Hello everyone,

My favorite games of all time, Star Control 2, has its source available as The Ur-Quan Masters. 
Do you think this would be a game you could realistically port this to C#/XNA?   I would like to see about porting this for folks who have never had the experience of playing this game.  I don't have a lot of C++ experience, but I would certainly like to contribute with my 4+ years of C# experience!  I've seen the Melee version of this elsewhere, using c#, but it doesn't look like it got far. 

Thanks,
CB 

Porting it wouldnt be too hard, but putting it on CG would be problematic. Not sure of the legal ramifications

Legal ramifications?  Never thought of that...
I figure since it was released open-source, it would be OK to port.  I'm not looking to make a profit on this, and Toys For Bob made one hell of a game that deserves to be seen by newer generations.

The CG?  Sorry, I'm new to these forums, so I don't know all the acronyms.  If you mean the computer-generated cut-scenes, hell... that can always be saved for last. 

Thanks for the reply,
CB

CG means Community Games, the Xbox Live marketplace for Creators Club members to sell their games.

I don't want to sell this game.  I would just like to create a port of it for others to enjoy.

CitizenBane:

I don't want to sell this game.  I would just like to create a port of it for others to enjoy.

As far as I can tell, the XNA framework (which isn't an OS library, and doesn't have source) and the GPL (which requires source for everything except for OS libraries) might not be compatible.  I'll let you do the math since we're not allowed to give anything resembling opinions related to the law in these forums.  Unless you have been granted the rights to it you risk being shutdown (or something worse if your unlucky).  If you can get in touch with the rights owners you might be able to get them to grant a GPL + XNA exemption license..  Atari apparently also has some rights to Star Control (maybe just the name? possibly why the open source version is called the Urquan Masters not Star Control).

I agree you would have to look closely into the legal issues.

As I see it, I think you would be okay doing a PC version in XNA, I even think you would be okay putting the source of the XBOX version online, I don't think you could release it as a community game without jumping through all the legal hoops first though.

I just had a quick look at the source and it would be pretty easy to port, a few pointer issues to sort out, but other than that it would be pretty easy.

The melee portion has been totally re-written using XNA and it's open source code (and I believe .ccgame binaries) is available.  The project was going strong with weekly updates but after community games became for profit only I think it was stopped as the UQM license wouldn't allow it to be distributed that way :( ..

Here's the blog site:

http://bwoot.com/xna

The source forge page is here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/uqm-xnamelee

So basically what it MAY boil down to is that I could probably create a port, but not release it on CG?

Hm.  Perhaps I'll get a lawyer to help me sort through some of this. 

Thanks for all the informative comments. 

-CB

Definitely talk to a lawyer. On the 360 it might be easier to argue that the XNA library is part of the operating system (since you don't distribute it, it's part of the MS CG platform), so possibly as long as you provide access to the source...  On Windows this is a lot more gray.  XNA is almost definitely not part of Windows.   You might be able to argue the XNA *IS* the OS.  Users would have to have XNA preinstalled, which it isn't on Windows.  I'm not sure there is much point of a Windows release anyway since there is already a windows version of the game.

Reality Shift:

CitizenBane:

I don't want to sell this game.  I would just like to create a port of it for others to enjoy.

As far as I can tell, the XNA framework (which isn't an OS library, and doesn't have source) and the GPL (which requires source for everything except for OS libraries) might not be compatible.  I'll let you do the math since we're not allowed to give anything resembling opinions related to the law in these forums.  Unless you have been granted the rights to it you risk being shutdown (or something worse if your unlucky).  If you can get in touch with the rights owners you might be able to get them to grant a GPL + XNA exemption license..  Atari apparently also has some rights to Star Control (maybe just the name? possibly why the open source version is called the Urquan Masters not Star Control).

