Reactions about 'Official stance on how ...'

[FLOZi]

your mutator does not need the art.

He's not suggesting it does.

(Though I agree with you that his argument is nonsense)

[smoth]

I don't know his deal is....

[FLOZi]

His point appears to be that if he makes a code change, he has to release it as a mutator, which means he is not distributing the mod (or would have to distribute the mod and the mutator).

Also the point about art and code being in the same archive is moot - if you are willing to accept them in the same 'package' view the archive as the package and the sub directories in the archive as seperating the art and code. In the virtual file system it is Spring/objects3d/my_CCSA_model.s3o and Spring/luarules/gadgets/my_gpled_code.lua anyway.

[SwiftSpear]

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.

Yes, you do not have the right to redistribute any mod on the engine under the GPL licence. Many of them rely on works that are not licensed under open licenses. Basically, you must regard and respect the licenses the authors have put in place for their mod/games whatever they may be. Many mods have released all their art and other content under GPL compliant licenses, so you're free to use those mods however you please.

[Tobi]

As is stated in my post we don't consider a mod a 'single work' in terms of the GPL.

So it makes no difference whatsoever whether the multiple (independent) works are actually together in the same archive or spread out over multiple archives depending on each other.

[souledge]

His point appears to be that if he makes a code change, he has to release it as a mutator, which means he is not distributing the mod (or would have to distribute the mod and the mutator)..

correct.

Also the point about art and code being in the same archive is moot - if you are willing to accept them in the same 'package' view the archive as the package and the sub directories in the archive as seperating the art and code. In the virtual file system it is Spring/objects3d/my_CCSA_model.s3o and Spring/luarules/gadgets/my_gpled_code.lua anyway.

I realise they are separate in the archive itself. They are packaged together in the same file though. I just think the separation should be more explicit. The idea also would help the fact that my mods directory is just over 1.3 gb and I'm willing to bet I could easily turn that into <200mb if models/textures/etc were shared between different versions of the same mods.

[==Troy==]

Smoth, the quake 3 engine is not a game either.

idtech 3 - game engine
QVM - game virtual machine, used by the engine through interface

Yes you do have to compile QVM, but it is really irrelevant in the sence that it makes no difference if it was an interpreter instead, it will just work a lot slower.

From this point of view, the situation is EXACTLY the same. The reason why noone touches spring engine is due to many reasons. But in reality a stand-alone release of any of the modifications as a separate game will allow the author to easily change any engine quirks he wants, as well as code the LUA part of the modification.

Both QVM and LUA are restricted to user's directories, both QVM and LUA are read by the engine, and both of them mainly govern the behaviour of the mod. You only change the engine in idtech3 if you want to put in new netwoking/etc features. Which is true for spring as well.

[SwiftSpear]

Smoth, the quake 3 engine is not a game either.

idtech 3 - game engine
QVM - game virtual machine, used by the engine through interface

Yes you do have to compile QVM, but it is really irrelevant in the sence that it makes no difference if it was an interpreter instead, it will just work a lot slower.

From this point of view, the situation is EXACTLY the same. The reason why noone touches spring engine is due to many reasons. But in reality a stand-alone release of any of the modifications as a separate game will allow the author to easily change any engine quirks he wants, as well as code the LUA part of the modification.

Both QVM and LUA are restricted to user's directories, both QVM and LUA are read by the engine, and both of them mainly govern the behaviour of the mod. You only change the engine in idtech3 if you want to put in new netwoking/etc features. Which is true for spring as well.

It makes a difference because you're linking to a GPL .dll file in your main code body.

Open office.org for example, is a GPL work suit, however, you can work with .doc format files in it, without GPL infecting your .docs, because they are not compiled code, and they are not linking to the GPL libraries. Spring modding files work very similarly.

LUA in spring IS linking to the engine, Cob in spring is being compiled by a GPL library. Those, used in modding, must be GPLed. The rest of the modding content doesn't necessarily need to be under a GPL, or any open license.

[smoth]

just saying that spring projects do not need to compile the quake engine exe we just used the provided spring one and let it make calls to our stuff. and use our stuff. I am probably explaining it poorly in my haste.

