http://www.linux-community.de/story?storyid=23294 and http://www.macnews.de/news/102145.html mention that some users are using Cider from one game to run a second game on the Mac. The game vendors are upset, and are saying they'll do something to make that harder. There is some question about whether Cider includes LGPL components of Wine, and whether there are any violations lurking there. I imagine our friends at Cedega would instinctively avoid such infringement, but accidents might happen. It'll be interesting to see if anybody finds a real problem. - Dan -- Wine for Windows ISVs: http://kegel.com/wine/isv
On Thu, 2007-08-30 at 12:07 -0700, Dan Kegel wrote:
http://www.linux-community.de/story?storyid=23294 and http://www.macnews.de/news/102145.html mention that some users are using Cider from one game to run a second game on the Mac. The game vendors are upset, and are saying they'll do something to make that harder. There is some question about whether Cider includes LGPL components of Wine, and whether there are any violations lurking there. I imagine our friends at Cedega would instinctively avoid such infringement, but accidents might happen. It'll be interesting to see if anybody finds a real problem. - Dan
Are there English versions of these articles? My German isn't so hot these days. Thanks, Scott Ritchie
On 8/30/07, Dan Kegel <dank(a)kegel.com> wrote:
http://www.linux-community.de/story?storyid=23294 and http://www.macnews.de/news/102145.html mention that some users are using Cider from one game to run a second game on the Mac. The game vendors are upset, and are saying they'll do something to make that harder. There is some question about whether Cider includes LGPL components of Wine, and whether there are any violations lurking there. I imagine our friends at Cedega would instinctively avoid such infringement, but accidents might happen. It'll be interesting to see if anybody finds a real problem.
All of the LGPL Cedega/Cider source code is available on TransGaming's public CVS server at http://www.cedega.com/cvs/. Any substantial patches to LGPL'd components are typically submitted back to WineHQ. There haven't been many recently since most of those components aren't heavily used by games. One of my roles at TransGaming is to make sure that patches to our LGPL'd folders make their way back here. Jason Green Developer, TransGaming, Inc.
On 8/30/07, Jason Green <jave27(a)gmail.com> wrote:
http://www.linux-community.de/story?storyid=23294 and http://www.macnews.de/news/102145.html mention that some users are using Cider from one game to run a second game on the Mac. The game vendors are upset, and are saying they'll do something to make that harder. There is some question about whether Cider includes LGPL components of Wine, and whether there are any violations lurking there. I imagine our friends at Cedega would instinctively avoid such infringement, but accidents might happen. It'll be interesting to see if anybody finds a real problem.
All of the LGPL Cedega/Cider source code is available on TransGaming's public CVS server at http://www.cedega.com/cvs/. Any substantial patches to LGPL'd components are typically submitted back to WineHQ. There haven't been many recently since most of those components aren't heavily used by games. One of my roles at TransGaming is to make sure that patches to our LGPL'd folders make their way back here.
Hi Jason, on the off chance the rest of Transgaming hasn't already seen those two pages, please circulate the links. it'd be nice to have responses to questions like "The LGPL seems to give users the right to remove the LGPL'd portions of Cider from game A and use it with other apps. The gamers who are currently doing this are also copying proprietary parts of Cider, which isn't allowed. How will Transgaming prevent the copying of the proprietary parts of Cider without preventing the copying or modification of the LGPL portions?". And maybe even get the answer back to the authors of those pages. That ought to calm the waters. Cheers, Dan
Hi Jason, on the off chance the rest of Transgaming hasn't already seen those two pages, please circulate the links.
One of the problems is that [to my knowledge,] we don't have any fluent German speakers in the company, so we wouldn't even know *how* to respond to those articles. :)
it'd be nice to have responses to questions like "The LGPL seems to give users the right to remove the LGPL'd portions of Cider from game A and use it with other apps. The gamers who are currently doing this are also copying proprietary parts of Cider, which isn't allowed. How will Transgaming prevent the copying of the proprietary parts of Cider without preventing the copying or modification of the LGPL portions?".
