Hedgewars violate GPL!

5 replies [Last post]
Blackflame
User offline. Last seen 10 years 11 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 2011-08-09
Posts: 17

From GNU General Public License, version 2 [1]:

Quote:
Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish)

Terms and conditions, section 1:

Quote:
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

When a user runs Hedgewars, the following words can be printed for him as a tip on the bottom on the main window [2]:

Quote:
Hedgewars is Open Source and Freeware we create in our spare time. If someone sold you the game, you should try get a refund!

Imagine that somebody sells the game according to the section 1 of GPL v.2, but a user reads the tip and demands his money back. What will a court of law conclude, if they can't solve the problem without court intervention?

[1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html
[2] http://code.google.com/p/hedgewars/source/browse/QTfrontend/ui/page/pagemain.cpp

Henek
Henek's picture
User offline. Last seen 6 years 26 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 2010-04-06
Posts: 55

If someone sold a disc with Hedgewars on it without further explanation of the situation you can and should demand your money back. But if you both decide that you will be paying for the disc and the work of putting the game on the disc then that is okay. And as I am not a lawyer I can not say for sure, but I think that he would have to have proof of the agreement. Thus we do not at all violate or confuse on this matter.

In future reference you might want to look up the meaning of a statement and not accuse people blindly.

One of those hedgewars developers. I am specially knowledgeable in lua scripting, and the father of gameplay scripts.

Blackflame
User offline. Last seen 10 years 11 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 2011-08-09
Posts: 17

I'd like to pay attention that a similar situation happened with the game "Teeworlds":

Quote:
In the copyright file of teeworlds, the 4th item in the license:

4. Neither this software nor any of its individual components, in original or modified versions, may be sold by itself.

Version 0.5.0 no longer contains this item.

http://libreplanet.org/wiki/List_of_software_that_does_not_respect_the_Free_System_Distribution_Guidelines#teeworlds

If they fixed, why don't you fix too somehow?

Henek
Henek's picture
User offline. Last seen 6 years 26 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 2010-04-06
Posts: 55

This is not at all the same, we are merely saying that people that have been victim to fraud should try to get their money back.
That said, I would not say that Teeworlds infringed upon the license as they still do not prevent you from charging for distribution or service. I do not believe that that accusation is accurate, but remember that I am not an expert at all in this matter.

One of those hedgewars developers. I am specially knowledgeable in lua scripting, and the father of gameplay scripts.

nemo
nemo's picture
User offline. Last seen 22 weeks 5 hours ago. Offline
Joined: 2009-01-28
Posts: 1861

Agree w/ Henek.

Obviously you are free to resell it (heck, you are even free to remove that tip). The tip was added because people were reselling it (with basically no packaging or added value, just the installer) and not informing people that they could have gotten the exact same thing from any number of other websites, for free.

While not against the GPL to do this, it is unethical and maybe even fraudulent.

Nowhere in that tip does it say hedgewars *cannot* be sold. It is just noting that if it was sold to you, you might want to try and reverse the sale, since you could get it free.

While that might annoy sellers of the unmodified software, well, too bad? It isn't like they are adding any value.

If they say clearly that they are selling you, say, a CD of free software, it is unlikely people will complain anyway. People know then they are getting the CD because it is a compilation, that it is a convenience charge for the CD, shipping, collection, effort etc.

Anyway, definitely no GPL violation.

--
Oh, what the heck. 1PLXzL1CBUD1kdEWqMrwNUfGrGiirV1WpH <= tip a hedgewars dev

passstab
User offline. Last seen 12 years 13 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 2011-11-28
Posts: 18

hows this?

Hedgewars is Open Source and Freeware we create in our spare time. Reselling the game IS legal, but you can always freely acquire the latest version by visiting http://hedgewars.org/Download.html .

User login

Copyright © 2004-2024 Hedgewars Project. All rights reserved. [ contact ]