is your lloyd liquid physics code GPL?

[7318]

Hi, I'm Biel Bestué, and I've been trying to contact Lloyd for his liquid physics code. there is another lad that goes by the name of Motorsep (he is the mastermind behind Steel Storm a GPL game made with a Quake1 engine port), he also has tried to contact Lloyd for this code. We intend to release the liquid code as GPL, but since we weren't unable to contact him, we've though of contact you guys, is the liquid physics code GPL in your amazing mod/game? and would you see any trouble from me extracting that part of the code from yours and release it as GPL? all credit given of course!

 

my take on mods, is that I like to create GPL code infrastructure so other people can use it, as a way to give the oportunity for the people to test, play, and change innovations in the idtech4 / BFG engine, as well as grow from it. and liquid physics seems to be another chance to release one of such things.

Edited November 4, 2013 by 7318

[nbohr1more]

Hmm... Without further information I would presume that since Doom 3's mod SDK requires mods to adhere to the same license as the SDK itself.... The water mod would have to be gpl or it would violate the terms of the SDK, no?

[motorsep]

That is correct. Lloyd's water physics mod was never GPL'ed. So the question is if TDM team contacted Lloyd and got his permission to include his water physics mod with TDM, which subsequently went GPL.

 

I would assume at the time of mod's inclusion GPL release of idTech 4 was far beyond the horizon, so no one thought it would become an issue

[grayman]

But wouldn't id have been forced to remove the water physics mod when idTech4 went GPL, if Lloyd had a problem with it?

 

If it's still in there, I would assume that it's covered by the GPL.

 

Would someone from TDM have even known to contact Lloyd? Or would we have assumed that all permission-getting for non-id code was handled by id?

 

And another question: If you're contacting Lloyd for his code, I could assume that you don't have a copy already. How will you know what to extract from TDM? Do you know what it looks like? I found only one reference to Lloyd's mod in the source, so it's not clear to me which code he originally contributed.

[7318]

the thing is that the water physics mod, that it's available the liquid physics code doesn't specify if the actual code is GPL or not, it has nothing to do with the sdk licence because it has nothing to do with Id, it's actually Lloyid's own creation.

 

since it doesn't have any licence, the only thing we can say is that it's authorship is by Lloyd. we don't know if Lloyd allowed it to be copied or changed, and re-distributed (although the fact the he allowed web-pages to distribute the code and the mod without them paying them, already allows for redistribution. but can we change it? can we redistribute the code without the mod? those are questions that remain to be answered.

 

Motorsep and I thought that we could redistribute the code as GPL, and if Lloyd had any trouble then he might contact us. would you see any problem with this?

[Sotha]

Well, I'm not a copyright specialist, but intuitively it would be horrendeously poor conduct to just grab someone else's work, without permission, assume a lot of things and hope they will contact you later and pray everything is alright.

 

Always get the owners permission first. That's the best for everyone.

 

Tragedies aside, people usually don't just disappear from the net forever, all you need to find is a working email or a forum the person frequents. Maybe searching the social media will help? Maybe he has a youtube channel? Twitter? Maybe a homepage with a comment system?

 

EDIT: A quick just-for-fun googling yielded a linkedin account for a software developer that might be your guy. Also a same named person seems to have a sourceforge account.

[7318]

yeah and both accounts didn't respond, we've tried to contact him with no luck.

 

another way would be to recreate a similar code inspired in his, and distribute the new code under GPL

Edited November 5, 2013 by 7318

[motorsep]

@grayman: someone's work doesn't become GPL automatically once engine becomes GPL (I wish that was the case ). While Water Physics mod is based on exactly the same code that is GPL now, it was made when license was different. So it's not GPL. If you use GPL tech and put your code in there, and you make public release of binaries, then you have to release source with your code in it under GPL. Which is entirely different from using someone else's code and applying GPL license to it without permission.

 

id Software has nothing to do with his code. Where would the remove it from? From idTech 4? It's wasn't part of it to begin with. I assume TDM folks just merged game's code, containing Water Physics, into idTech 4 GPL codebase (that's if that mod even in TDM) and that's how TDM's code became GPL.

