[gentoo-dev] Re: Gentoo Linux and Licensing for RTCW, ET, Q3A and other Id games

[gentoo-dev] Re: Gentoo Linux and Licensing for RTCW, ET, Q3A and other Id games

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Fri, 2003-10-03 at 16:48, Todd Hollenshead wrote:
> Mr. Gianelloni,
> 
> I am Todd Hollenshead, CEO of Id Software, Inc. ("id Software").  Perhaps 
> you should have contacted me personally before now.  I can appreciate your 
> sentiment that you are a fan of id Software games and enjoy porting them to 
> Linux.  Such goodwill unfortunately does not take the place of a 
> contract.  I prefer not to be unnecessarily heavy handed, however, you have 
> put me in a position such that I must make clear the rights of id 
> Software.  I take exception to several aspects of your email.

First off, thank you for your quick response.  I was honestly not aware
of who to contact.  As I stated in my email, I was not contacted by
anyone at id Software.  I understand the rights of id Software, which is
why I am contacting you now since I wish to resolve this.

> Firstly, no one has any authorization to distribute or redistribute any 
> property owned by id Software, use any trademark or trade name or any other 
> copyrighted property of id Software unless we agree to such use in a 
> formally executed and signed legal document, or they are acting under the 
> express provisions and within the acceptable limitation of an applicable 
> End User License Agreement.  Since id Software doesn't have any written 
> agreement with Gentoo Linux or Gentoo Games, the only authorization you may 
> have is the permitted distribution/redistribution of certain files under 
> the appropriate End User License Agreement (EULA) that was originally 
> distributed with the files from id Software or our expressly authorized 
> representative.  If you believe you are or may be in violation of any such 
> EULA, then you should cease such activity immediately.

We are not distributing the software at all.  Portage downloads the
files from the official mirrors, just like a user would were they to do
it manually.  We do not mirror these files on our own mirror structure.

> Secondly, Timothee Bisset is not an employee or agent of id Software, and 
> as such, has no right or authority to make any legally binding 
> representation on behalf of id Software or enter into contracts on behalf 
> of id Software or otherwise modify or alter any existing license or 
> agreement, such as the RTCW and Enemy Territory EULAs.  Any modification or 
> amendment of any existing license, or any implementation of a new license, 
> must be expressly authorized by id Software via a written and fully 
> executed contract.  Thus, you should not be under the false impression that 
> any email discussion, including the present discussion, has in any fashion 
> modified, altered or amended any existing EULA.

I was unaware of Timothee's standing (or lack thereof) in the company.

As for modification of the EULA, I don't expect there to be any.  This
entire thing is to attempt to show that we do not believe that we are in
violation of the EULA now that we force the user to accept it.  We are
informing you of these actions in good faith and to make you aware of
them in the event that there is something we are unaware of that would
prevent us from doing so.

> Further, id Software is not under any obligation to respond to this or any 
> other correspondence submitted by you or any other representative of your 
> company, Gentoo Games, or your apparent affiliate, Gentoo Linux.  It is 
> clear in the EULA that id Software reserves any rights not expressly 
> granted by such EULA and that such terms may not be altered unilaterally by 
> sending an email concluding that a "final solution" has been reached unless 
> further contact is made.

I am not a member of Gentoo Games.  Gentoo Games is a commercial entity
which releases free games under a "GameCD" moniker.  It is a separate
entity entirely.

The only parties I am concerned with are Gentoo Linux and id Software.

> To the extent that Gentoo Games or Gentoo Linux is in violation of any of 
> the provision of any EULA or any id Software game, or that Gentoo Games or 
> Gentoo Linux is distributing or redistributing any property of id Software 
> without an express license, demand is hereby made to cease such 
> unauthorized and infringing activity immediately.  Please confirm your 
> compliance with this demand via return email.

As I stated above, we are redistributing nothing except for a small
ebuild file which is copyright Gentoo Technologies, Inc.  The ebuild
file is a recipe which instructs our package management system how to
install this software on a Gentoo Linux system.

The ebuild performs these actions:

1.  Download the game/patches from the official mirrors
2.  Ask the user if they accept the license (EULA) for the game
3.  Unpack the files from the game/patch into a temporary directory
4.  Copy files from the temporary directory to a "sandbox" location
which mirrors the local filesystem.  This is what keeps incomplete
installations from breaking the running system and is simply an
intermediary step.
5.  Copy files from the sandbox to the live filesystem exactly as they
would be if installed from the original package.

No modification of any id Software supplied file is done.  The only
thing that is done is some custom scripts are added which facilitate
such things as launching the game easier and starting a dedicated
server.

> I must reserve any right or remedy of id Software and make clear that 
> nothing herein shall constitute a waiver of any potential right or remedy 
> of id Software.

I do not believe that we are infringing on any rights of id Software. 
As I said above, this is more of a "heads up" to id out of good faith to
inform you of our plans.

