License needed

[R Moog]

I have proposed that this great project would become part of the FreeDOS distribution as an installable package. However, this repository lacks the proper licensing.

Please clear up this uncertainty, so that FreeDOS can take this on.

[Frank Sapone]

What uncertainty? If you’re unsure of the license for GameSpy this is why we made it an optional external DXE module during compile time. The rest is regular GPL2 licensing as per id’s original release. WattTCP and Glide3x, Mesa, and Sage are also all GPL2.

It’s possible, that the various mods (including mission packs) are not technically GPL2 and authors are impossible to reach. With that said, again they are DXEs that you can choose not to compile. The main game DXE itself IS GPL2.

[Frank Sapone]

Another thing is the HTTP downloading uses libCURL which is GPL2 and the code itself is based off of R1Q2 source port, which is also GPL2. So you shouldn’t need to worry there either.

If you want to become a maintainer for FreeDOS for this project, that is great. Let me know any other concerns, I will try to answer as best I can and can guide you through compiling a “non-free” compliant version for distribution. It’s fairly simple, mostly a matter of telling what options you want on/off when running the makefile.

[R Moog]

There’s no LICENSE or COPYING file in the root of this git repo, and https://bitbucket.org/neozeed/q2dos/src/61ebf0eb512285f7adb9672f2bb0a1a219b845b5/licenses/gpl.txt#lines-293:294 does not specify exactly what code it applies to. I can only assume in good faith that it applies to the Quake 2 source code as I’m perfectly aware that at some point in time Quake 2’s engine was released under GPLv2, but it wouldn’t stand in a court of law and would probably require scrutiny of comparison of the source code against the GPL’d version.

I wasn’t even aware GameSpy was still around and that this build actually supported it! The actual build that would go into FreeDOS I think could skip the GameSpy part if the licensing of that part is unclear or straight up unfavorable. FreeDOS is known to package some programs that are freeware and not source-available simply because the individual license permits such redistribution.

I would very much appreciate if you could give me any clues or pointers how to compile this on my own. I can sail smooth on Linux, MacOS and Windows in that particular order of preference. Compiling on FreeDOS however isn’t maybe the best idea, but if the development stack is there, I don’t see why that also couldn’t happen.

[Frank Sapone]

That license is intended for id’s Q2 engine and SDK GPL release. We’ll have to fix that one and add the LICENSE and COPYING files to root of repo.

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GameSpy is not still around, I made an emulator for its master server a number of years ago. The GameSpy SDK was released with no real proper license about a year or so before GameSpy closed up shop. It’s a grey area and I’m not expecting you to include that for those reasons.

You can cross-compile on Linux and Windows. Linux is probably the best way as it’s the most tested method. @sezero will have to give you instructions on that as I don’t remember how to set it up. I just have a VM for that environment with it ready to go.

[sezero]

About compiling: I usually cross-compile under linux using djgpp. See cross_build.sh scripts under source root, and game, ref_soft and ref_gl directories.

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About license: The gamespy stuff are clearly conditionalized for compile (see Makefile.dj for USE_GAMESPY). I would suggest removing the Goa directory to avoid unclearly licensed stuff. The add-on games xatrix (xsrc) and rogue (rsrc) aren’t clearly GPL'ed: can be removed, doesn't affect anything else; don’t know the licensing terms of action, acebot, chaos, dday and zaero either.

[Frank Sapone]

Zaero was never released under a proper license. Regarding the others, who knows? The Coop mod I wrote myself, but uses Rogue, Xatrix, and Zaero code so it’s probably best to avoid packing that in anyways. Plus that mod is meant for servers anyways.

[Frank Sapone]

This is what id originally distributed in their source release: https://github.com/id-Software/Quake-2/blob/master/gnu.txt

If you know where to put it and what to name it to make it compliant for your needs let us know.

[Frank Sapone]

No response after a year. If you want to revisit this, just reply to this thread and we will reopen.