The Gang Garrison 2 Forum
Gang Garrison Discussion => Announcements => Topic started by: MedO on August 23, 2014, 05:55:56 am
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Hi everyone.
tl;dr: The current license prevents us from using certain nice and (cost-)free libraries / frameworks, so we want to change it. The new license (MPL) would be strictly more free than the old one, and is the same one that's also used by Firefox. I need your help to contact the remaining contributors though. Please see the list at the bottom.
Long version
We want to change the license terms of Gang Garrison 2. So far, GG2 has been developed and distributed under the GNU GPL v3, which is a very popular free software license, but is actually quite political and restrictive. For example, it has prevented us from using cost-free libraries like the FMOD sound engine extension in the past, and it also prevents a potential port to XNA / MonoGame that MrRatermat has been working on.
In fact, we could only use some of the libraries that we did use (39dll, Hobbl Downloader) because we added explicit exceptions to our license in the beginning. But that's not practical now, because adding more exceptions would require the permission of everyone who ever contributed to the game every time.
After some discussion (which you can find in this thread (http://www.ganggarrison.com/forums/index.php?topic=35446.0)), Arctic brought up the Mozilla Public License (MPL) (https://www.mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/) that is also used for Firefox. I'm pretty convinced now that I'd have wanted to use that license from the beginning if I had known about it. If you're interested in the details best read the license yourself (it's not that long), but in short, it allows multiple licenses to coexist in our project, but still forces people to publish their source modifications to our own code.
The problem is that I can't just change the license, because everyone who ever contributed to vanilla GG2 holds some claim of copyright to the game as it is now. That means we need to find all of those people and ask for their permission. We've come pretty far already in that - out of 49 contributors on my list, 41 have already given their OK, one said "maybe", and nobody said no. A big thank you here.
However, there are still seven people who I didn't manage to contact or didn't get a reply from yet. This is where I need your help. If you know how to contact someone in the list below, please either ask them to get in contact with me or give me their contact details per PM. Do not post their contact details on here, for obvious privacy reasons. Here's the list:
King Metroid
Taters
Thorvan
Timohtep
Vaati
Tankmen
CobaltBW
Finally, if you have made some contribution to vanilla GG2 and didn't hear from me yet, please write to me as well, and be sure to add what exactly you contributed.
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And the alternative is that we remove any and all content made by those people, correct? Not a problem for people like King Metroid or Thorvan, but I am pretty sure that most of our vanilla map rotation was made by Taters and Tarzan. Vaati is also an issue.
Blue Warrior is on the forum. Here, let me direct him to this thread.
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And the alternative is that we remove any and all content made by those people, correct?
Plus anything derived from that content. Not a big issue with artwork, but can be really iffy with code.
On second thought, if someone took textures and objects from one map and re-used them in another, the same iffyness ensues.
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Yes, but given how simple our textures are, I'm pretty sure that there's at least *SOME* cracks we can slip past. Plus, it only applies to vanilla maps, does it not?
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I have attempted to contact Vaati, and even managed to pinpoint his skype name, but to no avail.
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you have my OK
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Great, thanks :)
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Can we deal with the maps by making them external and just distributing with to constitute dynamic linking or is that a big nono?
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Is replacing their contributions a possibility if it comes to it?
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Worst case scenario yes
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Well, I mean, that requires that we know what would need replacing. I'm not sure how well things have been documented.
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very poorly before git
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King Metroid was a mapper, his contributions can easily be found in the Mapping section. None of his maps are still in the game. Thorvan was a mapper/artist, but if it is the case that one of his maps were added, they have long since been removed.
Vaati, ex-developer. High priority, anyone with contact to Vaati, please respond
Timohtep, primary contribution is the Generator sprites (he uses one as his avatar, even). Replacing the Generator sprites would be simple, and HIGHLY recommended by myself. No offense, if you read this. I just feel they need to be updated.
Tankman, veteran beta tester. Might be lumped in with Thorvan, had a conversation with MedO about some of the people needed and he might be thinking of veteran beta testers. Will look into his account nonetheless and see if he contributed to the project, might not require his approval. (Same with Thorvan).
Taters, 2.0+ mapper. Made the original Waterway, as well as several other maps. High priority, anyone with contact to Taters (tat3rs), please respond
CobaltBW, Blue Warrior. Already have his approval, do not remember what he contributed. What did you contribute, if you read this? I stopped keeping track around ~2.3.
Also, consider reading old changelogs to view contributions from certain members. Thorvan's contributions might be pre-b23, and thus not documented.
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http://www.ganggarrison.com/forums/index.php?topic=3.msg3#msg3 (http://www.ganggarrison.com/forums/index.php?topic=3.msg3#msg3)
Who is teeferbone?
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Mighta been asdf. He's offline since he starts college tomorrow, but I recall him mentioning at some point in time how he regretted making Avanti. It's probably him.
Also, I've gone through pages 203 through 153 (in reverse) of Tankman's posts. I'm almost certain he contributed nothing.
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oh, teeferbone just updated avanti after he abandoned it or something
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I sifted through pages 100 - 203 of tankman's fucking posts. I had wareya and arctic sift through 1 - 50 and 50 - 100, respectively. We have found nothing. We can do a more thorough search of his posts in Beta Testing later, but I am convinced that we will STILL find nothing. He was probably one of the beta testers that you lumped into the group, MedO.
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Thanks for being so thorough. I had Tankmen on the list with a question mark. Generally I preferred asking someone who might have done nothing to not asking someone who contributed. I'll take him off the list now.
Edit: Though I guess I have to add asdf and Teeferbone for Avanti.
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I would think we'd only need to ask asdf. I think I did, I'll ask him again tomorrow.
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We can just remove avanti, and Teeferbone's version never got used.
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Message from Tankman via Colton
8:06 PM - My Cartoon Can't Be This Chinese: I dont think there's anything in the game I've actually contributed to but I'll give my permission
So either way, that issue is resolved
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Permission granted to use gg_avanti as we wish
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Excellent.
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Would it be possible to move forward if we just got permission to use all the art and sound and remade all the code?
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"remade all the code" would involve rewriting through a clean room design wouldn't it? :drool:
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Getting all the OKs is the safest and easiest way, though honestly I don't really believe we'd have a high risk of being sued.
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CobaltBW, Blue Warrior. Already have his approval, do not remember what he contributed. What did you contribute, if you read this? I stopped keeping track around ~2.3.
idfk lol. I've only ever used github, but I think it might have been some minor changes to firebug or something.
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Vaati just gave his thumbs-up, and I have a new lead on King Metroid :D
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We have Taters' OK as well now :)
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is there anyone left that we haven't been able to contact yet?
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See the first post.