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Author Topic: OpenArena being SOLD in the mac appstore?  (Read 31996 times)
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THIS ONE POST HERE SHOULD DO IT.


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« on: October 25, 2011, 05:05:50 AM »

i just stumbled across this thing:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/open-arena/id422263923?mt=12

that can't be right, can it? is there something we can do about it?

i found it when digging around the interwebs after seeing http://twitter.com/#!/steedsoftware this guy raging at @notch. that twitter account is linked to that itunes store item in this forum post: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=101539

just thought you guys would like to know, it doesn't seem legit at all.
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« Reply #1 on: October 25, 2011, 06:21:59 AM »

There is also a previous thread about that here: http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=4231.0
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WingedPanther
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« Reply #2 on: October 25, 2011, 11:44:46 AM »

GPL doesn't prevent selling the software for a nominal fee.  With that said, I like the first review that points out it's available for free.  I still think it deserves 5 stars, however.
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« Reply #3 on: October 25, 2011, 12:35:33 PM »

It's more the other way round,

Apple's conditions aren't compatible with GPL, because they (apple) don't redistribute sources, so their terms of service probably isn't compatible with GPL.

Apple customers are accustomed to be taken for idiots so I almost don't even care they pay for OA and some guy earns money from it (and as some reminded, earning money from it is allowed by GPL).
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« Reply #4 on: October 25, 2011, 02:11:55 PM »

The page says, on the end, "Source code available upon request.". But I don't see how to make that request.

Obviously, their "OpenArena support" link does not bring to the official OpenArena site (where people could discover it is available for free), but to a sort of their simple blog.
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Peter Silie
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« Reply #5 on: October 25, 2011, 03:31:41 PM »

This should be the task:
- getting the sources
- information on apple about the GPL

or

- asking the developer to contribute to OA (which is the better approach imho)

But as long as there is no iPhone user around, who gets his ball to just ask a simple question, we still lay back in stasis.
If he had developed it for android, i already had the sources or making him a developer of OA. Wink

For the cash: it is legal to get payed for the work even if the license is GPL. but as long as i can see, there is no link to the license file or a hint to the GPL.
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« Reply #6 on: October 25, 2011, 03:43:41 PM »

But as long as there is no iPhone user around,
[...]
If he had developed it for android

It's not for iOS, but for Mac OS X.

Anyway, if you are interested into finding some guys (with the hope of bringing them here) that worked with Android and OpenArena or ioquake3, take a look to this post and to the following one.
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fromhell
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« Reply #7 on: October 25, 2011, 03:45:08 PM »

Hence this blurb on the license header:

Quote
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with OpenArena; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301  USA


...ok maybe the snailmailing could be a bit of trouble to do, but still......
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« Reply #8 on: October 25, 2011, 03:52:26 PM »

Anyway, publishing OA on app stores may sound a good way to promote it.

But it would be good if we could (more or less directly) manage the thing, to be sure to provide all the license info and links needed, and to make it available for free.
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Peter Silie
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« Reply #9 on: October 25, 2011, 05:54:39 PM »

It's not for iOS, but for Mac OS X.

Still the prob to get in contact with the developer.
As far as i can see, you have to have an market account to do something on this site.
Mac users here?
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« Reply #10 on: October 26, 2011, 12:49:30 AM »

Or maybe one may add a comment to one of the news on their blog, asking them to mention the GPL, to provide a link to the license and a clear way for users to require/access the source code.

I'd like to see also a link to the official OpenArena site, but I can understand it could be "against" that guy's business.
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Peter Silie
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« Reply #11 on: October 26, 2011, 01:31:04 AM »

Where i have been yesterday?
Dunno Cheesy
I guess he uses the OA source from repo and just compiled it for Mac OSX.
No need to ask for the sources, or am i wrong?
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« Reply #12 on: October 26, 2011, 01:54:14 AM »

