Hexen/heretic source finally gpl'd

[hmmm]

Wow kind of extremely late on Raven behalf (but thankyou for getting round to it Raven) - heres the info courtesy of Doomworld:

"In a surprise email from Raven Software employee James Monroe, James "Quasar" Haley of Team Eternity has been notified that the source code for Heretic and Hexen has been re-released under the GNU General Public License, and is now available from Sourceforge.

Having the code relicensed required a community effort spanning almost a decade. At its height, this included an online petition, an open letter, snail mail campaigns, e-mail, an international action item on GNU.org, insider efforts by Chris Rhinehart of Human Head Studios and Doom's own John Romero, and other activities carried on individually by countless community members.

This release is of monumental importance, as it will allow GPL Doom source ports to freely integrate support for Heretic and Hexen without requiring the code to be rewritten from scratch or to be emulated through empirical testing. The door is also now open for new ports such as "Chocolate" Heretic and Hexen, and for such ports to be distributed in free software packages."

The dump is here on sourcforge http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...roup_id=238655.

EDIT: Crap I didn't realise this news was slashdotted a couple of days ago - yes i am living under a rock

[me262]

Nice. A big fan of Hexen back in the day.

If you're under a rock, I'm in a cave. I haven't read slashdot in months.

[Svartalf]

Nice. A big fan of Hexen back in the day.

If you're under a rock, I'm in a cave. I haven't read slashdot in months.

/.'s the electronic equivalent of a monkey house in a zoo. Lots of screeching and poo flinging- and very little of import happening as a result...

[xav1r]

According to the sourceforge date, the source code was released last thursday, so how come only now everywhere on the web it's being reported as a news flash? Nonetheless it's good news. I love Heretic/Hexen.

[domkop]

Source gpl'd, as in 'anyone is now free to come up with a Linux client of their own'?

[Svartalf]

Source gpl'd, as in 'anyone is now free to come up with a Linux client of their own'?

Yes, though you could mostly do this anyhow with the license that was on that- we had clients using this same source base; they were just under a much more restrictive license from Raven. Having said this, the content's still decidedly Raven's and whomever has publication rights. You can't spread it around liberally, much like you can't distribute around Freespace 2, even though the engine's on a restricted, but open sourced, license...

[xav1r]

I think Activision has the publishing rights, since they own Raven, and the selling rights too.

[Julius]

I just wish the source code for

1. Homeworld 1
2. FreeSpace 2

Would be changed the same way too

[Svartalf]

I think Activision has the publishing rights, since they own Raven, and the selling rights too.

I think you have the answer there, then...

I'm a bit more interested in Freespace2 as a current ongoing prospect, however... There may be hope yet for that engine, the assets from the original game, etc. (You have yourself to thank for that turn of events, btb... )

[xav1r]

I think you have the answer there, then...

I'm a bit more interested in Freespace2 as a current ongoing prospect, however... There may be hope yet for that engine, the assets from the original game, etc. (You have yourself to thank for that turn of events, btb... )

Cool! It's nice to know I contributed in some ways to get more games running on linux.