[smoth]

The idea also would help the fact that my mods directory is just over 1.3 gb and I'm willing to bet I could easily turn that into <200mb if models/textures/etc were shared between different versions of the same mods.

The core files change too often.

[==Troy==]

quake QVM is not linking to any GPL .dll, it is directly used by the engine, and even if you re-write complete QVM, it is still to be GPLed, and smoth, you do not need to re-compile the idtech3, all you need is to compile your QVM, which can be and is done separately from compiling the engine.

[smoth]

Neat I was thinking about it wrong I guess.

[dizekat]

Hmm...
What's about proprietary OpenGL driver? Spring loads and dynamically links to opengl driver (libGL.so on linux, opengl32.dll on windows) which is not even open source on my system. Am I violating GPL by having spring to link with non-GPL code?

Suppose I release a widget under gpl-incompatible license. It is a text file. It does not contain any piece of Spring engine, it does NOT link to anything, it does not even contain instructions for loading and linking with spring. It can be used without spring, for educational purposes/learning LUA/whatever. Maybe, i'm releasing it so that someone can read it and reimplement same thing in supcom.
Most definitely, such release does not violate GPL. And most definitely, the fact that lua code can be used with spring (or that anything placed in widgets folder with extension .lua get loaded and linked with spring) does not make all lua code be GPL.

[lurker]

There's a reason the post says 'most'. We had an nice discussion.

[AF]

Same is true of C++ code that's released as source.

Anyways this is what happens with GPL argument threads now that the head has been cut off the chicken.

Sure we can still argue and attempt to address the gpl issue but theres no point because by declaring the official point of view as should have been done a long time ago, the developers have in a sense 'claimed responsibility' because we can now blame any legal misinterpretation on the advice and standpoint of the spring developers. The developers in turn have the benefit that they can issue an exemption should they ever encounter such legalities, however unlikely they are.

So now your turning to minutae which are already dealt with by tobis announcement, and even mentioning other engines.

Hopefully now we can all see how stupid these GPL arguements are because they're not really about GPL at all but rather the need to argue about something, and here we are arguing about something thats already been dealt with without directly mentioning it

[SwiftSpear]

Woot!

[Argh]

LOL. Well, I dunno if we're at the "facepalm" stage yet. We're just discussing the practical ramifications. There are a lot of little wrinkles after all.


On the issue of physically separate content... i.e., two files, side-by-side, one code, one content... I'm not really opposed to doing that, just as a demo of "best practices" etc., but until .SDDs can load .SDDs via dependencies (and sync, for MP testing in-house) I can't really justify the maintenance costs.

I change models, skins, etc., on a regular-enough basis that having to zip it up again, after minor tweaking, would be a very big hassle. It's not like things get added, then never change. Stuff changes daily. I've re-zipped World Builder at least 6 times today.

I've been having to do that with World Builder for the better part of a year, and I don't want to do it with P.U.R.E.'s core, just to make it easier for somebody to know what's GPL and what's not.

I wish that would get fixed on the engine side, it's a major time-suction device.

[lurker]

You do realize you can put any checksum you want in archivecache, right? Or they don't work at all; if so what happens?

[Argh]

No, I didn't know that. Still, if you think I want to have to mess with ArchiveCache on a regular basis, when I usually have to wipe it out completely once a week because of major changes that aren't getting read entirely right... you're wrong

So... I'll try it, but I don't like it. It should just load .SDDs if your dependency line calls for it, period, and treat that directory as if it's a zip that's already been decompressed. I know it's not that simple, I know that the VFS isn't fun.

Just saying... it takes maybe 20-30 seconds, to "zip" a 128MB file (just about exactly WB's size these days, uncompressed) using no compression, just so that Spring thinks it's a SDZ. And some days, I have to do it 20-30 times. It's hard on my drives, if nothing else. Really hard on my patience.

[lurker]

The reason you have to wipe is is the same as you can open and edit it. It doesn't rehash unless the date of the folder itself changes.
Also compare (20-30)^2 vs. changing the checksums once a week.