Blzut3 wrote:Usual caveats aside, I'm not entirely sure the license for the Blood, Redneck Rampage, or Exhumed reverse engineering efforts is anymore clear. Same could be said about Strife I guess.
Even if they did pursue it, who can they come after? Those who took code that was licensed under the GPL and assumed it was all legit or those who actually did the reverse engineering?
To be clear: I never did any reverse engineering here so they cannot sue me for that. I also didn't use code under a non-disclosure license. I used code released under the GPL by forking a publicly visible repo on Github.
But ultimately Rachael is right, nobody has anything to gain from stopping these ports - on the contrary: They are more likely to sell more copies thanks to their existence. and going after their games' fans would be a dick move the gaming community would not accept.
Strife should be in the clear after SVE's release, though. The code was released under the GPL by the copyright holders, that should eliminate all gray areas.
Rachael wrote:lowskill. wrote:They only care for this stuff if you're making a profit out of it in some way, and no one is, and likely never will.
I feel I should correct you here: They only care if you actually have money, they don't give a flying rat's whether you are making a profit. If you have money then it's a worthwhile endeavor to go after you. Suing a broke person simply nets you a lot of legal fees and them owing you something you're likely never going to get.
It's not that easy. If they do not come after the little guy they'll have a hard time coming after the big guy later using the little guy's work to make a profit.
If they let this run for an extended period of time one may assume that they are ok with the reverse engineered product and its licensing conditions which would make it VERY hard to come after secondary users of such code who took its license at face value.
And who talks about suing? If they want it stopped they first send a C&D. Remember Ion Maiden? The shit only hit the fan when 3D Realms did not comply.