Nvidia making GameWorks Source Code Publicly available

[Orangey]

Use the multi-quote.

 

[AlamoX]

Where do you see anything about cost?


It is royalty-free, which means there is no charge to use the source code at all. As I mentioned above, it seems nvidia grants the license as soon as you download it so any developer just downloads the source code and can use it free of charge.

So as i said, there are still some libraries that are only provided precompiled. Those compiled libs cannot be reverse-engineered. But all the source code is free to sue by the developer.

i get the cost from the mouth of nvidia's rep, in an interview done when all this argument started about gameworks being a blackbox, the rep said that Devs have the ability to buy a higher tier of the licence to have access to the source code, outlining the 2 options available with the source being the most expensive, i will try to dig up the video interview if i can find it.
roality free, doesnt mean free of charge, just means that nvidia doesnt ask for % of each sold unit, and there can still be a license fee, without having a roality fee, you make it sound like if it was free of charge and it's not, at the end of the contract you have this " NVIDIA’S AGGREGATE LIABILITY TO DEVELOPER OR ANY OTHER PERSON OR ENTITY CLAIMING THROUGH OR UNDER DEVELOPER EXCEED THE AMOUNT OF MONEY ACTUALLY PAID BY DEVELOPER TO NVIDIA FOR THE SOFTWARE OR ANY OTHER MATERIALS"

 

[D.P.]

Royalty-free, or RF, refers to the right to use copyrighted material or intellectual property without the need to pay royalties or license fees for each use or per volume sold, or some time period of use or sales.

 

[drunkenmaster]

Developers are allowed to modify the code, so Nvidia would have no grounds to revoke the license.

This is just hilarious watching the AMD crowd trying to undermine Nvidia's move Yiu guy should just be proud that AMD led the way and undoubtedly pushed Nvidia to follow!

Nvidia put in a clause that allows them to revoke the license at any time without cause..... it's right there in the wording making your point worthless.

The entire point is with a clause like that no one, absolutely no one spending big money on software development will risk the rug being pulled out from underneath them with a license that can be revoked at any time for any reason. You do not risk millions of dollars in investment in software without full licenses or using open source code that CAN'T have the license revoked.

This means this code will be used by absolutely no big games at all, which means they are left with Nvidia's current paid licenses... which means nothing has changed.

There were two options, cheap enough license for black box gameworks, an unspecified cost source code for gameworks license. They have now added another option, source code for some bits of it.... but with Nvidia saying they can pull this license whenever they want. That clause means some guys playing around with coding will use it, some indie devs might use it, anyone spending bigger money on software development will not risk a license being pulled on them so the new option is ruled out for them, leaving the two original options, of which every dev is magically choosing the non source code paid license, so nothing actually changed.

Edit:- maybe we should also remember what Nvidia's recent history is, patent trolling, trying to intimidate people into paying to license their IP or face big lawsuits. On that basis, a company trolling for royalties, how many big AAA titles are going to risk basing an engine/game and anything from 5-125m on a game just for Nvidia to just before release say, hey, we're pulling your license, pay us 10mil or you can't use gameworks in that game that you've finished with gameworks in it. With recent Nvidia activities with licensing and attempting to extort payments no sensible dev will 'fall' for this bull.

This is the difference, real open source code will involve a license that doesn't say they'll revoke it whenever they want.

 

[AlamoX]

Royalty-free, or RF, refers to the right to use copyrighted material or intellectual property without the need to pay royalties or license fees for each use or per volume sold, or some time period of use or sales.

you should look up more about the definition of royalty-free, that wiki page's definition is wrong.
and the 2nd link from google you get an article in scientific america saying this "Don't let the Free mislead you. Royalty Free (hereafter, RF) means that after the initial permission is secured, usually through money, additional uses can be made without payment. RF is multiple use free of royalties. Pay once, put the photo on a t-shirt, upload it to your website, print out some fliers, get it tattooed on your forehead. It's all clear! But you still had pay for it at the outset."

3rd link " A royalty-free (RF) image license is much less restrictive than an RM license. A user typically pays a one-time fee for a royalty-free image license and can then use the image as many times and in as many places as he chooses. The "free" in royalty-free does not mean there is no cost for the license, but instead refers to being able to freely use the image without paying additional royalties. A small-business owner, for example, may opt to pay a one-time fee for RF images for his website."

so gameworks isnt free, Devs need to pay a one time fee for the license, at least for the source code version, and if anyone uses it without byuing the license from nvidia it could be revoked.

