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.
Losses of sectors, ships, planes, land units and nukes are tracked in
the lost file. To keep it current, makelost() and makenotlost() were
called whenever one of these changed owners. Cumbersome and
error-prone. In fact, the lost file was never perfectly accurate.
Detect the ownership change in the prewrite callback and call
makelost() / makenotlost() from there. Remove lost file updates from
where they're no longer needed: right before a put. takeover() is a
bit more involved: it doesn't put the sectors, but all callers do,
except for guerrilla(). So remove the lost file update from
takeover(), but add it to guerrilla().
This takes care of lost file update for all ownership changes that go
through ef_write(). It can't take care of any missing updates for
changes that don't go through it.
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.
Simplify. Split into member sct_che (number) and sct_che_target.
Users changed.
(get_che_cnum, set_che_cnum, get_che_value, get_che_value): Che
encoding/decoding functions; remove.
(CHE_MAX): Move from var.h to sect.h.
(prsect, doland): Print / edit the new field.
To save space, the ancients invented `variables': a collection of
key-value pairs, missing means zero value, space for `enough' keys.
This complicates the code, as assigning to a `variable' can fail for
lack of space. Over time, `enough' increased, and for quite some time
now `variables' have been *wasting* space. This changeset replaces
them, except in struct mchrstr, struct lchrstr and struct pchrstr,
where they are read-only, and will be replaced later. It is only a
first step; further cleanup is required. To simplify and minimize
this necessarily huge changeset, the new item[] arrays have an unused
slot 0, and the old variable types V_CIVIL, ... are still defined, but
must have the same values as the item types I_CIVIL, ...
thread entrypoints:
(lwpSelect, shutdown_sequence): Parameters didn't match thread entry
point prototype.
(lwpEntryPoint): Arguments didn't match thread entry point prototype.
Change linkage of functions without prototype declaration to static
where possible.
Remove some superflous declarations, replace others by suitable
includes.