Carrying the football ...

Post by **FrikaC** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 9:04 am

Baker wrote:Not to promote a probably overly technical conversation, but the shareware license agreement is also dated June 21, 1996 and forbids a great deal of things that if interpreted narrowly, would forbid projects like Nexuiz that run custom maps.

None of it applies to Nexuiz, because Nexuiz has no Quake content whatsoever.

Some of the license agreement is superceded by the GPL release for sure, while other parts, I feel, are superceded by the letter by John Carmack explaining the intent and limitations of the release

John Carmack is not a lawyer and his comments are not legally binding. The terms of the GPL release only apply to the content included with the GPL release.

I mean, the drivers and DLLs and some of the other fun things required to make Quake work weren't GPL'd so I'd think technically a great many derivative projects like Transfusion can't meet that standard. At least as far as I know.

Transfusion and Nexuiz both use LordHavoc's Darkplaces engine which has rid itself of all non GPL libraries. In fact, as LordHavoc is fond of pointing out, you can copy DarkPlaces to a folder by itself and run it with no dlls or content whatesoever. Prior to the latest build it would start up in the game console. For some reason the latest build forces you to the menu, and with no graphics (just little checkerboard images indicating missing textures) indicating what the menu options are, it's somewhat difficult to navigate.

Baker · Post by **Baker** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 9:40 am

I didn't know that about DarkPlaces. Now I can understand some more about why it is so highly regarded, especially by modders. That it is very clean.

We have made efforts to make FreeQuake clean and legal, and as far as the files go they are all distributed in one shape or form elsewhere, with the except of the shareware installer, which, we did make make.

PlanetQuake ran a news item on it when it was first released last year and up until this conversation, none of the thoughts you've expressed here had ever even crossed my mind.

It has always been a point of pride, until maybe the last couple of hours, how legal and clean our project is and the fact that we have bent over backwards to keep it purely legal.

Skulltag:

http://www.skulltag.com/

I'll have to spend some time thinking about this. There are several other very public projects of a similar nature for other games that operate openly like we do. I'll have to do a compare and contrast and see what is considered acceptable vs. not.

I feel my interpretation of the GPL in combination with the Carmack letter is correct. At least I was sure, until today.

I spend some time thinking about it and see how I feel in a couple of days.

Either way, this has been a higher quality conversation that I have had in a while and at least you guys aren't still sulking about the Quake is dying thread

Thank you for the help with the trivial QuakeC modification I needed some assistance with. I'll probably be back for more when I get some other simple ideas.

Post by **FrikaC** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 9:52 am

You may also find that modders don't particular like or follow PlanetQuake, there was a major falling out at one point. I personally almost never visit the site...

Post by **FrikaC** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 10:09 am

Baker wrote: ... or your clone of "Qake" .. hehe.
Just kidding around

Qake is mostly in the clear. All content in it is stuff I drew, recorded or programmed myself, excluding the midi. No id trademarks or logos are used. The only thing questionable is the nails sprite has the letters NIN with a second backwards N like the Nine Inch Nails trademark and the midi files are recompositions of Nine Inch Nails songs. I intend to rectify these legal problems in subsequent releases.

Baker · Post by **Baker** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 10:23 am

That was a joke, notice the smiley face

The only thing questionable is the nails sprite has the letters NIN with a second backwards N like the Nine Inch Nails trademark and the midi files are recompositions of Nine Inch Nails songs. I intend to rectify these legal problems in subsequent releases.

Well, just don't get to preoccupied with that. I'm sure they didn't invent the backwards "N".

Methinks it is more likely that the Earth will get struck by a meteor or a planetary sized giant can of soda, for that matter, than for someone to worry about the backwards"N".

Post by **FrikaC** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 10:56 am

No I must stop ze legal Geshtapo! Btw, be sure to read Qake's license.

leileilol · Post by **leileilol** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 5:46 pm

I don't know where that Skulltag reference came from and what your point of that is, but that has a small community and requires Doom2.wad to run, and it also runs with Freedoom (which is better than OpenQuartz imo)

Lardarse · Post by **Lardarse** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 8:48 pm

OpenQuartz isn't all bad... Some of the models in there are good.

It just so happens that none of the good models are monsters...

leileilol · Post by **leileilol** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 11:48 pm

and the start.bsp included gives a very bad impression, everyone who complains about openquartz always at least mention the trees.

MauveBib · Post by **MauveBib** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 11:32 am

CheapAlert wrote:and the start.bsp included gives a very bad impression, everyone who complains about openquartz always at least mention the trees.

I made some GPL trees for DiD2, if whoever made openquartz wants to use them they can. http://www.planetquake.com/elf/trees.zip

The skinmaps are a bit of a joke though.

Post by **FrikaC** » Tue May 15, 2007 3:44 am

I don't believe in trees.

leileilol · Post by **leileilol** » Tue May 15, 2007 4:11 am

Trees are treerific, but zombie trees are anything but