Pioneer's relation to Paragon

[lwho]

I recently wanted to try Paragon to see what they made of Pioneer. I pulled their GitHub clone, compiled, started, but it crashed. So, I created an issue at their GitHub issue tracker, which was deleted (not closed!) a moment ago. I document here, what lead to this:

EDIT: It turned out, the issue wasn't deleted. It was a GitHub quirks hiding my account.

Binary aborts immediately after "New game" (#335)

Self-compiled binary from master (6cdec84) on Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS 64 bits.

Startup sequence runs properly, but 1 second after "New game" it aborts (saw airport buildings for a very short time).

Never happened with Pioneer, so probably not an upstream bug.

[backtrace, stderr.txt, opengl.txt stripped]

And now it's not even compiling anymore:

[compiler errors stripped]

I'm getting exactly the same issue with Alpha4 from a build from the devs.

Bug Report:
http://forum.paragongame.com/index.php? ... -new-game/

Thanks for the notice. Seems the devs are ignoring their bug tracker.

Looking at your gists, that doesn't look like the same issue. I'm getting a GL_STACK_UNDERFLOW directly after game start. Your log seems to indicate, that the game ran for some time.

You seem to have AMD graphics hardware (proprietary or open source drivers?), I'm using an Nvidia graphics card with their proprietary drivers (see my opengl.txt above).

Hi, I'm almost done syncing latest pioneer changes with our changes in sync branch. Did you run into these issues when testing the binary paragon alpha 4 release (the one from the website) or directly compiling from source? Keep in mind that since alpha4 paragon depends on a different set of assets that are not part of the opensource repository so compiling and running it on pioneer's assets may lead to crashing on new game though I'm curious what would cause it. I did however notice the GL_STACK_OVERFLOW assert when running in debug and will investigate it when I have time.

As I said 6cdec84 self-compiled. 6cdec84 should be the same as Alpha 4, as far as I can tell.

Keep in mind that since alpha4 paragon depends on a different set of assets that are not part of the opensource repository so compiling and running it on pioneer's assets may lead to crashing on new game though I'm curious what would cause it.

What do you mean by this? I cloned MeteoricGames/pioneer including the data folder. I did not mix with any pioneerspacesim/pioneer files.

I used the binary provided by humble bundle (Alpha 4).

I just also tried with the alpha4_rc branch (so commit 698536e). Same issue.

Aha ok to clarify Paragon's art assets (most of /data folder) are not under an opensource license anymore hence they are not part of this repository. The data folder in this repository is from an obselete release.

If you bought paragon you can simply use the data folder from our latest release (currently at alpha5) to run a freshly compiled version but we didn't merge the latest changes with master yet so use the sync branch to build an alpha 5 binary.

Aha ok to clarify Paragon's art assets (most of /data folder) are not under an opensource license anymore
[...]
If you bought paragon [...]

Just to make that clear:

You take the Pioneer source code without paying us (the Pioneer authors). Then you add some artwork. And finally you want us to pay for work which was partly done by us.

vs.

We trade free development work (source code) against free artist work (Paragon's art assets). After all, that's what open source development is about: You give your competence in one area and spend your free time and in exchange you get the competence of others in other area and benefit from the time they spent.

Now which deal sounds fair for you, and which doesn't?

About two hours later, there is no sign of issue #335 anymore. It seems, they don't want to hear anything about the fairness of their business model.

[lwho]

So, what is your opinion of their business model and on the relation between Pioneer and Paragon?

For me, developing open source software is a giving and taking. I'm contributing my coding skills, but at the same time; I suck at artist work. So, I'm grateful that others contribute there art skills or programming skills in other areas, and all of them their time. I also don't mind, that not everyone contributes, why should I mind that others enjoy our "product", as long as I can enjoy it as well.

Now, a business model like Paragon's destroys this symmetry. They take the code, add some nice artwork, but don't give it back to those, whom they took the code from.

[lwho]

I just noticed, that my GitHub profile was "hidden from public":

One of our mostly harmless robots seems to think you are not a human.

Because of that, it's hidden your profile from the public. If you really are human, please contact support to have your profile reinstated.

We promise we won't require DNA proof of your humanity.

So, the issue above wasn't deleted, it's just not visible anymore for the public (as is my pioneer clone, etc.). I contacted the GitHub support. I hope, they give me back my humanity, soon.

[robn]

Github does that from time to time. Support are usually pretty quick at putting it back together.

Regarding licensing, we've been over this before. Pioneer's code is GPL3, assets are CC-BY-SA 3. What Paragon is doing is allowed. Perhaps antisocial, but allowed.

They are likely not meeting the letter of the requirements in the GPL though. Specifically, the attribution requirements might it be met, and the ability to reproduce the same binary obviously isn't there. That said if you didn't get a binary from them then you might not be entitled to their changes anyway. Distribution is a funny concept.

