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Actually Quake3 is GPL. But because Id made it so, rather than via infection.

I for one do not like that train of thought:

It still sounds like a GPL violation to me. Now, we have to watch what FSF does. They own the C library that literally every program on Novell Linux uses.

Novell has had several long standing lawsuits over technology used by Microsoft. This clears those out of the way. This is not exactly a new business or legal process. The GPL can't be used to prevent Novell from sharing Linux with Microsoft. (I'd assume that downloading an opensuse.org source DVD would have been cheaper.) As long as the GPL parts are licensed and re-distributed under the GPL there is nothing the FSF can do.

Microsoft has their own C library. A C library that has been proven to support most userland UNIX utilities. With enough patches you could ship SuSE with something other than glibc (that engineering feat is left as an exercise for the reader.) Not that I would want to call SuSE 'Linux,' let alone GNU/Linux if such a horrible thing came about.

The biggest worry is that Novell pollutes open source projects with known patent-infringing code. Or that several large patents are being violated by FSF's C library and Linus's kernel and SCO just wasn't smart enough to find them. Linus et al had tried to play innocent by not looking at any patents while developing kernel code. Unforunately, just because you never saw widget X and independently developed it later the holder of the patent papers still wins in court. It just makes is easier when the patent holder can show you ripped off his designs directly. Either way, it might be prudent to watch the code checkins from @novell.com as if they came from @microsoft.com.

Furthermore, a lot of the GNU/Linux libraries important to a GUI shop such as Microsoft, such at GTK, are LGPL on Linux - not GPL. Microsoft can write Office against them and sell the binaries without so much as a line of Microsoft source code distributed. Far be it from me to be the first to point out that you can compile and sell traditional, proprietary applications on Linux. I hear this little company called ID Software does this a lot (it even ports some apps to Micosoft Windows the last time I checked.)

Solaris turned BSD into a commercial closed-source UNIX because the BSD license lets you do that. This is the danger that people warn about with LGPL software and it's lack of "viral" teeth. Microsoft could turn SuSE into another Xenix via this hole. Consider the competition in the market for commercial 'Enterprise grade' Linux and the potential for the community to cut off a pariah. Infecting SuSE would kill it off in the process. One less competitor; killed from the inside by a bad case of Mono and on the outside by public fear of software patents.

It's not iD Software it's id Software and it has always been pronounced just like the word it comes from:

id -noun Psychoanalysis
the part of the psyche, residing in the unconscious, that is the source of instinctive impulses that seek satisfaction in accordance with the pleasure principle and are modified by the ego and the superego before they are given overt expression.

> Let's pick PaintShop Pro or DOOM or WinZip or TextPad or any other one. Now, explain to us how exactly the authors of those products would have made any money if they were licensed under the GPL

Here is Quake 3 GPL source code: ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/quake3/source/Q3A _TA_GameSource_127.exe

And the original Doom was a shareware. And id made money anyway. But of course, you are too young to remember that.

id build games, sells them a bit, and release them as GPL. And you know what ? It mimics the original intent of copyright laws. A temporary monopoly for the creator in exchange to public good. And of course, id can't release code source as public domain, as their competitors will not respect the spirit but the letter of the law (hence will lock back changes and not contribute to public good). And copyright law should be changed so it reflect that. Or an alternative law must be developed (aka GPL)

And if you look closer, GPLv2 means that some company making a console (or soon a normal PC) can add crypto chip and release a paying version of Q3A that will be the only one running on such hardware. The can prevent id of running their own code on it. They can have a monopoly in selling "public goods".

Hence GPLv3. And be sure that id will move to GPLv3. Because it fits the original spirit of the copyright.

Aside from Semco (Brazil), there aren't many companies that call themselves grassroots managed (the reverse of top-down management.) However, historically all startups during the bootstrap phase have used such a management system before melding into hierarchy-managed organisations. If Flat/Democratically managed organisations were "better" (more efficient in providing higher employee satisfaction, effective delivery of products/services) one would have noticed a good number of NGOs and small companies (think of the size of "id Software") already adopting such a model.