 

[Final8y]

Nvidia put in a clause that allows them to revoke the license at any time without cause..... it's right there in the wording making your point worthless.

The entire point is with a clause like that no one, absolutely no one spending big money on software development will risk the rug being pulled out from underneath them with a license that can be revoked at any time for any reason. You do not risk millions of dollars in investment in software without full licenses or using open source code that CAN'T have the license revoked.

This means this code will be used by absolutely no big games at all, which means they are left with Nvidia's current paid licenses... which means nothing has changed.

There were two options, cheap enough license for black box gameworks, an unspecified cost source code for gameworks license. They have now added another option, source code for some bits of it.... but with Nvidia saying they can pull this license whenever they want. That clause means some guys playing around with coding will use it, some indie devs might use it, anyone spending bigger money on software development will not risk a license being pulled on them so the new option is ruled out for them, leaving the two original options, of which every dev is magically choosing the non source code paid license, so nothing actually changed.

Edit:- maybe we should also remember what Nvidia's recent history is, patent trolling, trying to intimidate people into paying to license their IP or face big lawsuits. On that basis, a company trolling for royalties, how many big AAA titles are going to risk basing an engine/game and anything from 5-125m on a game just for Nvidia to just before release say, hey, we're pulling your license, pay us 10mil or you can't use gameworks in that game that you've finished with gameworks in it. With recent Nvidia activities with licensing and attempting to extort payments no sensible dev will 'fall' for this bull.

This is the difference, real open source code will involve a license that doesn't say they'll revoke it whenever they want.

+1

 

[tommybhoy]

WOW!

Nvidia put in a clause that allows them to revoke the license at any time without cause..... it's right there in the wording

This is getting way out of hand...


What if a Dev takes the next step up a with another hardcore 'Hatred' style game, and ramps it right up to MAX carnage spinning it as a title with a religion terrorist kill spree on USA/European soil with massive civilian casualties?

Nvidia couldn't stop the dev from removing GW's code, or have I missed something?

 

[drunkenmaster]

WOW!



This is getting way out of hand...


What if a Dev takes the next step up a with another hardcore 'Hatred' style game, and ramps it right up to MAX carnage spinning it as a title with a religion terrorist kill spree on USA/European soil with massive civilian casualties?

Nvidia couldn't stop the dev from removing GW's code, or have I missed something?

I'm not even sure what you're saying to be perfectly honest, are you saying Nvidia couldn't stop them using the free code, or are you saying if they've paid for a contract that Nvidia then can't prevent them?

The point really is that with open source code there is really no expectations put on those who release it. If this theoretical hatred game used the free code no one would hold Nvidia responsible because it's open source and they didn't approve of the game. Likewise a game that uses free code and hasn't paid for it hasn't been paid for sponsorship or advertising, so the game wouldn't have Nvidia/gameworks banners all over it to begin with.

If they bought a license for gameworks off Nvidia and Nvidia really didn't want to be associated with the game that would be cause to break a contract... not necessarily enough cause but enough to potentially take it to court. In their wording of the free code license they say they can revoke it at any time WITHOUT cause. If you pay a company money to license some software off them then you would absolutely not have a without cause clause in said license. But it's also Nvidia's responsibility who they approve of licensing their tech to. In reality what would happen if Nvidia feared a backlash would be to get the game dev to take any agreed advertising out of the game.

Effectively should Nvidia want a fight to revoke the paid license they'd have to have a good enough reason to win any court case that would be the eventual result of any battle attempting to revoke such a license. You pay for licenses with fair terms for the protection that comes from doing that. No even semi professional game dev would be willing to put time and money into a game that relies on code that can be revoked at any time for no reason at all. A paid license would give the devs a very reasonable assurance that if Nvidia randomly told them they'd be sued if they release a game with a legally purchased license that a court battle would be very likely to find in their favour.

 

[tommybhoy]

If this theoretical hatred game used the free code no one would hold Nvidia responsible

We'd never hear the end of it.

 

[bru]

WOW!



This is getting way out of hand...

Your not wrong there.

Take one section out of a massive license agreement and use it to back a position that makes your target look bad.

absolutely ridiculous.

