[Scummvm-devel] Dreamweb engine inclusion.

[Max Horn]

Hi again!

OK, so I just had a look at the code on <https://github.com/whoozle/scummvm-dreamweb> and also gave it a spin trying to compile it.

The first issue is that the code triggers tons of warnings. But I guess those could be addressed by making improvements to the code which generates dreamgen.cpp. Or by manually fixing them and not regenerating again.


But more severely, I have to agree with Willem: This engine can IMHO only be released and distributed under the GPL if the sources and tools used to generate dreamgen.cpp are released under the GPL. Specifically, the ASM source that served as input. But we do not have permission for that, as far as I understood.

At least that's the only way I could do it and then still tell myself "I believe in the GPL and want to uphold its spirit". 

Eugene likened dreamgen.cpp to the various DAT files we ship. There is some truth behind this -- and indeed, the DAT also are problematic from this point of view. On the other hand, for them we do not have better sources (or do we? please let me know). So we provide to interested 3rd parties  everything we had access to ourselves when we created these files.


But for dreamweb, we do have the sources, we just do not have permission  to distribute them. That changes a lot!
 
In particular, if the plan is to use the original asm code as hint for bug fixes, and then re-generate dreamgen.cpp after making fixes to that asm code, then this *clearly* violates the GPL in my eys, at the very least in its spirit, but quite likely also by its letter (though IANAL): In a nutshell, the GPL is meant to ensure equal access to the sources for all parties. But in the described scenario, this is not the case. For anybody other than the people with access to the original source code, it would be very difficult to perform any work on the code. 

Also, it seems that no source code comments are being transferred at all. Were there none in the original code? If so, then maybe it's OK to go on, as long as we never regenerate dreamgen.cpp once it has been merged. But if there are source code comments, then I am pretty sure devs would want to use them. So then even if they fix dreamgen.cpp "directly", they's still be using their exclusive access to source code for dreamgen.cpp that has not been made public, according with the requirement of the GPL.


As such, I have serious doubts that releasing this engine under the GPL is legally possible, as long as the original creators do not agree to let their ASM code be published. (I actually wonder why those folks don't want that. Does it contain IP they don't own or what? Are they ashamed of it? )


Bye,
Max