Hello. I happen to be a core developer of the Ur-Quan Masters and can answer to some things :) Regarding GPL + XNA exemption license, in practice it wouldn't be possible since there have been quite a lot of contributions over the years and every single one of them would have to be tracked down and asked for permission, or excluded from the source and rewritten.

You are right about name "Star Control" being owned by Atari and indeed it is the reason the project is called UQM instead. All other SC-related copyrights are owned by the original developers (Toys For Bob).

So generally I echo what others have said, getting a lawyer is the best option here.

While no lawyer, I happen to own a software ISV and have a bit of experience with software licensing.  And as an avid StarCon/UQM fan, I'd love to bring this forward to a modern console.  Don't forget, the GPL version of UQM was actually made for a console in the first place: the ill-fated 3DO.  Back to the license, it is common to resell GPL code as a product, as Red Hat does with Linux, provided that you also offer it free and open source, which is why CentOS exists.  So I see no reason why someone with a bit too much time on their hands shouldn't port UQM to XBox community games and sell it there, provided that the source is also available for others to likewise tweak and offer if they want.  Ideally the UQM porting community would avoid presenting such confusion to the public by uniting their efforts behind a single port, host it someplace like sourceforge, and setup the community games account to pay all profits to someplace like the Free Software Foundation, lest you face the wrath of the open-source community for profiting yourself.  Don't forget, GPL doesn't seem to prohibit you from selling something, and even making a tidy profit doing it, provided that you also offer it free and open source.  That's why so many companies make money packaging and rebranding things like Linux, Apache HTTP, etc.

JayZ

JayZ:

While no lawyer, I happen to own a software ISV and have a bit of experience with software licensing.  And as an avid StarCon/UQM fan, I'd love to bring this forward to a modern console.  Don't forget, the GPL version of UQM was actually made for a console in the first place: the ill-fated 3DO.  Back to the license, it is common to resell GPL code as a product, as Red Hat does with Linux, provided that you also offer it free and open source, which is why CentOS exists.  So I see no reason why someone with a bit too much time on their hands shouldn't port UQM to XBox community games and sell it there, provided that the source is also available for others to likewise tweak and offer if they want.  Ideally the UQM porting community would avoid presenting such confusion to the public by uniting their efforts behind a single port, host it someplace like sourceforge, and setup the community games account to pay all profits to someplace like the Free Software Foundation, lest you face the wrath of the open-source community for profiting yourself.  Don't forget, GPL doesn't seem to prohibit you from selling something, and even making a tidy profit doing it, provided that you also offer it free and open source.  That's why so many companies make money packaging and rebranding things like Linux, Apache HTTP, etc.

This is my understanding of the GPL as well.  (cf. this section)

I believe that you are able to take the source code for any GPL'ed product, modify/tweak/port the code (in this example, porting it to XNA) and re-releasing it -- or selling it -- as long as you also provide the source code for free as well.  If you cannot distribute the source code as a package with the game (e.g. if it were on XBL CG), it appears that you are allowed to provide written instructions in the game that instructs people as to how they can obtain the source.  (Say, including a URL where all of your source code is freely downloadable.)

Am I understanding this correctly?  I've re-read the relevant sections of the GPL a few times now, and I don't think that there should be any issues from doing this.  After all, if all of the source codebase that you are porting from is being distributed under the GPL, then they have no right whatsoever to prevent you from modifying, redistributing, or even selling your modified product as long as you also provide the source code for free via some means as well.

If anybody has any further knowledge on this subject, please enlighten us, as the next project I was considering working on for XBL CG is a port of a somewhat popular recently-GPL'ed game.

One potential risk is that you don't have the source for the XNA framework (or the right to distribute it).  This potentially makes any XNA project GPL incompatible.  With the GPL you are required to give rights to distribute ALL code, including libraries, unless they are part of the operating system.  On both Windows and the Xbox, the XNA Framework is an additional download (although on the Xbox, this fact is hidden from the user), so it would be hard to argue that the XNA libary is part of the OS.