The truth is, there is a severe degree of biological hierarchy imposed upon human society. That prevents any model from becoming fully effective. Studyies of primates (can'c cite off-hand, but am sure there are papers backing this up) prove that there is an inherent hierarchy. Most mammals (particularly the predators) also indicate hierarchy and specialisation. Another good example would be wolves, pack hunters whose stragies are close to us. I've seen many people being seduced by the idea of a truly flat organisation, direct democracy within its limits. The trouble was they never studied why it "could" (and probably would) fail. That resulted in the failure of the model. To put it bluntly, why do you think the vast majority of organisations in the world are built on hierarchy?

• a great programmer and level designer (http://www.idsoftware.com/);
• an average game designer (Daikatana); and
• a really bad manager (Ion Storm).

..you must mean free drivers, since Quake 3 isn't free :)

So tell me, what the source packages on this page are about.

Let me quote the most relevant entry on that page:

Q3A 1.27g Game Source This is the combined source code for Quake III Arena and Quake III: Team Arena. It can be used to build the 1.27g point release or the Team Arena release. It contains buildable project files and all related game source code as well as prebuilt tool executables.

It is released under the GPL. How is that not free software?

Ah, you mean the game data? You can get that for free as well abeit with some limits, and as a matter of fact there are free and Free datafiles for quake 3 that do not need the data files from ID software to work.

However, to spoil your nitpick, but won't there be free third party data files (maybe even Id software's demo levels too) that you can use with your free software Quake 3 binary?

Indeed.

I completely buy into the possibility that games can be designed well enough to abstract their graphics to a point where the same exact graphics package can be used in even several different types of games.

Brillant! You could call it a graphics engine and sell it to people to make their own games with!

I think these guys might be on to something:
http://www.valvesoftware.com/sourcelicense/
http://ftp.idsoftware.com/business/technology/

So ... if the Quake engine has been released under the GPL, why does this project exist?

Why not build on and improve Quake II's engine, instead of just reinventing the wheel (3d engine) all over again? Does the world really need another engine, when there's a perfectly good FPS one available that's both free and a lot more mature?

I don't get it.

If it's just a for-the-hell-of-it project, that's fine, but the summary makes it sound like it's somehow creating something new, as if an open source FPS doesn't already exist. It does.

http://www.alientrap.org/nexuiz/
http://www.cubeengine.com/
ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/source/quake2.zip
http://www.itplaysdoom.com/

It's not like there aren't other FPSs and engines available. Am I nuts, or would someone with an interest in game design and F/OSS be better off creating derivative work from those engines?

Yeah, I just found it, and its like 10 years old, too. I feel like an ass for not knowing this. ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/quake/wq100.zip

I looked at the Quake FTP Mirrors list, I could not find one that works. Downed servers, missing directories, no anonymous FTP access, etc.

Check out ID Software for the Shareware Demo Version if you really want to download and play the 10 year old Quake.

Oddly enough, I got a Nintendo 64 version of Quake that I had bought for like $15 on sale when it was on clearence when a local store was going out of business.

Happy birthday Quake!

And thanks to Id for releasing its source code under GPL, because of this, the game is still being played and mod'ed after 10 years of its initial release, check Tenebrae for example, which adds modern rendering techniques like per-pixel lighting and stencil shadows to the original game.

The doom3 "patch" required to run on linux is about 16MB (450MB for the demo which includes maps and textures)
Older versions of the port stand at about 8MB.

Many games actually need very little in the way of code, the greatest majority of the game comes from the textures and meshes which populate the worlds.

Remember, most modern games are based upon still valid functioning code from easily 20 years ago, the algorythms haven't changed much at all, the rules are still in place.

I thought it was all the video game companies (at least, the big ones) were flocking to Hollywood to grab the latest license? I get a daily email from http://www.gamejobs.com/ listing most new jobs in Southern California. I don't see any big name Hollywood studios flocking to Texas to get cozy with http://www.idsoftware.com/.

http://www.idsoftware.com/games/wolfenstein/rtcw/ ?

