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Potential license violation in a third party using this

Open diaphragm-workplace opened this issue 1 year ago • 5 comments

The "Cactus" videogame client appears to use this library and is a fork of "DDnet" which uses it as well. While DDnet distributes the license with it's source code, Cactus doesn't include any source and I wasn't able to find the text in their release tarball either.

diaphragm-workplace avatar Nov 27 '24 12:11 diaphragm-workplace

Screenshot_20241127_141405 Here's refusal to change anything

diaphragm-workplace avatar Nov 27 '24 12:11 diaphragm-workplace

Hi, and thanks for pointing this out! Yeah, closed-source projects should mention WavPack somewhere if they're using it, but of course other than nicely asking there's not a lot I can do. I could firmly ask and get a "f*** you" and that wouldn't really achieve much either except create bad feelings.

I looked around the DDnet code and could not find any evidence that WavPack is actually called from anywhere. I might be wrong in this case, but I have seen other projects that include WavPack but don't actually use it. Maybe they thought of using at one point and then switched to something else or never got it working, but they can't be bothered removing it from the sources (until it breaks the build, of course).

I appreciate knowing about this, but I don't really see anything actionable at this point.

Cheers!

dbry avatar Dec 01 '24 19:12 dbry

@dbry, thanks!

Well, it appears to be linked and they use regular .wv files for all assets. As for actions, I would say you being the owner of this would make a difference cuz scary. I already got a fuck you though.

diaphragm-workplace avatar Dec 02 '24 20:12 diaphragm-workplace

Haha, thanks for taking the "fuck you" for me! :smile:

I couldn't find an e-mail address over there, but maybe I'll register on their forum and post something. Not sure exactly how "scary" I am though, especially over here.

Interesting they are actually using WavPack. I'll have to look again and see how it's linked in.

dbry avatar Dec 04 '24 18:12 dbry

@dbry, haven't found a forum, I contacted him via Discord (proprietary).

Also, please note DDnet is also a fork of the (at the time server only) DDRace (abandoned and pretty much same dev team). That was a fork of Teeworlds, a shooter. Teeworlds uses Wavpack it seems, so the dependency traces all the way back to the original. In fact, all of them have the same main menu song.

diaphragm-workplace avatar Dec 04 '24 22:12 diaphragm-workplace