Fwd: [quake3] ioUrT licensing controversy (was Re: Greetings)

[Bruce Kingsbury]

> Quake 3's source was released under the GPL Terms, but the engine is not
> GPL.
>
> You will see this very information by viewing the Technology Download
> section at ID's site. Both quake 1 / 2 include a reference to the GPL'd
> engines, whereas Quake 3 does not..
>
> So what is the real difference here?

Is it possible to distribute the source under GPL, but then claim that
the executables produced by compiling that source are under a more
'permissive' (BSD-style) license? If that was their aim, they should
have released the source under a BSD license. I'm fairly sure that no
possible reading of the GPL allows such a situation!

 ID can certainly dual-license their code; release a free GPL version
and sell a $10,000 executable-only license.

I think the license situation is very similar to that of nVidia's
drivers.. they're closed source and OS-independent, and for Linux they
come with a GPL-compatible wrapper-layer. While perhaps technically
not violating the word of the GPL, this arrangement violates the
spirit of it. I'm surprised iD don't step in and ask that UrT
developers properly honor the GPL, or pay for the right to distribute
a non-Free standalone game.