On the other hand, graphics cards make sense for consumers because there are only two graphics APIs, OpenGL and DirectX, and they offer very similar functionality under the hood (but significantly different high-level APIs). So a graphics card can accelerate games written with either OpenGL or DirectX, but that's not the case with the emerging PPU field. In graphics, the APIs developed and converged on common functionality long before hardware acceleration was available at the consumer level, but I don't think the physics API situation is stable or mature enough to warrant dedicated hardware add-in cards at this time.

However, I think there are two possible scenarios that could change this.

1) Havok and Ageia could create open or closed physics API specifications and make them available to chip manufacturers, e.g. ATI and NVIDIA, which have the market penetration and manufacturing capability to make PPUs widely available. I could imagine a high-end PCIe card that had both a GPU and a PPU on-board.

2) Microsoft. Think what you will about them, but DirectX has greatly influenced the game industry and is the de-facto standard low-level API (although there are notable exceptions, such as id). Microsoft could introduce a new component of DirectX which specifies a physics API that could then be implemented in hardware.

But unless one of those things happens, I don't think proprietary PPUs are going to make a lot of sense for consumers.

Your website requires me to disable images or override your CSS to be remotely legible. Don't use dark backgrounds.

You mean like this? Really, the 'bright text on dark background' format is becoming nearly as common as the more traditional 'dark on bright'. Though I think this is mostly a matter of personal preference.

• http://www.alice.org/
• http://www.ogre3d.org/
• http://www.yake.org/
• http://www.delta3d.org/
• http://www.panda3d.org/
• http://www.idsoftware.com/business/techdownloads/
• http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/
• http://www.garagegames.com/products/1

http://www.idsoftware.com/business/techdownloads/ Quake and Quake II look pretty free to me.

Of course they're dual-booting windows - how else are employees supposed to play the latest games?

WINE? Cedega? Or how about na-tive?

Of course they're dual-booting windows - how else are employees supposed to play the latest games?

WINE? Cedega? Or how about na-tive?

I wonder what the guys at id have to say about this...

Found a bug in GtkRadiant ? Submit a bug report at http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/bugzilla/

As long as they dont create a web portal between the two servers, we wont have to worry about hellspawn flowing forth. I dont know about you, but my BFG9000 is on the fritz, and I dont want to have to use a chainsaw on a Cyberdemon.

I don't think anyone's mentioned http://www.idsoftware.com/games/vintage/catacomb/ Catacomb 3D, which was one of ID Software's first games. It was their first FPS, pre-dating Wolfenstein, which of course led to Doom, Quake, and Hexen. The other stuff that ID was making at the time provided no hint of what was to come (I also had Commander Keen), but Catacomb gave a little glimpse of the future. I had no idea at the time though, I thought it was easier and more fun than Wing Commander.

Hovertank 3D by ID was the first 3D FPS on PC, according to ID software themselves. Both the Catacomb 3D(which came out before Wolf3D) and Wolfenstein 3D engines evolved from the Hovertank 3D raycasting-engine. However, the game Darkside on C64 and other platforms came out in 1988, and allthough it could hardly be called fast-paced, it featured a first-person perspective and movement in a (in some ways more advanced than Wolf3D)3D world.

Hovertank 3D by ID was the first 3D FPS on PC, according to ID software themselves. Both the Catacomb 3D(which came out before Wolf3D) and Wolfenstein 3D engines evolved from the Hovertank 3D raycasting-engine. However, the game Darkside on C64 and other platforms came out in 1988, and allthough it could hardly be called fast-paced, it featured a first-person perspective and movement in a (in some ways more advanced than Wolf3D)3D world.

