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.
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.
(grow_islands, set_coastal, update_coastal_flag, coast_sea_to_land)
(coast_land_to_sea): Determine sct_coastal flag when the sector type
is set. Old method only updated the sct_coastal flag when doing
cens() or a dump(). Other uses of sct_coastal could get stale values,
including selector coastal. Rework set_coastal() into NEW functions
update_coastal_flag(), coast_sea_to_land(), coast_land_to_sea() and
set_coastal(). Fix a bug where the deity designation would not
properly set the coastal flag. Fix a bug where the one sector lake
would not properly compute coastal flag. Fix a bug that makes
fairland treat the last sector it adds to an island as non-coastal.
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, ...