I'm not a GPL expert, but I think that if you redistribute a GPL program, you have to provide the COPYING file (license text) and some way to get the source code. Probably, a link to the OA official site (that contains links to SVN in the "Dev" section) could have been enough... but they instead said "source available upon request", without specifying how to make that request...
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Peter Silie
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« Reply #13 on: October 26, 2011, 09:24:40 AM »

the license file could be in the pkg file (dunno).
and the source on request seems fine for me - but this is lawyer business Smiley
best idea would be to contact him. but it seems that you need some kind of account to post on the store site?
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digitalfoundryl
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« Reply #14 on: November 01, 2011, 03:56:22 AM »

Hello everyone. I PM'd leilelol before, wanted to get a reply first before posting here, but I'll reply here too anyways.   I'm currently maintaining a slightly modified OA binary on the appstore. I'm a big fan of OA, been playing it since 0.7.0, and recently I've been using macs more often than windows.  

Im a longtime quake fan. As proponent of free software, i was delighted to know about OA.  A game that's free in both cost and license that plays like quake? Awesome.  Admitedly, i had been  playing it less often recently, mostly because of the lack of updates, and because since the 10.7 osx lion release PPC binaries are not supported anymore, making the official quake binaries unsupported.  id's latest quake game, quakelive has a mac binary too.  What a big letdown that binary was. Bugs, crashes, lags everywhere.  Mac users that want to quake and have new macs don't have much to choose from nowadays.  Which is why I'd like to propose you this:

Openarena has lots of potential to become big on the mac appstore. It's currently the only fps of its kind there, and the only idtech3-powered game, with the exception of the jedi games. There´s a big dissapointment right now on the QL community's mac owners nowadays too. The official QL binary is very rubbish like i said before. It says beta on the site, but it's more like an alpha, and the last recent update has only made it crash more often than before.  Any mac quaker that posts about it on QL's site gets told to bootccamp windows and play on that instead. I think this is a good moment that openarena could use to appeal to mac quakers that want to play on their macs and cant get QL running crash-free.  

 I'm thinking, maybe we could work together to make openarena appealing to mac gamers on the appstore. We could get a cue from some of those online fps's like TF2, and have a base OA that's free, which would be the current release the way it's been, but that has additional customizing options that could be purchased in-game to those that would like them. Items like custom models, custom overlays and such. We could too have player registration and stats with the mac technologies readily available.  To those of you objecting to oa being sold on the appstore, well, right now its barely covering the bandwidth costs. Having it free would increase its downloads and thus make it more visible on the mac appstore, and more people would download and play it.

Now, some of you could say, why have it on the appstore at all? Why not just have it elsewhere and people just download it and play? Well, the appstore is very good advertising, that's mostly cost-free, and it maintains itself. It gets lots of views everyday. It hosts both free and paid games.  It's installed on every new mac bought nowadays.  "Why have any of these changes mac only, and not on windows too", you could say too.  Well, as you all know, windows installed base is much bigger than the macs, and is more difficult to get a game with slightly dated looks and isn´t really entry level advertised to people there, since there's lots of other games readily available. Focusing on the macs could give Openarena a good solid playing base, make it more well known, and then it could move to windows too.  

These are of course only some suggestions, and I'd like to have some feedback on them.  I modified the source a bit to make it comply with the appstore requirements, which isnt really much.  Only protocol change to OA's, and enabling cmd-q to quit.  But im not much of a coder beyond that.   I compiled a recent ioq3 subversion release, i couldnt get OA's subversion to compile. A coder which knowledge on the mac sdk would be needed.  And of course in making the additional optional 3d content. I'm ready to promote OA on the appstore, in compliance with the community's guidelines, with the help of some members of the community too.  The source code is available to anyone that requests it like it says on my blog, and I'll put it somewhere online too.  The license file is available too. I welcome all feedback. I see by reading all the posts here that there´s lots of work and input by the community on Openarena itself. But promoting Openarena is somewhat lacking, and I'll like to help there.
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« Reply #15 on: November 01, 2011, 04:24:48 AM »

But how to request it sources? Last time I checked (days ago), there was told to request for them, but no email address or web form were linked, to actually do it.