Hovertank 3D by ID was the first 3D FPS on PC, according to ID software themselves. Both the Catacomb 3D(which came out before Wolf3D) and Wolfenstein 3D engines evolved from the Hovertank 3D raycasting-engine. However, the game Darkside on C64 and other platforms came out in 1988, and allthough it could hardly be called fast-paced, it featured a first-person perspective and movement in a (in some ways more advanced than Wolf3D)3D world.

wget ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/quake4/linux/quak e4-linux-1.0.2147.12.x86.run

You dont need to login. Direct link: http://zerowing.idsoftware.com:6969/torrents/96f04 284cd4fb77e6e8f55d43beaa5939914f780.torrent

Nice, that you are using a Opensource-Wiki (MoinMoin). However, it is completly locked and Moinmoin has localized Frontpages - so with intl.accept_languages="de-de, en-us" I get this page http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/quake4/StartS eite when I click on this link: http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/quake4/
Also it would be nice to have some possibility of feedback other than posting on /. ....

Nice, that you are using a Opensource-Wiki (MoinMoin). However, it is completly locked and Moinmoin has localized Frontpages - so with intl.accept_languages="de-de, en-us" I get this page http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/quake4/StartS eite when I click on this link: http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/quake4/
Also it would be nice to have some possibility of feedback other than posting on /. ....

I followed the link on http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/quake4/ to the BitTorrent tracker, but it wants me to "log in" to their site and asks my username and password. Since I have none I can't get in. But I can see that tere are 20 leechers, so a few people must have solved this problem? I would much rather use BitTorrent than FTP, how do I get to the torrents?

Torrent

We are pleased to announce that QUAKE 4 for the PC is done, and will begin shipping on Tuesday, October 18th! The game will be arriving at retailers beginning Wednesday, October 19th.

Huh? Quake 1 didn't even run under Windows (had to go to DOS mode) and could get by with 8MB (16MB recommended) http://www.idsoftware.com/games/quake/quake/index. php?game_section=sysreq
I remember giving it 16MB in a DOS session on OS/2 on an 8 MB 486/100, took forever to load or change levels but the actual game ran perfectly fine (full screen)

I don't get this... id have their own tracker, why aren't they using it....
-ReK

Sorry, you are wrong. They have put it also in they own FTP server - see tech downloads at idsoftware.com, thougth it can't handle the load very well :/

Thanks idsoftware for releasing (and creating) such great products :)

Tested on a Debian Sarge:

# Get the code
wget ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/source/quake3-1.3 2b-source.zip
mkdir q3a
cd q3a
unzip quake3-1.32b-source.zip
cd quake3-1.32b

# Transformation for UNIX
find -type f -exec dos2unix {} \;

# Compiling
cd code ./unix/cons

# Result
cd install
find -ls

# Install the packs
# You needs to original files!
# I do not find them in the source.
cp -a /usr/local/games/quake3/baseq3/* ~/.q3a/baseq3/

# Playing ./linuxquake3

Try here.

Unless, of course, the /. effect is upon id's servers.

Grab it from the Id Software FTP or from mirrors at the Quakesrc forums. Offtopic, I know, but my submission was rejected. If they have time to reject the story, they ought to have time to approve someone who submitted it.

It's already available since at least yesterday. QuakeIII source

Actually, it's a good compromise. iD releases its older engines sources as GPL while still selling commercial licences for them to be used in closed source software. And apparently, they do sell them, for everything back to the original Quake engine.

    It's a great gesture, and iD gets (as it should) a lot of respect from the OSS community from it; i just wanted to point out that they still do make cash out of their "older" engines. No conflict of interests there.

Don't you know about the Linux port? :)

Well, I don't run the site, and it is a 250+MB download, so I can understand their hesitancy to let just anyone use up their bandwidth. ;)

Here's what I found using Google:
Torrent links here
regular download here
and another faster-for-registered-users here

Why not try,

I only bring this up because my cousin and I had this exact conversation a week ago. I called it id (as in the id and the ego), he "corrected" me and said it is ID (as in "Do you have any ID?"). I told him that they're named after the id, he said then why do they always capitalize both letters. and I said they don't. http://www.idsoftware.com/business/ Find any place where they do and I would be glad to hear it.

Dammit, why doesn't anyone have a proper sense of humor anymore? Clearly the link should have looked like this: Mars moonbase.