This is for those who know most of the problems with GPLed pak1.pak maps. Also, personally I am not interested in doing anything in particular to make this happen, I think that QW needs other things than free variant of pak1.pak.

The goal is: Make an on-line installer of QW that will be free and legal and will make it legally possible to play maps from pak1.pak.
The goal is NOT: Make a GPL "compliant" package of QW (such that could be included in linux distros).

This installer would be inspired by nQuake. It would:
1) download (or even contain, if license allows it) GPL source codes of pak1.pak maps.
2) a) download some legal textures, or
b) download shareware Quake and extract textures from it
3) launch a some included bsp compiler and produce dm[1-6].bsp, e*m*.bps
4) it would be ensured (somehow, on the server) that the bsps produced are compatible with the original .bsps from pak1.pak
5) some license agreement would mention that the user is not allowed to distribute the produced files

I think the major reason this won't happen is there isn't enough people interested in making this happen (I am not interested either).

But my question is: does this in theory solve legal and license issues properly? That is not via "no one cares, lets close our eyes and do it", but in a way that cannot be proven illegal anyhow?

or you could just compile the BSPs locally without textures (actually simple flat ones) and just replace them at load time directly (whatever texture replacement package you wish to use). Then you don't have insane vis+light times, and you can guarentee that the hash is knowable, and mod the client to remap those known hashes to ones that are also valid. Oh, and you can distribute them too.
The problem is simply one of noone caring enough to enforce any standard set of replacements, rather than any technical issue.

I was under the impression that the demo license forbids derivative works (the engine blocks mods for instance), but presumably that also includes the player.mdl on a custom map, or even a gpled quake engine, thus your 2b is not viable, while the rest is merely overkill.

I think that was done before, i recall someone on quakeone forums did it.

http://www.quakeworld.nu/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1712

Please explain why we just shouldn't compile the dm maps and include them in nQuake?

1) You can't compile them with textures from ID software as their license is not GPL-compliant.
2) As I got it you can't compile them with QRP textures as at least one of these is true:
a) They aren't GPL compliant. (CC license is not GPL compatible; maybe they changed the license to GPL, but in such case they should release the *.psd source files they used for creating the texture imho)
b) Many people are not happy about them being pixel-copy of id textures, thus violating the copyright -> this discourages many people from supporting it.

And we can't use solid texture versions because?


If this is such a big issue, then we should write and ask FSF, they should be able to tell us what is derivative work and what is not. Dunno if anyone have played OpenTTD with the NewGRF packages, but they have some quite close remakes of original TTD gfx, and that is not considered derivative work.


Why? Noone else who release GPL license images release psd files, there are a million kde/gnome iconsets that is only released as png/svg


Pixel copy? Please explain - img1 img2

I didn't say we can't.

Dynamically loaded images don't need to be GPL compatible. Also, doesn't the svg format contain all that is needed for editing an icon? That's the requirement of GPL - give away also the stuff that you need to edit the released thing.

As for QRP relevant thread is here

SVG is not a source format, yes you can edit it, but not more than you can edit a PNG.

Well, why are we just taking LordHavoc's word for it? He isn't a lawyer - also how can something that is 8 times larger be pixel copy? The OpenTTD NewGRF road images are the same size and using the same width as the original road images, and they are not considered derivative works.