by divVerent » Sat Oct 20, 2007 7:36 am
I doubt that's allowed, as both are indeed compiled into one package, which you call "game". You don't download Warsow engine and data separately... and the maps don't work without the textures, which means, they "link" to them. The question rather is, whether the game "links" to the maps... and IMHO it doesn't, but the maps link to the game (they call spawn functions the game needs to have with specified semantics), so GPLed game code maybe does "infect" the maps.
Basically, that's a question simply not decided yet. If you want to make a map that won't be part of Nexuiz, you can of course use any textures you want - even if it is true that maps need to be GPL if the game code is GPL, I doubt anyone of us would sue you - even if we were that evil, the doubt is too high whether this counts as linking or not.
The biggest license problem is, however, the "Noncommercial" term in many "free" licenses. Nexuiz is distributed on Linux distribution media. It is distributed by package repositories. This already counts as commercial! Debian could never put Warsow on their DVDs, for example, as manufacturing and selling these DVDs IS commercial! Commercial does not just mean "for money"... you can give away something for free and still do that commercially, for example, if you get paid for it another way... for example, a certain company allows anyone to join their website for free and look for jobs... at no cost at all. This does not mean they earn no money... they get the money from those who post the job descriptions.
If an ISP runs a Nexuiz server and puts his company name in the server name, this is some kind of advertising - and therefore COMMERCIAL. If he also offers a Nexuiz download on his website, it is commercial too. GPL allows that though, and I am quite fine with it. But with Noncommercial license terms, this would not be possible.
Also, note that the textures DO influence the map... for example, they can end up more or less directly on the lightmaps stored in the BSP file. Look at my map necchesu for an example of this...
1. Open Notepad
2. Paste: ÿþMSMSMS
3. Save
4. Open the file in Notepad again
You can vary the number of "MS", so you can clearly see it's MS which is causing it.