Oh look.

52 8. OWNERSHIP. The Licensed Materials including all Intellectual Property Rights therein are and remain the sole and exclusive property of AMD or its licensors

Not quite so open sourced by the sounds of that.

This is a good one.

67 13. TERMINATION AND SURVIVAL. AMD may terminate the Agreement immediately upon the breach by Licensee or any sublicensee of any of the terms of the Agreement. Licensee may terminate the Agreement upon written notice to AMD and destruction of the Licensed Materials Licensee accessed hereunder. The termination of this Agreement shall: (i) immediately result in the termination of all rights granted by Licensee to distribute the Licensed Materials and Derivative Works through multiple tiers of distribution under Section 2; and (ii) have no effect on any sublicenses previously granted by Licensee to end users under Section 2(c) and which are compliant with all terms and conditions of this Agreement, which sublicenses shall survive in accordance with their terms. Upon termination or expiration of this Agreement, Licensee will cease using and destroy or return to AMD all copies of the Confidential Information, including but not limited to the Licensed Materials. Upon termination or expiration of this Agreement, all provisions survive except for Section 2.

Sounds to me that AMD retains all the rights to everything, the moment the license is broken for any reason.

The point being, these licenses are very complex documents, you cannot just take one paragraph and say 'OMG this means this company owns my family and house the moment I sneeze' There are reasons these document have pages and pages of different clauses and half of it to me seems deliberately to baffle the guys reading it. It's all legalese and you need a degree in law to even begin to get your head around it.

Cue people telling me I'm stupid.


Source for all quotes: https://github.com/GPUOpen-LibrariesAndSDKs/FireRays_SDK/blob/master/LICENSE.txt

 

[humbug]

Termination of licence in circumstances breaching said licence is pretty standard tho Bru

For example, its standard that a breach would be to take an open source code and locking it to sell it as your own for profit.

 

[D.P.]

Termination of licence in circumstances breaching said licence is pretty standard tho Bru

For example, its standard that a breach would be to take an open source code and locking it to sell it as your own.

And is the same as the nvidia clause, can we all end this ridiculous nonsense and just accept nvidia has released source code to the public with very standard licensing.

 

[humbug]

And is the same as the nvidia clause, can we all end this ridiculous nonsense and just accept nvidia has released source code to the public with very standard licensing.

Perhaps, then i would say Nvidia need to clarify its wording given that as it currently stands Nvidia have given themselves the right to revoke use permission for reasons of their own choosing.

That renders it unusable without Nvidia's specific permission and there after continuing permission.

 

[Insanties_birth]

Likely, it also completely Kill's AMD's PR tactic with GPUOpen (although we can thank AMD for helping make Nvidia do this).

Nvidia was getting completely unwarranted negativity about gamesworks with all sorts of conspiracy nutter proclaiming how they purposely damage performance on AMD or that its terribly optimized etc., all without a shred of evidence (in fact quite the opposite according to developers and actual real world benchmarks).

By doing this Nvidia can completely discredit all these claims. Nvidia were always willing to give the source code away to developers that wanted it, just under careful licensing terms to prevent the developer exploiting the code or passing it on to AMD (either accidentally or on purpose). Seems like nvida are no longer worried about that so will follow AMD.




This is great new, we should finally be able to read these forums without morons going on about "gimpworks" and proclaiming all sorts of conspiracy onse.

But even CD project red admitted AMD had no access to the code and so it was hard for them to improve there performance as they couldn't optimise for it. Considering the state of pc gaming at the moment a lot of out the gate drivers require optimisation to stay stable especially when updates occur that can alter performance down the line. Sticking your fingers until your ears and wha-wha'ing about the fact Nvidia got some stick for a practice that even when they didn't interested d to harm AMD clearly did block them out of optimising only highlights how naive and childish a lot of the people are on the subject.

I've given Nvidia some stick myself so I came here to honestly state I'm happy for Nvidia and glad they took the right approach. If you want to slam AMD for moving the industry in the right direction then that's your prerogative but I thank them for moving it the right way. You must have some strangely large chip on your shoulder to try and turn positive news into an AMD ****ging off and praising Nvidia for following there shadow though.

 

[andybird123]

Perhaps, then i would say Nvidia need to clarify its wording given that as it currently stands Nvidia have given themselves the right to revoke use permission for reasons of their own choosing.

