id and Valve May Be Violating GPL
frooge writes "With the recent release of iD's catalog on Steam, it appears DOSBox is being used to run the old DOS games for greater compatibility. According to a post on the Halflife2.net forums, however, this distribution does not contain a copy of the GPL license that DOSBox is distributed under, which violates the license. According to the DOSBox developers, they were not notified that it was being used for this release."
Having read the GPL, I think the problem here is that they failed to include the DOSBox source code. A written offer to provide the source code is no good, because this is a commercial distribution.
hmm, I dunno (as I'm not a lawyer, open sauce nerd, or someone who cares to read the GPL)
But... I'd suspect the most concerning bit for valve would be that (IIRC) they're meant to share any changes they make (Perhaps, like the bit that makes these versions of dosbox require steam to be open) Then again, I may be totally wrong. so there.
If it's just a case of missing files then surely Valve could just push out an update to the software to fix it. Also you would have thought they'd check with the authors of DOSbox for something this big, ah well.
spoodie wrote:If it's just a case of missing files then surely Valve could just push out an update to the software to fix it. Also you would have thought they'd check with the authors of DOSbox for something this big, ah well.
Yup, should be no issue with fixing the missing files thing.
I would have thought id would've at least told the DOSBox people they were going to use their product, obligation or no. If their license is clear on use for profit, they wouldn't have been able to charge, it just seems...polite - as well as enormously beneficial to both parties.
T'internets wrote:id aware of Steam issues
Posted by Faith - August 06, 2007 12:23 - 176 Views
iD Software says it's aware of the minor bugs that have surfaced over the weekend after it released nearly their whole PC line of games on Valve's Steam service. They are working on getting it fixed as soon as possible.
"I was actually looking at the support forums and noticed a couple of things this morning, so I'm furiously sending people texts going 'look into this'," Steve Nix, id's business development director.
"We launched a lot of games over the weekend and we would expect a few minor issues. But of course - the great thing about Steam is you can fix things very quickly. So we're going to work to make sure these small bugs are fixed very quickly."
I suspect the other issue(s) remain, Also, ISTR the licenses are from a newer version of dosbox than they're using. which may or may not matter (eion?)
id and Valve May Be Violating GPL
