[Scummvm-devel] ScummVM License

Eugene Sandulenko sev at scummvm.org
Mon Feb 1 12:10:03 CET 2016


Hi Team,

I would like to raise a question of upgrading ScummVM to GPLv3+ license.

It was long believed that because of difficulties or impossibility to
connect with some of the code contributors, we have no way to upgrade to
GPLv3+.

However, yesterday I had a chance to ask this question directly to Richard
Stallman on FOSS (Strangerke and md5 were with me), and he explained, that
GPLv2+ (which ScummVM is currently licensed under) perfectly allows
so-called "autoupgrade."

Why I'd like to upgrade.

1. There is certain software, particularly RetroArch's shader scalers which
I'd like to use. I spoke to them last year, they kind of dual-licensed
portions under GPLv2, but since that that specific branch was deleted from
their repository on GitHub, so there are no traceable signs of that
agreement.

2. The difference between GPLv2 and v3 is in preventing so-called
TiVoisation when consistency checks on the platform prohibit any binary
modifications. This may potentially touch us in the future, e.g. somebody
could prevent ScummVM from running anything but some specific game on some
platform, restricting our freedom (yes, it's theoretical exercise, but
still). The second difference doesn't touch us as it deals with patents,
but I hardly imagine that we may even consider patenting something related
to ScummVM.

Thus, the primary goal is #1. #2 is informative.

The major (and only to my knowledge) drawback is that we will effectively
prevent GPLv2 projects to reuse our code. Say, DOSBox or Linux will have to
upgrade too if they want to build-in portions of ScummVM.

So, thoughts? Complains?


Eugene
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