Nexuiz re-make on the 360

[xav1r]

I didnt understand a single thing that above post says. I think they are using these "copyright" assignment and transfer talk and not mentioning that they cannot use GPL code and just cheerfully close it and turn it propietary. It really saddens me to see people like Paul ‘Echon’ Jackson, the guy who made the quake engine port EGL, Forest ‘LordHavoc’ Hale, Dark Places guy, and Chris Holden, on board with this dubious Illfonic people.

Illfonic is already pulling their strings they have with Lord Havoc to close threads about this on Alien Trap's own forum as shown here: www.alientrap.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6043. And art assets too, I dont think they got the all clear from every contributor of every art asset made for nexuiz that they are going to include in this console release.

They mention too that they got a "DarkPlaces license". Can Lord Havoc do that at all? Isnt DarkPlaces a derived port of the GPL'ed quake 1 engine?

[BlackStar]

Wait a moment, why is this development sad? What's so bad about the developers deciding to make some money after working their asses out for free, year after year? It's not as if the new port will render us unable to able to play the game we all know and love!

What we have here is a new game, with different art assets and similar mechanics, targeting a different, completely proprietary platform. Why do current players feel they are somehow affected by this is beyond me. (Or have you actually forked your money to Microsoft for an Xbox? Sorry, but you don't get to gripe about the non-GPL license then).

Best of luck to them, I say.

[mugginz]

Wait a moment, why is this development sad? What's so bad about the developers deciding to make some money after working their asses out for free...

Well the development isn't sad if they're not using community contributed code and assets.

I certainly wouldn't want to have code that I contributed to the project become the property of someone else without my say so. I don't know if this is happening, but if anything like it was to then I'm sure there'll be a bit of a backlash to say the least.

[yotambien]

But that is not what happened. What in principle should be good news is, for some reason, perceived as an insult to 'the community'. The guy from Illfonic sounded perfectly reasonable and wasted his time trying to explain what the situation was. In return he got more of the same whining, insults and threats to give bad publicity to his project. And what is 'the community' bitching about? Well, they don't sound very coherent, apparently they demand Illfonic to adopt a different name (even suggesting that it should be 'the community' to decide it) and to have an equal clicking area in Illfonic's web site...Yeah, we're getting pretty serious now. Oh, and they want stuff back (from where, one would ask?). Engine improvements are not enough, apparently, they'd like art assests too (so they can mix and match ala OpenArena I presume?).

Whatever, I hope the game does well.

[BlackStar]

I certainly wouldn't want to have code that I contributed to the project become the property of someone else without my say so. I don't know if this is happening, but if anything like it was to then I'm sure there'll be a bit of a backlash to say the least.

As someone who has had his MIT/X11-licensed code integrated into a proprietary, closed-source offering (by a major Linux player, no less), all I can say is... this isn't always bad. The increased project visibility and/or code contributions may be worth it (keyword: may).

Then again, GPL explicitly prevents this "attack vector", by not allowing relicensing under closed-source terms. Which means one of four things may have happened here: (a) the core Nexuiz devs required all contributors to assign copyright to the Nexuiz team (which means they can relicense as they please)
(b) they hunted down all contributors and got their written approval for the license change
(c) they simply removed all GPL code not contributed by themselves
(d) they XBox port will actually remain GPLed (but the new assets won't).

Now, they interesting thing is how they will gain access to the XBox devkit. The freely available tools are C#/XNA-only, which means they are not suitable for the job. Or will they port the game to an XBox-capable engine (like the upcoming version of Unity3d)?

[mugginz]

Then again, GPL explicitly prevents this "attack vector", by not allowing relicensing under closed-source terms.

As long as they're playing by the rules no one should have any issue with what they're doing. Not everyone plays nice though, lets hope they are. Unless there's evidence of foul play though I hope people attacking them is kept to a minimum.

[Zhick]

They mention too that they got a "DarkPlaces license". Can Lord Havoc do that at all? Isnt DarkPlaces a derived port of the GPL'ed quake 1 engine?

It's actually quite simple: They licensed the DarkPlaces-Engine from LordHavoc and the Quake1-Engine (or was it 2?) from iD. LordHavoc required people who contributed code to the DarkPlaces-Engine to assign the copyright to him, so that deal is perfectly legal.
Illfonic also bought the rights to the trademark "Nexuiz" from Vermeulen, the original creator of Nexuiz, who afaik stopped contributing a few years ago. So it's kind of morally questionable for him to sell the trademark imho, but again perfectly legal.
Apart from the engine afaik the only parts used from the original Nexuiz will be a few maps, for which they supposedly also got a permission from the respective authors.
So there's really no GPL-violation or anything else illegal going on. Illfonic are not that stupid. :P But what Illfonic should've done is to involve/inform the community earlier, and not do it behind its back. Then there surely wouldn't have been such a huge back-leash at them.

[Melcar]

So they did buy it. I was under the impression that the domain and name were simply "given away".

[xav1r]

It's actually quite simple: They licensed the DarkPlaces-Engine from LordHavoc and the Quake1-Engine (or was it 2?) from iD. LordHavoc required people who contributed code to the DarkPlaces-Engine to assign the copyright to him, so that deal is perfectly legal.
Illfonic also bought the rights to the trademark "Nexuiz" from Vermeulen, the original creator of Nexuiz, who afaik stopped contributing a few years ago. So it's kind of morally questionable for him to sell the trademark imho, but again perfectly legal.
Apart from the engine afaik the only parts used from the original Nexuiz will be a few maps, for which they supposedly also got a permission from the respective authors.
So there's really no GPL-violation or anything else illegal going on. Illfonic are not that stupid. :P But what Illfonic should've done is to involve/inform the community earlier, and not do it behind its back. Then there surely wouldn't have been such a huge back-leash at them.

AFAIK, id doesnt make give licenses to the quake 1 engine anymore. The only way to use it now is under the GPL. I dont get why they can use GPL'ed code, which some of what they have right now falls under, and just close it.

[Melcar]

The more I read about the subject, the more I start to feel that it was a dick move by AT. Perfectly legal and nothing of what they did seems overly shady, but just messed up when it comes to the moral aspect concerning the community.
The "game" is still there. Hopefully the community does not loose interest or kills off the project as a form of "revenge", because I really like the game and it will be a shame to loose it.