 

The problem here is that anyone who contributed to TDM before it went from mod to standalone GPL engine, should give permission to have their contribution to become GPL (they are authors of their mods, so they have a say so). If Lloyd's code was used, he had to be contacted and asked. What if he is the same way as LMS Coop guys are, e.g. GPL-hostile ? Then he can easily go got S&D on TDM, because you are using his code without his permission under wrong license. That would suck.

 

I looked into readme of his mod. It doesn't even say what many other Doom 3 mods do - feel free to use it in your mods, etc. I can only assume that by releasing source code he implied that

 

Seems like the guy on LinkedIn is the guy we are looking for. But to reach him, I'd need to for over $20 monthly (charged annually) to be able to send InMail to him. Does anyone here have Pro LinkedIn account and can send him InMail ?

[motorsep]

another way would be to recreate a similar code inspired in his, and distribute the new code under GPL

 

Seems like enormous undertaking, unless you are good with the code base and physics So if you are - go for it !

[nbohr1more]

I'm trying to parse the implications here...

 

Let's say you make a Doom 3 mod using Doom 3's SDK license terms but then decide to "sell" this mod.

 

Well, that violates the terms of use for the SDK.

 

Let's say you decide to provide your code free to the public under a restrictive license but it includes some of Id's code...

 

Well, that also violates Id's license.

 

I think that this problem falls into the latter scenario. Nobody making any Doom 3 mod that uses "any" of Id's code can change

the terms of the SDK. That means you could write an enormous amount of code but if it is intermingled with one line of

Doom 3 SDK code it must necessarily be GPL or else it violates the use of the SDK.

 

Does that make sense?

[7318]

yes

[nbohr1more]

Then I think it's time to diff his code against the SDK. I doubt he could build a clean implementation that does not incorporate any Id code and its unlikely he even bothered to consider this. I suspect this also applies to those closed source fragging free guys. I'll bet Id software could c 'n d them because I doubt they kept their own code modularized. (Though if they read this discussion they could change that... They'd still have to publish the code they used to hook their modules to the SDK code though).

[motorsep]

You do realize that SDK and GPL release have the same code base, just different license and additional GPL heading in the .h / .cpp files ? So if you made you mod for SDK, but then later decided to release it under GPL, you can. Easily. Legally. Just diff your code from SDK, and release it as patch. Or diff it, incorporate into GPL code and release whole thing. But patch is better (make sure it applies and compiles though).

 

So in short, if you made your mod when SDK was released, you still the author of the code you added to SDK and you can do what the hell you want with it. Just re-release _your_ code either with GPL idTech 4 or as patch. Can't do that with someone else's code though.

 

The implications of releasing/including SDK built mods with TDM based on idTech 4 GPL is not going to come from id Software. If anything, it's the authors of the mods who you need to worry about.

[Springheel]

Lloyd was a TDM team member in the early days, helping us with water physics. That would mean his contributions to TDM fall under the same license as everyone else's.

[motorsep]

Did you have something in place which now allows you to do whatever you want with the code produced by contributors?

[Serpentine]

Yup, just checked and he did work on the mod

 

As far as I am aware, and what I was told is that code added by a member towards the mod, is gifted to the mod where possible under the BSD 2 clause, or id SDK agreement (obviously that now has fallen away to GPL v3). As such the current mod members retain the rights to change the license where necessary, i.e if an upgrade is required.

 

So you may consider his code to have been gifted to the mod and then relicensed under the GPL v3 later on.

 

This is why code is not just added, but donated

[motorsep]

If that's the case, that would definitely make things easier. Is TDM's water physics more advanced that his original water physics mod?

[Bikerdude]

Talking of water physics, do crates and other boyant things float in TDM..?

[Serpentine]

Yup, if they are light enough.

 

Edit: Just be careful with planks, I seem to remember that they wobble from end to end sometimes, causing excessive splashing.

[7318]

now this is pretty great news!

Edited November 6, 2013 by 7318