Quoting: play0adWe totally agree that the person had the right to upload it to steam due to the license. The concern here is Wildfire Games' identity theft, the lack of certainty about the source code (Verified, not verified), the mistakes in the title, and especially the potential load on our servers if the person didn't change the multiplayer lobby, and bonus, the positive or negative reputation of the game's presence on Steam in an alpha version for Wildfire Games and 0 A.D. Empires Ascendant since the person is pretending to be us. As an additional cost, moderation might have been problematic.

Regarding the legal part, there is no CLA on 0 A.D., so if it had to be re-licensed to link to the Steam SDK, I have potentially 500 contributors who disagree with taking this into account. Some of them are part of a fork, and some of them are dead.

You have to be the copyright owner to post on Steam, but I'm not sure.
In fact, if the person had contacted us beforehand, we could have considered something, but the fact they totally ignored us and or our messages made it a matter of urgency.

We're actually really interested in what it would take to go on Steam properly, and whether we can at all so please get in touch if you know what's required.

We'd like to thank all the people that reported the game on Steam, and we're sorry it had to go to such extents.

These are good reasons to be concerned. This person clearly acted maliciously, and it's no surprise that it was quickly removed from Steam (for several reasons).

I've heard of similar things happening with people impersonating an author/publisher and publishing their book on Amazon or even paying someone to voice an audiobook for a work they don't own the copyright to and collecting royalties for months, even after telling Amazon about it, and when it was finally removed, never seeing any of the royalties, of course. Valve is far quicker on the mark, it seems.

If you're curious how that relicensing exercise panned out for VLC (they did get it relicensed in the end), here's their press release on the matter: https://www.videolan.org/press/lgpl-libvlc.html

QuoteThe modification affects the VLC engine, also known as libVLC (and libVLCcore), allowing applications or plugins based on the VLC engine to be built under non-GPL licenses. Some libVLC bindings for other languages have already changed license too.

The license of VLC media player will continue to be GPLv2 or later. This will not impact normal users of VLC in any way.

All the developers have agreed to the relicensing, but a famous one, who refused to answer. His code was therefore rewritten.

As another user mentioned, Super TuxKart is licensed under the GPL and was published on Steam, so it is evidently possible under the right circumstances. I don't imagine it involved relicensing, but Valve's wording seemed to suggest that copyright holders needed to agree to make an exception for the SDK. That also seems unlikely to have happened in the case of Super Tux Kart.

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Quoting: ElectricPrism

Quoting: cprnOn top of that a clear attribution to original product would have to be made.

This is a moral argument, which directly contradicts the part you wrote before ("It'd have to be "redistributed" under a different name") -- which go ahead and argue it, i'm not going to disagree -- but again from my original post I prefer to stick to the legal requirements.

Note that 0 A.D.'s source code is covered by the GPL and the art/music is covered by CC BY-SA, which requires attribution.

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Quoting: EagleDelta

Quoting: slembckeWorth pointing out that their licensing basically allowed this: https://github.com/0ad/0ad/blob/master/LICENSE.txt
The source is GPL which specifically allows commercial redistribution, and the art is CC-by-sa3 which also specifically allows commercial redistribution. I can understand how the dev maybe missed that the GPL allows it since it's a wall of text, but the CC license is like 2 lines of text and half of it is devoted to saying this was fine. :-\ They could have just used a different CC variation that didn't allow redistribution.

I've been asked many times if I'm worried that someone could do this to my open source stuff, and I always tell them no. Like I didn't pick the licenses I do because it allows this, but I also... don't really care. Like sure, you can totally get a sucker to pay for something that's free, but reselling pirated stuff totally happens too. (shrug)

Open source users often have a certain attitude about how great it is that people make free stuff that they just give away from the warmth of their heart. Sometimes that's true, but it's usually much more nuanced than that. Sometimes you've got people that just want to give back and share what they learned, and sometimes you've got folks that openness as a moral imperative separate from the monetary aspects. Sometimes devs get caught up in the feelings too and forget what the legalese actually says. :(

edit: My point being: Open source is great, but make sure you know what you are getting yourself into!

You're missing that the Steamworks SDK, which is required to distribute a game on Steam, and since the Steamworks License is incompatible with "copyleft" licenses, any exceptions to the GPL to allow a piece of software to be distributed on Steam must be agreed to/decided on by the Software Authors, not just anybody.

Source: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/sdk/uploading/distributing_opensource

How many authors? All of them? If you just needed the permission of one author, all you would need to do is make a change to the software and add your name to the contributor list.

If you need the permission of all the authors...that would be very problematic given that every contributor to a GPL codebase (at least without a CLA) owns the copyright to part of the code. Every single copyright holder would have to agree. VLC had a rough time getting the software on Apple's App Store because of this (needing to change the license to LGPL to do so): https://www.videolan.org/press/lgpl.html

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Selling free software and redistributing it to help others out is a great thing. It's one of your rights under both the GPL and less-permissive licenses. They do not, and should not need the permission of the 0 A.D. copyright holders to do so. If you don't want this to happen with your software, an OSI-compatible license is not the answer. You instead want a non-free license which prohibits commercial redistribution and derivatives.

