Nexuiz re-make on the 360

[BlackStar]

Community, in this case, includes pretty much all developers (programmers, mappers) except for the original one, who afaik has not contributed for years.
So morally I'd agree that the developer-community should have a say in what happens with Nexuiz, since they helped making it what it is now.

Don't they still have access to the code and the assets? What's stopping them from having a say?

Edit: I guess I don't see how this affects the community.

[Zhick]

Wait a moment, what is the moral aspect concerning the community? Why does the community feel that the an open-source developer owes them something? Not only has he/she given how many years of his life away for free, now the community demands for more?

Something doesn't fit here, at least the way I see it.

Community, in this case, includes pretty much all developers (programmers, mappers) except for the original one, who afaik has not contributed for years.
So morally I'd agree that the developer-community should have a say in what happens with Nexuiz, since they helped making it what it is now.

[Melcar]

Well, the "community" has been largely responsible for the project in recent years, and my understanding is that the top guys at AT haven't been that active with the project in comparison. The main beef everyone is having is that the decision wasn't made clear sooner and there was no real transparency. I'm sure if AT came out a while back with an announcement detailing their future plan the community as a whole wouldn't be as upset.

[BlackStar]

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.

Wait a moment, what is the moral aspect concerning the community? Why does the community feel that the an open-source developer owes them something? Not only has he/she given how many years of his life away for free, now the community demands for more?

Something doesn't fit here, at least the way I see 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.

[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]

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

[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.

[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.

[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)?