That renders it unusable without Nvidia's specific permission and there after continuing permission.

And so does the AMD one, yet AMD get a free pass.

 

[humbug]

And so does the AMD one, yet AMD get a free pass.

Its this clause which makes it quite different from standard open source licensing.

Term: This License is effective until terminated. NVIDIA may terminate this Agreement (and with it, all of Developer’s right to the Materials) immediately upon written notice (which may include email) to Developer, with or without cause.

Basically, Nvidia could contact you at any time with the right to stop you using that code and they don't even need a reason, it could just be they don't like you.

Ok so one could argue that its nvidia's right to pick and chose who they give their code to, yet if they retain that right its not open source.

I can use AMD's code in whatever i do knowing that if i adhere to standard agreements not even AMD can stop me.

If i use Nvidia's code they can stop me at any time for no reason.

 

[fs123]

Its this clause which makes it quite different from standard open source licensing.



Basically, Nvidia could contact you at any time with the right to stop you using that code and they don't even need a reason, it could just be they don't like you.

Ok so one could argue that its nvidia's right to pick and chose who they give their code to, yet if they retain that right its not open source.

I can use AMD's code in whatever i do knowing that if i adhere to standard agreements not even AMD can stop me.

If i use Nvidia's code they can stop me at any time for no reason.

+1

Some people simply don't want to acknowledge that key bit of the text. Of course AMD's licensing can be revoked if the devs break any of the terms BUT the Nvidia wording specifically mentions that they can revoke the license with or without cause. That needs to be re-worded or we can all accept that usability of the source code is not guaranteed and depends entirely on what Nvidia thinks of the game.

The license could theoretically be revoked for a trivial reason such as the performance being better on AMD cards or the dev refusing to implement some Nvidia codepath that could affect non-Nividia gpu's (think AoTS and Async Compute, etc...)

 

[andybird123]

Its this clause which makes it quite different from standard open source licensing.



Basically, Nvidia could contact you at any time with the right to stop you using that code and they don't even need a reason, it could just be they don't like you.

Ok so one could argue that its nvidia's right to pick and chose who they give their code to, yet if they retain that right its not open source.

I can use AMD's code in whatever i do knowing that if i adhere to standard agreements not even AMD can stop me.

If i use Nvidia's code they can stop me at any time for no reason.

Nvidia have also stated that the licence in the root is under review and that their intention was to publish with the same licence as their code examples, which is basically a BSD licence link the one included in the subfolders, it could just be that the standard Game works licence has been published by mistake.

 

[drunkenmaster]

Nvidia have also stated that the licence in the root is under review and that their intention was to publish with the same licence as their code examples, which is basically a BSD licence link the one included in the subfolders, it could just be that the standard Game works licence has been published by mistake.

It isn't the standard one, absolutely no one would use Gameworks if you had to pay for it and agree that it can be revoked without cause, that goes against every reason there is for paying for a software license, or for anything else.

Imagine a car payment plan, or a builder doing an extension or a contract for your job, if there was a clause that your car could be taken back, building work can be stopped or your job can be pulled without cause whenever the hell the other party likes... who would sign such contracts? Like right now, who when their income depends on the software being used, would agree to use a license such as that, the answer is no one remotely serious about developing games. The clause was very clearly added for this specifically and isn't the standard gameworks clause.


Then as usual we have you and D.P. trying to compare apples to oranges. Standard license agreement as terms and conditions, break them and you may lose the license, that is fine. You know the conditions going in and would have to chose to break them. AMD can't just decide for no reason to revoke the license. Nvidia specifically state they can revoke it for no reason at all. In court if AMD attempt to revoke a license and the licensee has broken none of the terms of the license, AMD would lose in court. If Nvidia attempt to revoke the license and the licensee has done absolutely nothing to break the terms of any agreement, that clause means the court would side with Nvidia. They aren't remotely comparable and it is plain to see those conditions aren't comparable and hiding behind "these terms are so complicated it's impossible to compare them" is just nonsense.

It's incredibly easy to understand those terms and the fundamental differences involved.

 

[humbug]

Nvidia have also stated that the licence in the root is under review and that their intention was to publish with the same licence as their code examples, which is basically a BSD licence link the one included in the subfolders, it could just be that the standard Game works licence has been published by mistake.

Ok, i'll look forward to the new licence.