I've got a question about DosBox and the GPL. I'd love to bundle DosBox with my own dos game similar to GOG's awesome setup, but I'm unclear if I "bundle" a game and a launcher app with DosBox, do I need to provide source code for the game and the launcher? They talk about the GPL being viral in "many" circumstances, is this one? Obviously GOG doesn't, I wouldn't want them to need to, but I wasn't sure if GOG has licensed DosBox separately or if they are using the GPL.

Anyone have any knowledge or experience with this? I'm just trying to be legit and not make potentially bad assumptions. The answer I saw in the DosBox community was "you can bundle as long as you abide by the GPL" - very helpful of them. :)

Again, I made the game, I made the launcher, if I distribute it with dosbox using dosbox's standard GPL license, does that GPL license mean the game & launcher code need to be shared/GPL'd as well? I didn't change any dosbox code, or even compile it myself.

You dont have to. The GPL license applies to Dosbox only, many commercial closed programs like games sold here on GoG are bundled with Dosbox, and sold without any problems. The GPL license doesnt apply to whatever software is bundled with dosbox. That software has its own license.

That's fantastic news, thank you.

Just to be safe, I would recommend asking the Dosbox devs at the VOGONS forum. If you are going to alter the Dosbox code, I think the Dosbox license requires you to publish that code.

Thanks, though that's where I found less than concrete answers that didn't really answer where the boundary was that I was wondering about.

And definitely if I were to modify the DosBox code I'd need to provide that code, I know that's covered by GPL. Fair enough, no complaints. But that's not this project. :)

Ask a lawyer.

Any other response is purely speculation.

It's not. Like i said many commercial closed source programs are bundled with dosbox without any problems.

Hasn't anyone already asked a lawyer? Like, the Gog team? That's more kind of info I was hoping for, and why I asked here. Otherwise, I ask 3 lawyers and get 3 answers, probably variations phrased like "I estimate a 75% change of winning a challenge in front of a good judge in a favorable jurisdiction." And how helpful is that?

:)

Thanks, keithdrop. So the license holders over at Vogons don't seem to mind, and the community prior behavior supports it; looking good. The other question, of course, is who could sue, and that seems to only be the DosBox owners - the dev team, I assume, and since they seem Ok with it, haven't chased similar things (like Gog), and I'm not breaking new ground... sigh. Never a 100% guarantee, but sounds I'm OK as long as I follow such "many commercial" patterns.

AFAIK, the only stipulation you have to abide by in this instance is providing the source for DOSBox. The source is available in the DOSBox directory of every DOS game on GOG. It helps that it's only 1.2 MB as a tar.gz.

It's not that simple. This is a contentious issue and one person's interpretation is not going to be parallel with another. It is one of the faults of the GPL, one that has been argued extensively by people more educated on the matter than you and I.

As for other companies using the code that way, that doesn't mean it's legally acceptable. It means they have lawyers that viewed it that way and are willing to argue as such. That or, they made their own interpretation and hoped for the best. Neither is a concrete interpretation.

I've researched the GPL a bit in the past, and had some discussions with developers. The "viral" aspect of it is very real, and significantly limits how useful a lot of OSS is. There are a lot of very good tools out there that I would have used at one time or another, but the GPL does demand that anything that uses it be opened up the way that the component is, which isn't really viable in many scenarios.

That being said, there are specific guidelines for how that plays out, and who gets "infected". I don't think bundling two otherwise separate products constitutes the kind of contact it takes for the GPL to transmit its nature. The problem isn't having two things in a bag, its making something from a GPL product that causes the transmission of nature. Basically, if one piece of software ingests something with GPL, it gets GPL. Something that isn't happening in this case.

You just have a piece of software that is doing its job. It doesn't need the game to function. The game isn't part of it at all. It's just something the software can play with. If the GPL did effect bundled games, then we all would be entitled to each game's software on GOG that uses it. I'm fairly certain any such request would get denied.

There are a number of sites that try and tackle the GPL which would be better to read than anything I have to say.

Thanks, all, and still interested if you all have more. Yes, gooberking, that was definitely my concern, and I know even being 100% legal doesn't mean one won't get sued, just makes it less likely to lose big. I'm glad the answer isn't "yes, bundling always invokes viral nature explicitly in GPL" or even 'GOG has non-gpl commercial license that allows them to bundle."

The other attitude I've seen that I appreciate is "a contract/license is just a piece of paper, it's the business relationship that matters," meaning in this case the intent of the licensors - the DosBox team - is as important as the license itself. Of course, intent can changes, so the words matter for business protection, but much easier if they consider it an acceptable use.

Tangents:
Of course, it's sad when a licensor pics a license like GPL because of good marketing or fame and then realizes that it wasn't what they intended once they see the details applied. But that's a whole different issue. :)

What can I say, like Richard Stallman, I believe in free software (in many applications), but unlike him I don't think GPL is really free. It's what a hardware guy means by "free software", I think, not what a software guy like me thinks. But that'll derail a conversation, won't it! :D

I don't think that there is a problem, although I'll leave the finer points of license conformance to professionals.

I do recall that there was some outrage back when Steam started bundling dosbox with games, but they had modified it to build in their DRM in it and then not released the source to their modifications as required by the GPL. I'm not entirely sure how that ended, apart from the dosbox developers being fine with the end result.

One thing I do know; you will want to bundle along the source code to the dosbox that you're distributing. It's not strictly required to do so, but otherwise you're mandated to provide it on request for years to come. Easier to just include it with every distribution and forget about it.