GPL and the Oculus SDK

**AnyOldName3** · 07-30-2019, 10:36 AM #1

I'm dealing with a guy on the OpenMW forums who's complaining that we've been hiding behind the Occulus SDK and OpenVR aren't GPL-compatible, so we're waiting for OpenXR excuse for not starting work on VR, claiming that it's a lie started by Dolphin devs to silence someone with the wrong political opinions. I want to avoid saying anything incorrect, so can I get the actual story? I'm under the impression that (at least some of) the devs were vaguely aware of a licence-breaking fork for a while, but ignored it because it looked interesting until someone bothered to complain.

**JosJuice** · 07-30-2019, 05:36 PM #2

(07-30-2019, 10:36 AM)AnyOldName3 Wrote: I'm dealing with a guy on the OpenMW forums who's complaining that we've been hiding behind the Occulus SDK and OpenVR aren't GPL-compatible, so we're waiting for OpenXR excuse for not starting work on VR

It's true that that is the reason for us not wanting to add VR support based on those SDKs. Though of course, there is also a second excuse for not having started work on VR: Someone has to be interested enough in doing it before any work can get done Smile

(07-30-2019, 10:36 AM)AnyOldName3 Wrote: claiming that it's a lie started by Dolphin devs to silence someone with the wrong political opinions.

The statement about the Oculus SDK not being compatible with the GPL is true (if you assume that we have interpreted the licensing situation correctly, but our interpretation is shared by the FSF, so it's not exactly something we just made up). It is also true that some Dolphin devs dislike the author of Dolphin VR for reasons unrelated to the licensing, but we tend to be critical of GPL violating forks regardless of what the person who has made them is like. (By critical, I mean doing things like banning links to them on the forums, not actively trying to get them taken down from where they are hosted.)

***MayImilae*** · (This post was last modified: 07-30-2019, 10:06 PM by MayImilae.)

EDIT: Also this doesn't really belong in random, this is very Dolphin related. I should spin this into its own thread...

*waves her magic moderator wand*

Done! Now this will have it's own thread. Now onto my original post.

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We don't dislike the Dolphin VR author for their political opinions, we dislike them for being an asshole and insulting one of our own who had recently passed away. Their chronic need to assert their political beliefs in totally apolitical situations was just a symptom of their assholeness.

Regardless, the Oculus SDK and GPL are completely incompatible, and Dolphin VR was violating both our GPL license (see below) and the Oculus SDK (the SDK requires controls on what software can run within it for vague health reasons, since Dolphin can run whatever within itself, it is instantly disqualified. Also a few other things, see what the FSF says about it here). In fact, but sure to show that to whomever you talk to about this. The FSF has lawyers who specialize in licensing, so they understand this topic far better than we do!

Spoiler:

Lastly, we're not obligated to work on VR support. Now that an acceptable API exists, whether or not we get VR support depends on when a developer (in or out of Dolphin) wants to implement OpenXR support and does one that's clean and acceptable. The dev who expressed interest in creating an OpenXR implementation left during the long LONG wait for OpenXR, so they probably won't be doing it.

**Helios** · 07-31-2019, 01:35 AM #4

speak for yourself he's a fucking racist lmao. I'll openly and loudly dislike him for that. The other shit he pulled is just to be added on the shitty pile.