Why upgrade? I'm not a lawyer, but here's my take on the differences
to version 2:
* Software patents: better protection against abuse of patents to
prevent users from exercising the rights under the GPL. I doubt
we'll get hit with a patent suit, but it's a good move just on
general principles.
* License compatibility: compatible with more free licenses, i.e. can
"steal" more free software for use in Empire. I don't expect to steal
much, but it's nice to have the option.
* Definition of "source code": modernization of some details for today's
networked world, to make it easier to distribute the software. Not
really relevant to us now, as we normally distribute full source code.
* Tivoization: this is about putting GPL-licensed software in hardware,
then make the hardware refuse to run modified software. "Neat" trick
to effectively deny its users their rights under the GPL. Abuse was
"pioneered" by TiVo (popular digital video recorders). GPLv3 forbids
it. Unlikely to become a problem for us.
* Internationalization: more careful wording, to harden the license
outside the US. The lawyers tell us it better be done that way.
* License violations: friendlier way to deal with license violations.
This has come out of past experience enforcing the GPL.
* Additional permissions: Probably not relevant to us.
Also include myself in the list of principal authors.
This oopses on output dependency violations, e.g. two threads doing a
read-modify-write without synchronization, or the one thread nesting
several read-modify-writes. Such bugs are difficult to spot, and tend
to be abusable. I figure we have quite a few of them.
New struct emptypedstr member seqno. Make sure all members of unit
empobj_storage share it. Initialize it in files: main() and
file_sct_init(). Set it in ef_blank() and new ef_set_uid() by calling
new get_seqno(). Use ef_set_uid() when copying objects: swaps(),
doland(), doship(), doplane(), dounit(), delete_old_news(). Step it
in ef_write() by calling new new_seqno().
Factor do_read() out of fillcache() to make it available for
get_seqno().
Make sure all members of unit empobj_storage share uid in addition to
ef_type.
Add matching uid member to struct gamestr, struct natstr and struct
sctstr, and set them.
Swap struct empobj members uid and own to make that easier, and update
struct comstr, struct lndstr, struct lonstr, struct loststr, struct
nwsstr, struct nukstr, struct plnstr, struct realmstr, struct shpstr,
struct trdstr, struct trtstr accordingly.
Note that the uid isn't properly set for struct nwsstr, struct lonstr,
struct trdstr, struct comstr and struct loststr. To be fixed.
other. Ensure headers in include/ can be included in any order
(except for econfig-spec.h, which is special). New header types.h to
help avoid inclusion cycles. Sort include directives. Remove some
superflous includes.