make with this engine, can people modify our work and pass it off as their own, etc., etc.

At any rate, I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't get Smoth riled up again, he's almost as awful as I am when he's pissed.

[==Troy==]

Well, being new to this community I have to apologize for my unclear wording of the posts, but as I have replied above, that was the only thing that I meant, and I always explicitly stated in my replies that artwork is not included into my statement.


As for the Tobi's announcement, I would like to support the decision by giving a popular example, Quake 3 game. For those who are not familiar with the engine :

The idtech3, engine of the Quake 3 game, was released under GPL license.

The engine itself uses Quake Virtual Machine, which is a binary VM used by the engine to follow such things as world rules (i.e. main properties and rules of the world, the actual functions such as collision detection are engine-side). Most of the modifications only use the QVM files to change the gameplay and rarely touch the engine code.

Bearing that in mind. Even if only QVM code has been changed, it HAS to be released under GPL, due to the engine being licensed under GPL.

As for the artwork and models, IdSoftware still has proprietary rights for them and they were never affected by the GPL licensing of the engine.

Taking in account that IdSoftware is quite well known company and surely does have experience with GPL (they have a habit of releasing their engines under GPL after they loose commercial value) I am pretty sure that the current decision is quite stable.

[Argh]

Well, being new to this community I have to apologize for my unclear wording of the posts, but as I have replied above, that was the only thing that I meant, and I always explicitly stated in my replies that artwork is not included into my statement.

I know, I read it. It's just that people get real, real twitchy about this stuff, because we've had a few people who have seriously tried to advance the proposition that anything that runs in Spring is entirely fair game. That's a minority opinion, but it exists.

Taking in account that IdSoftware is quite well known company and surely does have experience with GPL (they have a habit of releasing their engines under GPL after they loose commercial value) I am pretty sure that the current decision is quite stable.

Well, it's an untested set of assumptions, and in Id's case, they owned everything. Moreover, they only GPL the engine when it's basically worthless, whereas Spring's actual value as a codebase is increasing, not decreasing, as more and more advanced stuff gets done (like a few things I've been doing but don't have Done enough to show yet). That's part of why it's a high-energy issue around here.

[smoth]

*edits*Godamnit I cannot make fucking sense at all I am talking with troy about it in pm. I would like to just forget that stuff ever happened, please let it die.*edit*

[souledge]

If the code of a mod e.g. PURE is GPL, if I modify the code I cannot distribute the mod without distributing the artwork. The code and artwork is so intertwined that its probably why people say artwork could be under gpl. Yes mutators make this possible, but it is simply not the same.

What should happen is that content and code are stored in different places and not in the same archive. This way you can modify and distribute mod code without issues. Another advantage of this is that the download size of mods like BA would go down significantly - The same BA models/artwork being downloaded again and again with each version is so pointless, if they were installed to a directory and only the needed file changes were made, most mod updates would be of a tiny size compared to now.

[smoth]

as far as gpl and quake are concerned. Our projects do not really do much with the engine code beyond cob and lua interaction. Unlike quake3 where I would be compiling and using dlls or something similar. We are not even like a mod of the game as there is no spring game. As I mentioned in the thread, gundam was created before spring was around. I develop it as a game in this engine but the only changes or direct things done to the engine was 1 patch I submitted. even then I was left with a sour taste and still refuse to patch the engine because of it. Instead preferring to just leave it alone.

unlike a quake project we all use the same engine source and the projects use the same lobby, I think that is a strength of the current setup most projects with some amount of work can actually be pitted against each other. Once upon a time, fang, deci and myself made an EE/Gundam mutator which allowed you to play gundam versus ee, it was kinda fun. Anyway because we are all in the same lot there is a lot of working together and sharing. Some more than others but it is very much a community, I think argh and I are the two most bitter rivals here but we are more civil that I have seen on most game engine groups. Trust me we really do go for blood sometimes.

saying all that I still, dislike the culture on this board and still don't like the presence of the ta content. Ca is working on that though, so there is a ray of hope for the *a players!

I just don't think that quake is the same situation. Spring is kinda like a platform in a way, and to use my earlier pun the lobby is a sort of springboard to get our projects out there where there are players.



Souledge: no. Art is not gpl, the gpl it's self says no this doesn't cover art. The code and art are not so intertwined, I can take pure and replace the models with my own, for the scripts to work I just need to have the same piecenames. Please don't go and make speculatory posts as facts.

No the art should not be a separate package because unlike ba we are always making new art not still using the same stolen content. It isn't even a thought out comparison. We distribute the shit fine, I can have a (C), gpl, cc, pd all in the same archive.

[souledge]

Souledge: no. Art is not gpl, the gpl it's self says no this doesn't cover art. The code and art are not so intertwined, I can take pure and replace the models with my own, for the scripts to work I just need to have the same piecenames. Please don't go and make speculatory posts as facts.

No the art should not be a separate package because unlike ba we are always making new art not still using the same stolen content. It isn't even a thought out comparison. We distribute the shit fine, I can have a (C), gpl, cc, pd all in the same archive.

You can replace the models with your own, that wasn't my point. My point was if I change unit balance in PURE, I cannot distribute the mod. I can turn it into a mutator, but that is not the same thing. The art and code are in the same mod archive, and therefore you cannot distribute a change of code without distributing the art.

Art doesn't need to be in a separate package. it could be in the same package, it should be stored separately though. For example a content folder inside the current mod folder. Inside the content folder there can be folders for the art/models of each mod. Adding art is trivial, just check which files you have and download any file changes.

[smoth]

your mutator does not need the art.