However, failing to provide the source code when asked would be illegal. Did anybody ask for it? They do not have to provide it alongside the executable, although they must include an offer. Nonetheless, this is something that could be easily solved without much drama if they provided it when asked. If they impersonated the developers of 0 A.D. or claimed that they created it, this would be a crime (as it's fraud). It's not clear whether the party that published the game on Steam did this. I am not aware of any registered trademarks for 0 A.D. that were available to be infringed on.

Similar commercial redistribution has happened with GIMP (mostly on the Windows Store), and this is what they had to say about it: https://www.gimp.org/about/selling.html

They even have some specific recommendations for people who sell GIMP: https://www.gimp.org/about/selling.html#recommendations-for-those-who-sell-copies-of-gimp

If you're interested in why commercial redistribution is one of the four freedoms a free software license allows you, there's an article written by the creators/stewards of the GPL: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling

QuoteMany people believe that the spirit of the GNU Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible—just enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding.

Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If a license does not permit users to make copies and sell them, it is a nonfree license. If this seems surprising to you, please read on.

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Quoting: Lofty

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualOh, and sharing files is more of a pain to set up than with Virtualbox.

Well that depends on what you define as pain. I use Gnome boxes with 'Sync-thing' and to my amazement it just worked directly from host to client & vise versa. Fast too. In fact the syncing of downloads from a VM pushed to the local machine is better than mere shared folders, in my use case anyway.

I'm referring to the standard webdavd method. Syncthing certainly seems like an easier method, though I don't think it would work if the guest were connected to an isolated internal network, which I usually have my Windows guests on.

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In my experience with Virtualbox and Virt-Manager/Libvirt/QEMU last year, I found that QEMU gave me smoother performance with fewer bugs on a Windows 10 guest. Part of this might be due to libvirt taking advantage of KVM for native CPU performance on Linux. I mention this because Virtualbox's extension pack, which contains what many might consider fundamental features, is licensed under a proprietary license. Virt-Manager has a little more of a learning curve, but it also gives you finer control; even giving you the ability to pass-through a hard drive for better performance. And GPU pass-through, of course, though that's not something I've tried...because I mostly fail to see the point.

You can also try GNOME Boxes, which also uses libvirt and QEMU, but has a very simple interface with fewer options.

The performance of my games, which were exclusively visual novels encumbered with DRM from the likes of DMM, was still poor regardless of the software. Oh, and sharing files is more of a pain to set up than with Virtualbox. On the other hand, what I love about libvirt is that the machines are defined using XML files, which are easily editable and portable. Virsh is also very easy to use for those who prefer a command-line interface.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualObligatory "I wish Steam just did normal TOTP with secrets you can use with any 2FA app, including password managers" comment.

It does, however the secret is not accessible without reading app data directly, which requires root, OR you may use a third party implementation such as steamguard-cli that bypass the need for a phone entirely.

Huh. The more you know. Maybe I'll try that someday instead of email 2FA.

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Obligatory "I wish Steam just did normal TOTP with secrets you can use with any 2FA app, including password managers" comment.

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I would never use a cloud streaming service or recommend that someone use such a service. However, there is no ethical difference between an online-only multiplayer-only game and a cloud streaming service. Practically, there is a difference in delivery. However, as a user, you have the same level of power over the software. Online-only multiplayer-only games are already a service and can (and will) be taken away from you at any time, for any reason—but most likely the company loses interest or goes bankrupt.

There is an ethical (and practical) difference between singleplayer games which are delivered through a streaming service and those that are delivered through a binary executable. You would likely have far more control over the executable than the streaming service. However, consider if the singleplayer game is encumbered by DRM and require activation to continue playing. It could also prevent you from making any modifications which could improve the experience (e.g. linking up a texthooker to learn a language for a visual novel). The amount of control you have over the game is the same, then.

Johren's DRM, which limits you to three activations (so three different devices) would be inferior to a streaming service you can access from anywhere, so long as it's the only place you're playing it. Furthermore, there are games encumbered by Denuvo DRM which require you to always be online in any case to play the game, balancing the ethical scales. Then, there's maximum-privileged anti-cheat watchdogs, which you might be forced to install even for a singleplayer game, which you wouldn't need to do for a cloud streaming service.

So there is an ethical difference between cloud services, encumbered binaries, and unencumbered binaries. However, even if the developer does not prevent you from modifying the game, they are not being helpful. It would be more ethical if the sources for the game were published under terms that permit you to inspect, modify and distribute it, granting you and any other customer absolute power over the game.

It's a pity the ugly compromises customers are left to make in this industry, depending on what they believe is most important. If I chose to read only those Japanese visual novels not encumbered by DRM, I'd run out of reading material quite quickly. Historically, gamers have always been the demographic most accepting of being treated poorly by a company if they can still manage to use their product (Adobe customers come a close second). Unfortunately, I am no exception.

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I'm surprised they're refunding anything.

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