[quake3] Re: Greetings

[monk at rq3.com]

>> As long as UrT, the mod, still works on both vanilla Q3 and on ioq3,
>> there's no reason the mod should fall under the GPL.  If UrT ONLY worked
>> on ioq3, THEN it would have to fall under the GPL.
>
> You've got the dependency backwards here. ioUrT depends on UrT as this
> is its BASEGAME. Since ioUrT is GPL, any libraries on which it depends
> must be GPL compatible. The Q3 mod SDK license, which is used by UrT, is
> not GPL compatible. Therefore it violates the GPL.
>
> Furthermore, said Q3 mod SDK license states that any distributed works
> are for use with "QUAKE III ARENA" only. By inference this means not
> ioq3. Therefore it violates the Q3 mod SDK license.

So to remove this dependency in your mind, ioUrT would have to:

1. Check to see if UrT is installed.  If it is load UrT like it normally
does.
2. If not installed, fallback to some generic ioq3-ish behavior where one
could load any mod via a menu or load the baseq3 content.

That would make the ioUrT part function independently without any manual
dinking around by the end-user, ya?  I have NEVER tried UrT or ioUrT so I
do not know if this is how they already do it or not.

Since UrT the mod already has no dependency to any specific flavor of Q3,
it won't be forced to any license.

Basically, what you seem to be saying [from the 10 emails after this one,
not this specific email] is that if someone is able to reverse-engineer a
library/platform/game and release their code under GPL, any program that
uses that library should be forced to GPL.  The fact that Q3 was released
under multiple licenses (original retail, GPL, and $10,000) does not mean
that a mod which will run on platforms based on all three licenses must be
GPL'ed.  If someone created a ground-up remake of the Quake 4 engine and
released it as GPL, would that force any Quake 4 mod that it could run to
also be GPL'ed?  To me, that seems to be what you're saying.


>> UrT did it pretty much the only way you can do it to remain
>> closed-source and probably the way I would have gone about it if I
>> wanted
>> to keep a mod closed source.
>
> If they were distribtuing UrT and ioUrT as separate entities, they
> probably could get away with it (although the ioUrT dependency on UrT is
> still potentially an issue).

If ioUrT had a solid automatic fallback, I don't see distributing them
together as a problem.  I'm referencing GPL2 only stuff since I believe
that's what id released under.

It seems your entire issue is with how ioUrT is handling UrT.  If ioUrT
didn't require someone to manually set the basegame to use it for
something besides UrT, would you have the same objection to UrT being
closed-source?

Monk.