The EULA included in all games which are shipped using Cider technology spells out how each of the pieces of the Cider framework are licensed. It includes the folders which have LGPL'd WineHQ code and lists all of the various MIT/BSD-style licenses for other components. Any components which require source re-distribution (such as those licensed under the LGPL) are available on the public CVS site. All of the license details can also be found on the public CVS site. We know that some people are creating their own "home-brew" Cider packages for other games, but they obviously cannot distribute these packages legally (in most countries, at least). It does take a fair bit of work to put together a custom package that actually works, and many of these apparently require hacked EXEs to get around other games' copy protection techniques. We do make customizations to the Cider engine and optimizations for each game that we port, so these "home-brew" games will never be as high quality as they could be. At the moment, there isn't much of a real issue to be worried about. People have pirated software on every platform that's ever been made, so I don't see why Macs would be any different. Not that we condone software piracy (ahem, *copyright violations*, that is) by any means, but in this case, it's mostly a non-issue. I'm not sure if that answers your question or not, but hopefully it clears it up a little bit. If a user wants to use only the LGPL parts of Cider, they will need to extract just those folders and leave the rest of the code alone. However, they'd probably have a hard time running a DirectX-based game without any of the D3D* libraries or many of the other non-LGPL pieces.
And maybe even get the answer back to the authors of those pages.
Anyone who speaks German is invited to respond to these types of articles and point them to our website and PR department. To my knowledge, I don't believe that these authors attempted to contact us prior to writing their articles.
That ought to calm the waters.
Nah, this is the Internet... there's always a storm brewing somewhere. ;-) Jason Green Developer, TransGaming, Inc.
Am Donnerstag, 30. August 2007 22:26 schrieb Dan Kegel:
it'd be nice to have responses to questions like "The LGPL seems to give users the right to remove the LGPL'd portions of Cider from game A and use it with other apps. The gamers who are currently doing this are also copying proprietary parts of Cider, which isn't allowed. How will Transgaming prevent the copying of the proprietary parts of Cider without preventing the copying or modification of the LGPL portions?". Well, just link everything to the game and ask the 'porter' to rebuild the LGPL'ed parts from source. I don't think the LGPL requires the binaries to be reusable, the source should be enough. Or ask people to use Wine for that business.
I can translate the articles if you want to, but so far google offers this: http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.linux-community.de%2Fstor... http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.macnews.de%2Fnews%2F10214...
On Friday 31 August 2007, Stefan Dösinger wrote:
Am Donnerstag, 30. August 2007 22:26 schrieb Dan Kegel:
it'd be nice to have responses to questions like "The LGPL seems to give users the right to remove the LGPL'd portions of Cider from game A and use it with other apps. The gamers who are currently doing this are also copying proprietary parts of Cider, which isn't allowed. How will Transgaming prevent the copying of the proprietary parts of Cider without preventing the copying or modification of the LGPL portions?".
Well, just link everything to the game and ask the 'porter' to rebuild the LGPL'ed parts from source. I don't think the LGPL requires the binaries to be reusable, the source should be enough. Or ask people to use Wine for that business.
My understanding is that it must be possible to change the LGPL part to to a modified one. In cases where the LGPL code is in a native shared library or in this case also in a DLL, it can be replaced by rebuilding that module from source and replacing the respective library file. In cases where the LGPL code is statically linked into an application, the rest of the application needs to be available in re-linkable form, e.g. object files. Cheers, Kevin
Dan Kegel wrote:
http://www.linux-community.de/story?storyid=23294 and http://www.macnews.de/news/102145.html mention that some users are using Cider from one game to run a second game on the Mac. The game vendors are upset, and are saying they'll do something to make that harder. There is some question about whether Cider includes LGPL components of Wine, and whether there are any violations lurking there. I imagine our friends at Cedega would instinctively avoid such infringement, but accidents might happen. It'll be interesting to see if anybody finds a real problem. - Dan
Users can do whatever they want, (in most jurisdictions, even mostly the USA) with their binaries. But they can not then redistribute those hacked games or Cider binaries. regards, Jakob Eriksson
participants (6)
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Dan Kegel -
Jakob Eriksson -
Jason Green -
Kevin Krammer -
Scott Ritchie -
Stefan Dösinger