John Carmack Enforcing the GPL on Quake Source on slashdot
Check out Carmack’s .plan for 2/23/00
” If you can’t stand to work under the GPL, you should release the code to you last binary and give up your project. I would prefer that you continue your work, but abide by the GPL.
If necessary, I will pay whatever lawyer the Free Software Foundation reccomends to pursue this.”
There is a The QuakeLives Files:
“Purpose
This web site aims to be a collection of material which gives some insights into some of the perceived problems with the QuakeLives project and its leader, Slade. Many people, the author included, have become extremely upset and irate at the behaviour of this group, especially Slade, as we have observed it. “
One slashdot comment:
“Carmack’s motives re: the GPL
I’d like to think that part of Carmack’s motivation for embracing the GPL was something like this:
The people most interested in the Quake source are part of a Windows-centric “community” to which the GPL is utterly alien and incomprehensible. This is where closed-source shareware came from, right? Those people don’t even give away the source for “freeware”. Hell, I’m a Windows programmer, but I can recognize the fact that these people are mostly (though not all!) yutzes. It was goddamn inevitable that some asshead was going to build something on the Quake source and then turn Libertarian and refuse to abide by the GPL. If you drop a rock, it will fall. If you drop source code onto a gang of Windows programmers and Libertarians, somebody’s gonna try to steal it. This is a law of nature. Carmack damn well knew this was going to happen.
It’s great fun and damned cool that somebody just happened to release The Code Most Likely to Be Subject to GPL Violations . . . under the GPL. And that the code happened to be released by somebody willing and financially able to hire dozens of savage, bloodthirsty lawyers to send howling after the blood of malefactors. I’ve seen comments from Carmack about how much he likes the GPL as a user, because (as Stallman intended) he can fix bugs in drivers instead of waiting for vendors to make excuses. I think he cooked up a test case. I think he’s been a nice guy and given this Slade moron a lot of rope. And now I think he’s going to nail Slade’s ass to the wall, and it’s going to be a beautiful and instructive example. I don’t think that was his only reason for GPL’ing Quake, nor even a major one, but it is what it is. When a guy with a machine gun in his hand throws meat into a tank of sharks, I don’t think he’s just exercising his throwing arm.”
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 24, @07:29AM EET (#294)