[SOLVED] GNU Licence

[Yudraciell]

i play this game called eve-online and they have a version for ubuntu. My question is

1) does it have to be open source or does it not?

2) Can someone explain the gnu license in simplified terms.

3) am i allowed to modify it, for like stability and graphics purposes

[binarymutant]

I'm pretty sure eve online wasn't released under the GPL, although it should be.
A lot of proprietary software is on Ubuntu, not everything is licensed under the GPL, for instance your NVIDIA drivers. If it was GPLed you could modify it and do pretty much whatever you wanted with it, for more info on the GPL check out http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html and as for modifying eve online, your really installing a binary not the source, which makes modifying almost impossible.

[Vadi]

Here is a human-readable version of the GPL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/

While, yes, there is software that's not released under it on the GPL, we should still be very thankful that it was released on Linux in the first place - a lot of things wouldn't be where they are at today if not for them.

[binarymutant]

Yes, we should thank companies that consider linux users and not solely the microsoft/apple camp, but finding GPL replacements to those proprietary programs should be a higher priority. After all where would GNU/Linux be without the GPL.