[Zagro]

I noticed eduke32 uses QuickLZ, also inside BUILD licensed files. This looks a violation of their GPL license, unless you buy a QuickLZ license (but I didn't see notes about this in eduke32 tree, also it's not clear how such license would cover redistribution (e.g. Linux distribution packages) or derived games), or relicense BUILD licensed files to GPL (probably not easy, I suppose, unless all contributors including Ken Silverman agree).

[Hank]

Zagro, on 30 December 2012 - 02:12 AM, said:

I noticed eduke32 uses QuickLZ, also inside BUILD licensed files. This looks a violation of their GPL license, unless you buy a QuickLZ license (but I didn't see notes about this in eduke32 tree, also it's not clear how such license would cover redistribution (e.g. Linux distribution packages) or derived games), or relicense BUILD licensed files to GPL (probably not easy, I suppose, unless all contributors including Ken Silverman agree).

What?

Please be definitive about your accusation - what makes you think Build is not Open Source?

[Zagro]

Hank, on 30 December 2012 - 02:57 AM, said:

What?

Please be definitive about your accusation - what makes you think Build is not Open Source?

Uh?

Well, for sure BUILD is not open source:
from BUILDLIC:

Quote

[3] Distribution of any derivative works MUST be done completely FREE of
charge - no commercial exploitation whatsoever.

while from the Open Source Definition:

Quote

1. Free Redistribution

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

This is only a single point, I can see other point for BUILD being not open source.


But that's not the point of this post. The point is this:

Quote

Q: If a library is released under the GPL (not the LGPL), does that mean that any software which uses it has to be under the GPL or a GPL-compatible license?
A: Yes, because the software as it is actually run includes the library.

Here "the GPL library" is QuickLZ, while BUILD is not GPL compatible (and neither open source).

[Hank]

Zagro, on 30 December 2012 - 03:52 AM, said:

Well, for sure BUILD is not open source:

Yes, it is, under the specifics of Ken Silverman's clauses, not GPLs. Case closed.

Anyone can open his programs to the public, one does not have to use the GPL umbrella to do so.

[TerminX]

Quote

Delivered-To: terminx@gmail.com
Received: by 10.231.33.198 with SMTP id i6cs133961ibd;
Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:14:33 -0800 (PST)
Received: by 10.213.103.130 with SMTP id k2mr1009229ebo.61.1259320466472;
Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:14:26 -0800 (PST)
Return-Path: <lar@quicklz.com>
Received: from mailout2.surf-town.net (mailout2.surf-town.net [212.97.132.197])
by mx.google.com with ESMTP id 1si11415004ewy.74.2009.11.27.03.14.25;
Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:14:26 -0800 (PST)
Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 212.97.132.197 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of lar@quicklz.com) client-ip=212.97.132.197;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 212.97.132.197 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of lar@quicklz.com) smtp.mail=lar@quicklz.com
Received: from localhost (mailout2 [127.0.0.1])
by mailout2.surf-town.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 84A9A1F64
for <terminx@gmail.com>; Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:14:25 +0100 (CET)
Received: from squirrel-webmail.surftown.com (unknown [212.97.133.1])
by mailout2.surf-town.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id E093B1A4A
for <terminx@gmail.com>; Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:10:36 +0100 (CET)
Received: from 83.94.221.178
(SquirrelMail authenticated user lar@quicklz.com)
by squirrel-webmail.surftown.com with HTTP;
Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:10:36 +0100 (CET)
Message-ID: <94e13c32d57cd54a5dcb3406883a2a58.squirrel@squirrel-webmail.surftown.com>
In-Reply-To: <4B0F9A3F.9050103@gmail.com>
References: <4B0F9A3F.9050103@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:10:36 +0100 (CET)
Subject: Re: Licensing question
From: lar@quicklz.com
To: "Richard C. Gobeille" <terminx@gmail.com>
User-Agent: SquirrelMail/1.4.16
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
Importance: Normal

Hi Richard,

I can allow use in EDuke32 regardless of the conflict you mentioned :-)

