How can TuxRacer legally be commercial?

[Gadren]

Apparently TuxRacer was originally GPL'ed, but then was developed commercially by another company (seemingly without the source for the new updates)...

Legally, how is this possible? I thought that he GPL prevented taking an open source program, changing it, and ending up with a proprietary program.

[towsonu2003]

Legally, how is this possible? I thought that he GPL prevented taking an open source program, changing it, and ending up with a proprietary program.
it doesn't, as long as the creator doesn't sue the other company.

[charlieg]

I believe that the company made TuxRacer GPL initially to spark interest and spur development then took it closed source after it got good enough for them to finish themselves.

Besides, even if the engine is GPL, the art/media (levels etc) can be kept proprietry.

[Lord Illidan]

I believe that the company made TuxRacer GPL initially to spark interest and spur development then took it closed source after it got good enough for them to finish themselves.

Besides, even if the engine is GPL, the art/media (levels etc) can be kept proprietry.

Case in point: Quake 3 Arena..

[Burgundavia]

If you own the copyright to the code, you can relicense at will. Observe how MySQL has the same codebase under two different licenses.

Corey

[towsonu2003]

the nice thing about gpl (from previous posts, I take the first makers = the later developers of racer) is that if you get your hands to the gpl'd code, you can just fork it. all you need to be is a programmer ;) I am guessing once you have an up and running engine (forked), the artwork should be easy to organize by an artwork devel team.

[Zeroangel]

So am I mistaken to believe that pre-forked code is still opensource? or does the individual/company that GPL'd it able to close the source entirely?

[towsonu2003]

So am I mistaken to believe that pre-forked code is still opensource? or does the individual/company that GPL'd it able to close the source entirely?
I've got nothing to do with legal stuff, but logically, it should be so (gpl'd code that was out before change of license is logically still gpl'd).

[slux]

The artwork has been a major stumbling block for most games that are free software so it's not currently really just an issue of getting an artwork team together.

Which is strange as there's a very strong modding community churning out lots of quality mods for all the commercial games and gamers' flock to buy average first person shooters to get their hands on the best mods.

There are many things that could be the cause, the best engine technologies are currently always the non-free ones of course and maybe that's perceived as a more valuable aspect than being able to make a stand-alone game or not requiring players to purchase another commercial game just to play your free effort.

[Asraniel]

there is a open source fork of this game somewhere, google it

[twowheeler]

http://projects.planetpenguin.de/racer/

The last version is shown as 0.5 alpha. Looks like not much activity on the site.