Enemy Territory and many other games ebuilds violate EULA, because they don't ask user confirmation for the EULA upon install. This is a comment from TTimo (of Id Software) from linuxgames.com: "What gentoo is doing is against the EULA, and they never asked Id for permission to do it. They previously released a live CD of ET 2.55 already, and tampered with the files in a way that's against the EULA. More precisely, gentoo installs ET without having the user agree to the EULA prompt. If this situation keeps getting worse with them doing ebuilds of ET and our other game ports, we are going to have to officially ask them to reconsider their practices regarding third party software. We certainly like Open Source software and Linux gamers, but there are still a few rules to follow :-)" Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3.
possibly related: http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=28634
I think this is the perfect example of how to use pkg_config and NOT automatically fetching files. It could be made that pkg_config can fetch the file after a src_unpack displays a message if the file doesnt exist already in distfiles. ebuild package config would be much nicer. I would disagree to automatically downloading the source regardless of the application if the license even remotely requires user input.
I'm taking this one and will be contacting Id about it.
actually this has nothing to do with fetching files john the EULA is presented when you run the loki/makeself installer solution i find here is that in the unpack_makeself function i made, it'll run ${PAGER} EULAFILE and way for the user to hit yes
question for the reporter ... where did you find that quote ?
Quote is from linuxgames.com comments about ET 2.56 post: http://www.linuxgames.com/news/ feedback.php?identiferID=6345&action=flatview
I have emailed TTimo at id software and am awaiting a reply. If I don't get one some time today, I will proceed with contacting other members of the id staff.
I think that the best solution would be implementing some interative method to install this types of ebuilds, showing the EULA and asking the user's answer prior to install. Well, if someone have difficults to download from the mirrors, here is one that works, and can be added in the ebuild: http://www.ropnet.ru/games/rtcw/mods/et-linux-2.55.x86.run And many thanks to Id Software to make Linux ports of such games and supporting open-source-comunity. Is a good example to follow by game developers world wide.
No. The best solution is to work with the upstream authors to come up with a system that is mutually beneficial, or to remove the ebuild altogether. I understand that this isn't the most popular opinion, but it is the right thing to do. I am still waiting on a second response from id on this. Their first response was to create a wrapper and run loki_setup. I tried this, but unfortunately, the text-only version of loki_setup packaged in the distribution of et segfaults on every system I have. The gtk installer works fine, but then there is no way for portage to track the files installed, which makes the ebuild worthless anyway. I have already written a function which will display the license and ask for user approval, but have not implemented it yet because I am waiting on word from id software on whether this would be sufficient of Gentoo to satisfy the EULA requirement.
I would consider this one "fixed" since I removed Enemy Territory from portage. I made a backup of the ebuilds (with modifications that I never commited) in case something changes in the future. I will continue to work on this issue in hopes of finding a resolution that is better for our users.
Just from an end-user point of view - I personally think that this, and other, ebuilds should be put back in portage as a matter of urgency. This should be an open, critical bug. Such censorship is *not* healthy for Gentoo Linux. What's wrong with displaying the self-same EULA with the pager and waiting for the user to type "yes"? This provides precisely the same functionality as the installer. Then, the only other issue is the fact that we've apparently "tampered with the files in a way that's against the EULA", which I suspect is probably a LiveCD-only problem, and as such should not prevent this returning to portage very soon indeed. I know that the developer's perspective is somewhat different and that we like to keep things legal, but if we comply with what has been said then there's no reason for us to keep this out of portage and the onus is on ID Software, not ourselves, to check for compliance with the EULA. That's just what the law says, else we have no case to answer ;-)
Trying to avoid getting sued is not censorship. ID is telling us that our ebuilds are illegally violating their EULA. We have to comply with their decision. If you'd like them to change their apparent policy on this to allow us to readd these ebuilds, please contact them about it, because obviously they don't give a damn about what we think. Chris posted his correspondence with ID to the gentoo-dev mailing list; he pointed out that it seemed that we were not actually violating the EULA, the contact at ID insisted that we were. Frankly, it's not a big enough issue to be worth having to have it decided by a judge.
I will see if I can get some sort of petition going, as that's probably the only way that end-users can affect the thinking of a major company these days. I won't be able to do it right away, but I'll get started when I can. It is censorship, although I realise who the culprits are - ID Software. How about the winex solution? I_ACCEPT_THE_EULA="yes" emerge winex Would that one help? Anyway, as I said, when I get time, I'll both browse the EULA and see what the problems are, and also try to get that petition going. Finally, it's probably worth stating that this is almost certainly a US-only problem, and that UK users (and others) can use the ebuilds without issue - except that we don't have them any more.
Trying to avoid being sued is censorship, although it's censorship via coercion. Unfortunately it's not realistic to deal with it in a court, as Jon said.
the games team already has a solution but we are waiting for word back from id, since the last e-mail we received (which was about a week ago iirc) ... basically if we dont get word back come oct 1 we're gonna go ahead and push out our solution which does not violate the EULA
Honestly, I am pretty peeved about how this entire thing has been handled by id software. First, there was no "official" ciorrespondense on this at all to Gentoo. There was only one member of id software complainging on a third-party message forum. The worst thing is that I post there and have made it abundantly clear that I was the maintainer for this ebuild and how to contact me. TTimo *never* made any contact with me. I contacted him to try to straighten this out. I have attempted to contact other people at id, but have gotten no response at all from anyone else. Honestly, it appears that id doesn't care about this issue. The quickest way to resolve this from the legal standpoint was to remove the offending ebuilds from portage. Now, the games team created a solution which should not violate the EULA (I have studied the RTCW and RTCW-ETEULA extensively). I have sent id a copy of this solution and am waiting for a response. If I don't get one by Oct 1st, then we're simply going to implement it and wait for the complaining from id (if any). I honestly can't think of any other way to do this. We have shown that we are very willing to work this out.
Absolutely! I don't dispute this. My only qualms, at least now, anyway, are with id, and not with the Gentoo devs or anyone else. You'll probably find that, in the end, this was a UK local authority type move - everyone wants to be seen to do something right, but nobody wants to be seen doing anything wrong: this is, in fact, exactly what a revolving door mentality does to any entity. So, TTimo saw that we were (allegedly) violating the EULAs and so straight away told us as such. But nobody, least of all TTimo, would instigate legal action against Gentoo on id's behalf due to the fact that this would cost money, and losing a case fought on dodgy grounds is an instant sacking at such places. It'll all blow over on Wednesday - id will be happy, the devs will be happy, and the users will be happy-ish until they forget that this was ever an issue, whereupon they'll be happy too.
Reopening for a reason soon to be seen... ;]
Enemy Territory and RTCW have been added back into Portage. An email has been sent to id Software showing our changes which now comply with the EULA. Todd Hollenshead (CEO of id) has said that there's no problem provided we're not breaking the EULA, which we are not. He also made it abundantly clear that Timothee Besset (TTimo) is not an employee fo id Software and has no authority to speak for them. I have to thank TTimo for pointing out our license violation and I also want to thank the other members of the games team (except SpanKY, because he sucks ;p) for getting this resolved quickly.