Greetings,

Lasse Reinhold - lar@quicklz.com
Developer
www.quicklz.com

> Hi, I program and manage the development team and community for a
> project called EDuke32, which is an open source port of the old DOS game
> Duke Nukem 3D to modern platforms.
>
> I am interested in possibly trying out QuickLZ as a replacement for the
> current LZ compressor I'm using, but I believe there's a licensing
> conflict. As it stands, Duke Nukem 3D was released under version 2 of
> the GPL in 2003; however, Duke Nukem 3D does not build or link or
> anything else without the BUILD engine libraries.
>
> Unfortunately, the BUILD engine libraries were released under a
> proprietary license (http://hrp.duke4.net/BUILDLIC.TXT) which is
> certainly open in nature but not compatible with the GPL. Therefore,
> the whole project is pretty much technically copyright infringement, but
> we have permission from both parties to link the code in question
> together since half of it is completely useless without the other half.
>
> Anyway, QuickLZ would reside in the library that's under BUILDLIC. Is
> this okay or should I look at stuff with a more permissive license? I'm
> using FastLZ now... there's nothing really wrong with it, it just hasn't
> been maintained in a couple of years. MIT license is nice, though.
>
> --
> Richard C. Gobeille
> http://www.eduke32.com
> terminx@gmail.com
>
>

[Hank]

^ can you or someone explain this licencing in plain English? Or this conflict? I still don't see the issue in the first place.

[TerminX]

Well, in this case the main point you should take away from my post is that I anticipated and took care of this licensing conflict more than 3 years ago. The way the licenses are written, it is not legal to link BUILD with GPL code. There is a license exemption for linking against the Duke3D source (since Duke3D is GPL but is useless without BUILD). As my last post shows, there is also a license exemption from the developer of QuickLZ to permit linking it into BUILD since GPL is inherently incompatible with the BUILD license but I wanted to use QuickLZ anyway.

[Zagro]

Nice, maybe you should add the mail in the source tree to avoid future questions.

And anyway this could be an interesting alternative: https://code.google.com/p/lz4/ .

[Hank]

Thank you both, TerminX and Zagro, this was an eye opener

[Hendricks266]

Zagro, on 30 December 2012 - 03:52 AM, said:

Well, for sure BUILD is not open source:
from BUILDLIC:

while from the Open Source Definition:

This is only a single point, I can see other point for BUILD being not open source.

BUILD is absolutely open source: The source code is publicly available for download.

What you may be arguing is that BUILD is not Free Software, with capital letters. That may be true, but whether you call it "Free Software" or "Open Source", the terms boil down to nothing more than an ideological imposition.

[Zagro]

Hendricks266, on 30 December 2012 - 03:18 PM, said:

BUILD is absolutely open source: The source code is publicly available for download.

The availability of the source code is not the only requirement for being open source. From the official opensource FAQ:

Quote

Q: Is <SOME PROGRAM> Open Source?
A: Only if it uses one of the approved licenses, and releases appropriate software.

Q: Can I call my program "Open Source" even if I don't use an approved license?
A: Please don't do that. If you call it "Open Source" without using an approved license, you will confuse people. This is not merely a theoretical concern — we have seen this confusion happen in the past, and it's part of the reason we have a formal license approval process.

Q: Is <SOME LICENSE> an Open Source license, even if it is not listed on your web site?
A: In general, no. We run all licenses through an approval process to provide an accepted standard on which licenses are Open Source, and we list the approved ones. Be dubious of claimed Open Source-ness for licenses that haven't gone through the process.

As I quoted before BUILD explicitly forbids selling the software (no commercial exploitation whatsoever), and this is a clearly violation of the first principle of open source software (The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software). About BUILD it can be only said that the source code is available but not open source.

Quote

What you may be arguing is that BUILD is not Free Software, with capital letters. That may be true, but whether you call it "Free Software" or "Open Source", the terms boil down to nothing more than an ideological imposition.

Yes, free Free Software and Open Source for practical purpose are very similar (FAQ).

Note: as my first work I did a research of open source software usage and compliance for the software a company sold. Not the funniest work, but I learned something useful about software licensing and compliance.