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