I'm still getting around to writing to Meteoric; the last few weeks have been insane for me and I haven't had time and brain space for it. My aim is to make sure that were getting everything back that were entitled to, bit also hopefully start to establish a good understanding between both teams. I feel like we're on the wrong foot a bit here, which is a bad way for things to be.

[lwho]

Regarding licensing, we've been over this before. Pioneer's code is GPL3, assets are CC-BY-SA 3. What Paragon is doing is allowed. Perhaps antisocial, but allowed.

This split license is quite confusing. I'm not fully getting, what it actually means.

For example, I stumble again and again upon 5c in the GPL:

c) You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this
License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. This
License will therefore apply, along with any applicable section 7
additional terms, to the whole of the work, and all its parts,
regardless of how they are packaged. This License gives no
permission to license the work in any other way, but it does not
invalidate such permission if you have separately received it.

What means "entire work, as a whole" in this context? And the last paragraph of 5:

A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent
works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work,
and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program,
in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an
"aggregate" if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not
used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users
beyond what the individual works permit. Inclusion of a covered work
in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other
parts of the aggregate.

I can not see, how artwork could not be "by their nature extensions of the covered work". On the other hand, I am not a lawyer (obviously ;))

If this double/mixed licensing has such a strange results, it's very sub-optimal, though I agree trying to change licensing would be a nightmare.

That said if you didn't get a binary from them then you might not be entitled to their changes anyway.

I know that. But that would be easy to change. And if it turned out that the whole game (including their artwork) was subject to above clauses, this would allow me to redistribute (for free if I like).

[Luomu]

Every Id software game released under GPL makes an exception for assets, and nobody has challenged that in court, so I take that as a sign split licensing is perfectly OK.

[lwho]

Every Id software game released under GPL makes an exception for assets

I think this is a different case: Of course the original copyright holders may choose and split license at will (that would be Id software or the Pioneer authors). (Also GPLv2 vs. GPLv3 might make a difference, I don't know).

The question is, what happens if someone else takes the code under GPL, modifies code, adds their own art work and re-publishes the product. Let's say they threw the original artwork away and only took the the GPLed code for the sake of argument.

Now the GPL says that "You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. This License will therefore apply, along with any applicable section 7 additional terms, to the whole of the work, and all its parts, regardless of how they are packaged. This License gives no permission to license the work in any other way, but it does not invalidate such permission if you have separately received it." (emphasis mine). I'll have to read if the mentioned section 7 has anything applicable.

The distribution/compilation exception does not apply IMHO as the artwork would be considered "by their nature extensions of the covered work" and is "combined with it such as to form a larger program".

So, does that mean, that despite the fact, that artwork in the original work had a different license, the viral GPL suddenly "infects" artwork in the derived work? I know, this sounds strange (but legal stuff often is).

That effect would also have been in id software's interests by the way: They can give the code to the community, allowing fan projects and such, without the risk of competitors selling a product with their code (a competitor of course would be allowed to sell it by GPL, but every recipient of the software would be allowed to re-distribute for free).

[robn]

So, does that mean, that despite the fact, that artwork in the original work had a different license, the viral GPL suddenly "infects" artwork in the derived work? I know, this sounds strange (but legal stuff often is).

At the end of the day I'm not a lawyer either, and I don't know exactly how I'm supposed to interpret the passages you cite. What I do know is our intent. The intent was always that code would be under one license, assets under another. It says that at the top of the different files - code says GPL, models and other things say CC. It seems to me that that statement of intent makes a commercial asset replacement ok - we explicitly apply a non-GPL license to our assets, which surely can't mean anything other than that our assets are supposed to be covered by the GPL? Given that, surely that resolves any ambiguity?

I guess I could contact the SFLC to try to get some clarity on it, but I don't really want to, mostly because I don't actually have a problem with any of this. As I've said repeatedly, I think that what Meteroic is doing is generally fine. There's a few details that need to be ironed out, but I'm hopeful that will be straightforward to resolve.

[FluffyFreak]

This isn't something I have a problem with, I'd like them to correctly attribute the work we've done and some official acknowledgement of that would be very nice.
However I don't see any malice in their actions just a little bit of naivety and inexperience - which they will hopefully work out eventually.

You've got to look at when they started too, Pioneer was much more of a mess back then and it was difficult with all of the arguing and heckling on the old forum, LionHeart didn't want anything to do with Pioneer because of it, he just wanted to make a space game without having screaming about how it wasn't like Frontier.

I seriously considered jumping ship across to Paragon for a long time just because of how bad it all got.

So when you take all of that into account, and how things have progressed far enough that they want to do it for a living, then I wish them the best of luck.