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Comment by nicce | Hacker News Reader

> To use the compiled binaries, you must own the game.

> This repository and its contents are licensed under the GPL v3 license, with additional terms applied. Please see LICENSE.md for details.

It does not sound open-source to me...

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I think they just mean that for the game to work, you'll need art assets, etc. from the original game that aren't part of the code they open-sourced. I don't think it's a licensing restriction. (And even if it were, they released it under the GPLv3, which says "If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term.", so you could just ignore it.)

It certainly sounds like all you need is in the repository, and the usage of the resulting binaries are still restricted. Whether they find assets correctly or not correctly should not matter, if they are somewhere else.

> the usage of the resulting binaries are still restricted

To use the binaries, you need the game assets. The only legal way to acquire the game assets is to own the game, as EA have not included them in this release.

This is less a licensing issue, but stating the real limitations, that EA aren't volunteering to do the leg work to remove. Which is fine.

You could word it differently. Why not mention it?

It is separate problem if runtime assets are missing and the game is not actually a game without them or gives an error message. Let's also assume that you can bypass DX dependencies with other means.

The current wording sounds like binaries are always proprietary, no matter what.

Where are the assets for openra coming from? I guess those could be used in a fork of this?

I'm pretty sure they get their assets from the freeware release

It's the same model as the idTech GPL releases - the code is open source, the rest of the game is not. To legally play the original game or a modified version of it then you'll still need to buy it for the assets, but there's nothing stopping you from only taking the code and building a brand new game on it like various studios have done with idTech (e.g. Selaco and Wrath: Aeon of Ruin).

Yea, this seems -fine- to me. Even if they had to rip out some third-party licensed code that they couldn't open source[1], to the point where the game wouldn't even compile! Some code is always better than no code. The open source community can/will fill in any gaps.

1: Which seems to be the case here. To fully compile, you need:

DirectX 5 SDK, DirectX Media 5.1 SDK, Greenleaf Communications Library (GCL), and Human Machine Interface (HMI) “Sound Operating System” (SOS), or disable the code that calls into them.

The additional terms are under term 7 of the GPLv3, so -- assuming they're valid -- would still render this open-source.

It's realistically the best-case scenario we can hope for in most cases. If you want all old games to be FREE, then, fine, this won't make you happy. But for those of us who are just happy to be able to play the ancient PC games from our youth on modern systems, and are willing to PAY for it, this kind of license separates the engine from the assets, and effectively requires you to prove that you have bought the game by supplying the assets. But then you can do whatever you want with it to get it running on your favorite Linux distro, etc.

I am personally not opposed to this. It worked for Doom.

I mean, it sounds like the Red Alert code is available under GPLv3 (plus some additional "we want to be very clear, this doesn't cover the trademark" terms tacked on), but you can't build it without DX5, which gets compiled into the binary, thereby making the binary non-free. Someone could port it from DX5, GCL, and HMI and produce something that builds as GPL.

The other part is it doesn't include the game assets or usable replacements, much like OpenRA, or OpenTTD for the first half of its life.

I'm not going to fault EA too much for this approach, particularly if it paves the way to open sourcing e.g. EOL MMOs and the like if game devs don't feel the obligation to port away from all the commercial libraries. I've seen game devs who I genuinely believe on this say things to the effect of "Oh yeah, we'd totally open source dead game X, except we'd have to port it away from Bink and Havok and XYZ, and we don't have the time to do that for 0 revenue"

That sounds reasonable, but they could have worded it differently.

They first statement about DX:

> or write new replacements (or remove the code using them entirely) for the following libraries;

But, they say that binary is proprietary regardless, no conditions. So it is very difficult to say.

If the code compiles without assets (no mention about them, it sounds like it should compile), then the resulting binary should be free to use. Missing runtime assets are different problem, and separate from the binary usage permissions.

They don't say the binaries are proprietary. "To use the compiled binaries, you must own the game." is not a statement about licensing, which is why it is not under the "license" section. It's a statement about completeness of the repository: it doesn't include the game data which you need to obtain separately buy buying the game. This is pretty much standard for open source releases of old games.

OpenRA doesn't ship with the assets+ for Tiberian Dawn, Red Alert, and Dune 2000 but they're downloadable straight from the UI as they were made officially available by EA/Westwood.

+ Without the music and cutscenes. If you want that you need original discs or other dematerialized versions.

Maybe read LICENSE.md before making such claims. The additional terms are about limitations of liability and being explicit about what is not covered (e.g. trademarks). The GPL allows such additions.

Does open-source mean it's free? I don't think that is what it means, it just means the source is open, viewable, and you are free to use it as per the licensing.

Yes, it actually means that.

https://opensource.org/osd

No it doesn't. You are allowed to require payment before you provide a copy of open source software.

If it's open source, people are free to redistribute it. Copies of open source software can be sold for money, but open source licenses allow redistributing the software for free. In practise, that means most people won't buy the open source software from a seller, they will choose instead to get a copy from someone who is willing to redistribute it free of charge.

> it just means the source is open, viewable

That's called source-available, unless "use it as per the licensing" includes further freedoms

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