[vox] Outlaws redux

[Micah J. Cowan]

On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 07:29:38PM -0800, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> On Tue 18 Nov 03,  7:24 PM, Micah J. Cowan <micah@cowan.name> said:
> > I think you're missing that they specifically said "not the source":
> > in your quoted text above they are speaking *exclusively* of the
> > executables. That would be 100% pointless, IMO.
> > 
> > -Micah
> 
> i guess that's the part i'm wondering about.  i *think* they're talking
> about source code, although i'm not entirely sure.  because if they are,
> their terms are (so far) compatible with the GPL.   on my first reading,
> i think i read it the same way that john did...

Hm. Well, given this:

  We would not "give away" the code in the same sense done with the
  Doom and Quake engines and we certainly would not such to be
  considered or become "open source".

It sounds to me like they don't want to allow free access to the code
at all: I take it by their (apparent) contrast of "in the same sense
done with the Doom and Quake engines" and "open source" that they
possibly don't understand that the Doom and Quake engines were in fact
"open sourced". But at any rate:

   What we could do... [is] that we [could] make it available ("it"
   being either the entire engine or selected executable files)

To me, the "entire engine or selected executable files", gives me the
impression that "selected executable files" is a subset of "the entire
engine", which I would then assume to mean, "in executable form only".

Admittedly, I'm reading a heluvalot between the lines, but to me it
seems to be the most /likely/ intent. Their wording is *very*
ambiguous. I'd be tempted to draw conclusions on the competency of the
author for a legal occupation based on that, but I'd hate for them to
come across that in the archives ;-)

Anyway, I know that the real reason for the poor wording/writing is
most likely that they spent a total of ~2.8 seconds in reading,
contemplating, and responding to the request... :-/

-Micah