ioUrT licensing controversy (was Re: Greetings)

[Tim Angus]

On Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:57:24 -0600 (MDT) monk at rq3.com wrote:
> 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.

ioUrT and UrT are distributed together thereby forming a single
product. This is the issue. ioUrT elects UrT as its BASEGAME. Trivial
as this is, it indicates the intention that ioUrt is dependent upon
UrT, but that is already obvious as they are part of the same product.

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

Any Q3 mod is forced to one of two licenses, the Q3 SDK license or GPL.
These are the options that the copyright holder (id) has gifted us. You
are correct that no one can force UrT to go GPL, assuming it remains a
mod. However, distributing it together as a single product with intended
dependencies means it is no longer simply a mod, but a standalone
product. In this case the GPL rules all.

> [from the 10 emails after this one, not this specific email]

Hehe, I think you're the last person who should be criticising my
verbosity ;)

> 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.

No, that would be absurd. However, if the Q4 remake was then
distributed with a closed source mod as a single product, the closed
mod would need to use a GPL compatible license.

> 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?

That's a side issue really; the BASEGAME thing is just an indication of
intent, albeit an important one wrt the GPL. The major problem in my
mind is distributing ioUrT and UrT as one product. If they were separate
as with an earlier release, we would be more comfortable.