[Nel] Congratulations + concerns

[Michael Warnock]

6/30/2001 3:51:13 PM, x5101920@fedro.ugr.es wrote:

>
>Mensaje citado por: Michael Warnock <michael@in-orbit.net>:
>
>> By way of introduction, I am working on a couple of games making use of
>> nel- commercial games.  In addition to selling our content and service,
>> we consider our game rules our ip and there are a couple reasons why
>> they can be implemented without violating the gpl (which i consider
>> scripture).  First of all our rules will be in a brand new specification
>> language in 
>> their own files or database tables and wont be compiled or linked at
>> all.  But should we run into speed problems for not hardcoding
>> everything, we're still not required to release anything- you can quite
>> legally use gpl'ed code in your own, unreleased programs- and why should
>> we release the server side code?
>
>I would love that you reply to this answer to me and to Nel guys that are so 
>hard working on such a good project.
>
We're quite grateful to them- we've even had them over to our place in san francisco, but it just so happens that they are also at work on a lot of nel based code that they have not released- and they are by no means required to- it is only in the event of distributing binaries that you must distribute source.

>IMO In the same moment that you make public your server you are making it public 
>and you should release it. But I am not a lawyer.
>
if it works out to seperate our rules in an external data format- because that really is what heaps and heaps of content specific rules are, then we might well release our server code (and we will of course release any changes we make to the basic services), but though ianal, I'm quite sure on the point of not being required to release internal software that makes 
use of gpl'ed code and I really don't believe that even mr stallman would object given the situation- its quite a step for a game company to share source at all and it has been no small hinderance in our search for funding, nevertheless we've stuck by the gpl.

michael warnock
InOrbit Entertainment