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Nexuiz Forks: Another Example of Single Ownership Problems

Nexuiz is sort of a poster child open source project, an example of a high-quality game that's developed by the open source community. Unfortunately, it may also be a poster child of how things can quickly go wrong once commercial interests are involved and when it's unclear who controls a project.

Phoronix is reporting that Nexuiz has forked into Xonotic because the founder of the project has entered a deal to allow proprietary use of the game name and code for a proprietary project. The folks forking the project claim that Nexuiz founder Lee Vermeulen is an "absentee" founder, and that use of the code by IllFonic (the company working with Vermeulen) may constitute a GPL violation because the rights haven't been assigned to Vermeulen.

According to the Xonotic FAQ that's been posted:

Lee Vermeulen, the Nexuiz project founder, decided to license the Nexuiz code, including the Darkplaces engine, to a new game development company named Illfonic so that they could develop a closed-source version for the PS3. As part of this deal, IllFonic acquired the rights to use the name Nexuiz along with the domain nexuiz.com, and are under no obligation to contribute code back to the open-source Nexuiz project (and have stated that they have no intention of doing so).

When this was announced, the response from the Nexuiz community was overwhelming negative, even among the development team and main contributors. Vermeulen had not actively participated in the project for several years and all development had been done by the community. Most members have expressed a sense of betrayal and cited the project as an example of mushroom management. Vermeulen essentially cashed in on the hard work of others and sold the code, name and reputation that they had built up over years without him.

This is probably going to get uglier before it gets resolved, but it once again highlights the dangers of a single entity (be it individual or corporate) holding the keys to a project. The community around Nexuiz apparently has little to no say in the way that the name, code, or domain are managed. That's a recipe for problems.

Any project with a reasonable number of community contributors needs to address the questions of who holds the keys to the kingdom: That is, the code, the name, the domain, etc. It's important to note that for every community project that forks or runs into negative governance issues, there are probably 10 projects that see smooth sailing. That is to say, thinking about governance and licensing issues is important, it's healthy to approach them from a "what might go wrong" perspective, but also to approach these issues positively. But do it before it becomes an issue, not after.

• gpl
• fork
• nexuiz
• xonotic

by Andres on Oct. 04, 2010

The whole point to Open Source is that any one can deal with the code. Businessmen should think ahead what they want and expect of their products. If they conveive them as free products they should be ready for such an option. But if they are planning to profit form their products they should plan accordingly. This would resolve many of the ownership issues.

Andres Curso Arreglos Florales

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by Tony Vittore on Oct. 09, 2010

Open source? is that something like Open GL? i dont really know much about this so err i guess i should ask something --

what is open source? XD

thanks a lot!

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by thomas shaw on Jan. 01, 2011

This is a classic example of someone sensing an opportunity to make money. But i hope i'm wrong.

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by Kate on Jun. 13, 2011

"by Tony Vittore

What is open source?"

Hey Tony,

Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software. (Thanks to Wiki)

Kate the PS3 Girl

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