> Sincerely,
> 
> Todd Hollenshead
> CEO
> id Software, Inc.
> 
> At 02:35 PM 10/3/2003, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> >   For those of you that do not know me, allow me to introduce myself.
> >My name is Chris Gianelloni and I am a developer for Gentoo Linux.  I am
> >on the games team, which makes me responsible for gaming on Gentoo
> >Linux.  I am not affiliated with Gentoo Games (the company) as they are
> >a separate entity from Gentoo Linux.  I am also the maintainer of the
> >ebuilds for Return to Castle Wolfenstein and RTCW: Enemy Territory.  For
> >those of you not familiar with Gentoo Linux and our package management
> >system, portage, an ebuild is simply a recipe for installing a piece of
> >software which allows it to be tracked by portage.  The syntax is
> >extremely simple and very easy to follow since it closely mirrors bash
> >scripting syntax.
> >
> >    All non-GPL Id games are currently removed from our package
> >management system (portage) due to an issue about licensing that was
> >brought to my attention via our Bugzilla[1] web site.  The issue was
> >apparently brought to light by Timothee Besset in a post on
> >http://www.linuxgames.com[2] where I am also a poster and my email
> >address is publicly available.  I was never contacted by Timothee, nor
> >anyone else at Id Software, so I proceeded to start a dialog with
> >Timothee about the problem as he perceived it and possible solutions.
> >In the mean time, I had masked the package (ET) in portage so users
> >could no longer install it except via the Makeself installer.  Our
> >package did not ask the user to agree to the license specifically.  I
> >agreed with Timothee that this was a problem, so I quickly rectified it
> >by removing the ability to install ET.
> >
> >   After some emails back and forth (available upon request) between
> >Timothee and myself, it became apparent that we were at an impasse on
> >the issue, so I removed ET and RTCW from portage and asked the
> >maintainer of the Quake III Arena ebuilds (Mike Frysinger) to remove
> >those as well, since they also used the Makeself installer and would be
> >subject to the same restrictions as pointed out by Timothee to myself.
> >I asked Timothee if there was anyone else at Id Software that I should
> >contact about this situation.  I have yet to receive a response to that
> >email which was sent on September 22nd.
> >
> >   The old disputed ebuild can be viewed via our viewcvs[3] web page and
> >is quite easy to follow.  If there is any questions about any of the
> >functionality of the ebuild, I can provide it upon request.  We have
> >since added a check_license function to the eutils.eclass.  An eclass is
> >a group of functions which can be called so as to not repeat code
> >unnecessarily in our ebuilds.  You can view the full eutils.eclass[4]
> >also which is the current version in portage.
> >
> >   The Gentoo Linux games team has decided that we wish to return Id
> >games to our portage tree, allowing users to install them with a simple
> >command and allowing portage to track the files and versions, making
> >upgrades easier for our users.  For retail games, the original CD or
> >installation files are still needed.  The CD key is still required.  We
> >are not avoiding any copy protection schemes.  We plan on adding a call
> >to check_license (in eutils.eclass) to the pkg_setup (pre-unpack)
> >section of the ebuild.  Attached is a diff against the last version of
> >enemy-territory-2.56.ebuild.  The unpack_makeself function can be found
> >in the eutils.eclass linked above.  If there are any questions about
> >this ebuild, the patch, or the eclass, please direct them to me at
> >wolf31o2@gentoo.org and I will get back to you in a timely manner.
> >
> >   The games team has decided that this is our official response to the
> >licensing issue and will consider this a final solution unless a request
> >is made on the contrary from official Id channels.  I do not know if
> >anyone at Splash Damage needs to be contacted in this, as well.  Please
> >forward this to any party which may need to be privy to this
> >information.  I am sending this to the gentoo-dev@gentoo.org email list
> >so it can be viewed by the Gentoo developers and users subscribed to the
> >list.
> >
> >   You can find a discussion about this issue in the
> >gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list[5].
> >
> >   I hope this reaches you all in good spirits and I thank you all for
> >not only making the best games around, but also for taking the time and
> >energy to port to the platform that I love and also to take the time out
> >of your busy schedules to read this very long-winded email.
> >
> >References:
> >[1] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=28707
> >[2] 
> >http://www.linuxgames.com/news/feedback.php?action=displaythread&threadID=21381&identiferID=6345
> >[3] 
> >http://www.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/games-fps/enemy-territory/Attic/enemy-territory-2.56.ebuild?rev=1.2&hideattic=0&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup
> >[4] 
> >http://www.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/eclass/eutils.eclass?rev=1.61&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup
> >[5] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/12400/match=eula
> >
> >Once again, I thank you all,
> >
> >--
> >Chris Gianelloni
> >Developer, Gentoo Linux
> >Games Team
> >
> >Is your power animal a pengiun?
> >Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=enemy-territory-2.56.ebuild.diff
> >Content-Type: text/plain; name=enemy-territory-2.56.ebuild.diff; charset=
> >
-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Games Team

Is your power animal a pengiun?

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