Anyway, wellcome to the community! Smiley Smiley

PS: If the final aim is to promote OpenArena, do you know what would be a great boost? Making it available for free... Grin Grin Grin
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« Reply #16 on: November 01, 2011, 04:50:52 AM »

Reading the blog and seeing the description of OA in the mac app store gives me the impression that whoever put it in the store really does not give any credit to fromhell or any of it's authors and behaves as if OA is his/her/their product. There is no mentioning that OA is licensed under GPLv2 or anything basically which would point the user to their rights. I can't download this to check if the person at least kept the COPYING file or anything. I think this is a breach of GPLv2, and the intentions of whoever put it in the store are not really benevolent.

I find this quote ridiculous:
Quote
More content updates planned! Have fun with this first release!
Like he's gonna update anything. He's just leeching off the hard work fromhell and the OA community put into OA.
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digitalfoundryl
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« Reply #17 on: November 01, 2011, 02:00:57 PM »

Reading the blog and seeing the description of OA in the mac app store gives me the impression that whoever put it in the store really does not give any credit to fromhell or any of it's authors and behaves as if OA is his/her/their product. There is no mentioning that OA is licensed under GPLv2 or anything basically which would point the user to their rights. I can't download this to check if the person at least kept the COPYING file or anything. I think this is a breach of GPLv2, and the intentions of whoever put it in the store are not really benevolent.

I find this quote ridiculous:
Quote
More content updates planned! Have fun with this first release!
Like he's gonna update anything. He's just leeching off the hard work fromhell and the OA community put into OA.

Well, the credits and license file are in the package on the appstore, and I can make the source available separatedly too upon request, like mentioned in the site.  Yes, it's not that visible, but i can make those corrections.   I actually was planning on making a complete different fork of openarena, and hiring people to make additional player models and such. Those are the updates I was talking about.  But then that would be a complete different game, maybe it'd be better to ask openarena´s own community first. You know, OA is licensed under the gpl, both code and content, and like it's been mentioned before several times, the gpl allows selling code. As long as source code and credits are included and offered, there is no additional obligation. Oh, and Apple's TOS do not conflict with the GPL. In fact, there's several apps right now on the appstore that use GPL code, like id's own.  If there's friction anywhere, fine, I can make all credits and source more visible and make a new fork off openarena, with more content that i want to add, which would sit on top of that new OA fork.  But it probably would be better to have openarena's community' approval, and make any additional changes gpl too, like OA's own nature. 
« Last Edit: November 01, 2011, 02:13:58 PM by digitalfoundryl » Logged
digitalfoundryl
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« Reply #18 on: November 01, 2011, 02:06:30 PM »

But how to request it sources? Last time I checked (days ago), there was told to request for them, but no email address or web form were linked, to actually do it.

Well, anyone can make a comment on my blog.  I can put this forum in the contacts if you would like. 


PS: If the final aim is to promote OpenArena, do you know what would be a great boost? Making it available for free... Grin Grin Grin

Yeah i know, it was free several times, got more downloads that way, but i would like to offer the appstore crowd something additional to get them to try OA.

Quote
Anyway, wellcome to the community! Smiley Smiley


Thank you!  Cheesy Smiley
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Graion Dilach
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« Reply #19 on: November 01, 2011, 02:49:32 PM »

Ah. The "I'd like to fork, any objections..." question.

What I think... If you fork, it will become your project and you can do whatever you want with it from that point. The possible GPL violation with the not-that-easily-obtainable source is my only doubt. Take note tho... if you fork, effectively you take the responsibility to fix any bug appears and you must rely on yourself first. It's kinda tougher if you do everything alone.

Your aims are kinda like a dreamers. Hiring modellers for this game... I doubt it would work, since professionals use 3DSMax and I don't know of if that's applicable here. Mind you, you must (well, here comes the legal trouble*) state in their contract that their work will be GPLd.

Also putting this forum on the contact list... I doubt that would be the best move. You did that port, and we can't support it, since we know nothing about it.

Y'know, your popup do sounds like a leecher... even with a good intentions. As far as I see, your moves can be understood as if you were a person who did a port, took the whole money alone, and leave the support to others... and right now you just say plans for your content. Plans are nice, but without a proof they worth nothing in this case IMO.

