Re: Quake 2 sources GPL'd

[Adam Olsen <rhamph@d2dc.net>]

On Mon, Dec 24, 2001 at 02:53:25PM +0100, Erich Schubert wrote:
> > No, it doesn't apply, because quake2 is an engine for a game, not an
> > interpreter for a language.
> 
> Actually the quake2 engine IS.
> It's a runtime environment (you might call it interpreter) for the graphics
> files and the gamei386.so (or whatever it was called)
> These graphics files and the gamei386.so can be exchanged to make a very
> different game out of the same engine.
> The gamei386.so for the original quake2 is GPL, too, but not necessary
> (as this is, i think, the only part that really depends on the
> commercial data files!!!)
> 
> So the engine IS free; the original quake2 rules should go into contrib.
> 
> Think of python running a compiled python script (?)
> or java running a "java program".

But it still depends on the -data, just as much as every other package
that depends on a -data does.  And until there actually IS an
alternative, it has to live with the side effects of a dependency on a
non-free.

-- 
Adam Olsen, aka Rhamphoryncus