If you pop up with new stuff, I'll change my thought but 'til that happens, I highly doubt your aim.

*See http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=4320.0 ... and take note, OA content is GPL'd and only GPLv2 licensed. You can't relicense it. And you can't really mix licenses neither.
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« Reply #20 on: November 01, 2011, 03:40:22 PM »

@digitalfoundryl
Sorry, I did not see your post before I made mine. Fail on my side. It's nice that you've responded to this thread.
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« Reply #21 on: November 01, 2011, 03:56:38 PM »

But how to request it sources? Last time I checked (days ago), there was told to request for them, but no email address or web form were linked, to actually do it.

Well, anyone can make a comment on my blog.  I can put this forum in the contacts if you would like. 
Uhm... I suppose comments in blog news should be used to comment those news, not for other things. Why should one ask "can you give me sources?" as a reply to a blog post where you talked about something else?
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« Reply #22 on: November 02, 2011, 08:18:51 AM »

Note on all of the following: I'm just a concerned player who as contributed close to 0, aside from enthusiasm.

digitalfoundryl: Having OA supported on additional platforms sounds great to me, but I'd really like to see the tweaks you made find their way back to the main project.  As far as new content, my understanding is that you could create models/maps that are not GPL, if they are in completely separate files from the main OA files.  To be honest, from what I've seen, one of the big things OA needs is modelers, so if you can contribute back, that would probably generate a lot more good will.  A fork, on the other hand, could generate some ill will unless it is renamed, and all the usual licensing stuff is followed.

My thinking is that having help is a good thing, and if the money you make helps development of code/models/maps for the main code.  A fork, on the other hand, is something that we have far too much of in OSS, as it is, and could end up with two projects cannibalizing each other to the detriment of all.
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« Reply #23 on: November 03, 2011, 07:36:48 AM »

Note on all of the following: I'm just a concerned player who as contributed close to 0, aside from enthusiasm.

digitalfoundryl: Having OA supported on additional platforms sounds great to me, but I'd really like to see the tweaks you made find their way back to the main project.  As far as new content, my understanding is that you could create models/maps that are not GPL, if they are in completely separate files from the main OA files.  To be honest, from what I've seen, one of the big things OA needs is modelers, so if you can contribute back, that would probably generate a lot more good will.  A fork, on the other hand, could generate some ill will unless it is renamed, and all the usual licensing stuff is followed.

My thinking is that having help is a good thing, and if the money you make helps development of code/models/maps for the main code.  A fork, on the other hand, is something that we have far too much of in OSS, as it is, and could end up with two projects cannibalizing each other to the detriment of all.

Yes, those additional models/maps would not be gpl, and they would not be part of openarena, they would just sit on top of it.  But it would be better to have openarena itself benefit from more content, that uses a license compatible with OA.  I guess that yes, it would be like an exercise to see if the "freemium" business model would work too. You know, some people would prefer paying a good low price to get things neatly packaged than to download free and figure how to put it all together. I suppose it could be like those games where on the pc the additional content is free and on the consoles it has a cost. Stretch, i know, because in this case, you could get that additional content free too if you want to do the additional work of getting it working.  There's several costs right now in having openarena on the appstore, i got that covered.
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« Reply #24 on: November 03, 2011, 08:28:28 AM »

There's not cost in hosting files on Tuxfamily, you just pull your fingers out of your ass and you participate in server maintenance, you give hardware, or you give donations. The more work you do yourself, the less you have to pay.
When you develop free softwares, it's not to have customers. I personnaly don't give a shit of having some, while I can give a shit about getting both an audience and contributors.
The model you ask for is a regression and contradictory to the efforts guys here put into OpenArena, and to the whole free software.
Use your technical skill to do something useful, contribute upstream, release your files into free licenses, convince guys to release their work under free licenses. Other efforts may look nice but with them you miss the point.
We're technical guys, we're here to build, not to sell nor to delegate work.
If you want to make the software accessible to wider audience, make it free and provide insightful infos about the Mac builds you did.
If you want to commission artists to do free software stuff, then make sure you understood what I just wrote, act accordingly, then after that only you may think about using money or something, I mean, if you really need.
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