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Plan 9: Plan 9 was not always open source. It was originally a research project at bell labs, and released to the public sometime around 1995. The first open source release was ~2000ish, iirc. It was not developed as an open source project, anyway.

Portal: Portal was not in any sense of the word a Mod. The authors of an independant (closed-source) game called Narbicular Drop were hired by Valve, and wrote Portal while employed. Aside from the gameplay development, it was written and voice acted by professionals[1], and was sold at retail.

Multitouch: While Multitouch hardware is obviously not free, the software to intepret and build interfaces for them is Open Source.

[1] It's not often you get to refer to OMM staff as professional.

Check out Narbacular Drop. It's the Digipen Institute senior project that got its creators hired by Valve to remake it as Portal.

http://www.nuclearmonkeysoftware.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narbacular_Drop
The predecessor to Portal (Portal was written by the ND guys, Valve hired them on the spot), with all the community-created levels, has the awesome problem-solving puzzle elements of Portal without the Valve graphics. It took a couple students from DigiPen to create the unique concept that was Portal, not some internal Valve guys. I'm glad that a company with the popularity/graphics expertise of Valve could bring it to a wider audience and make it more acceptable to the general gaming public.
Just FAYI.

Same team wrote an earlier version of this two years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narbacular_Drop
http://www.nuclearmonkeysoftware.com/

If you haven't found this already.

I admit I am curious what the packs on steam are going to be like. I know I am not going to buy a boxed copy, but instead I will preorder from steam (you tend to be able to get a few bucks off for preordering through steam). Admitdely I doubt you will be able to buy portal by itself (atleast not for a while).

And if you want to play with the mechanics behind portal, go download the game it is based on Narbacular Drop

Looking through the list from Firing Squad actualy has me looking forward to alot of games I had forgotten about.

I saw an Article on Shadowrun a while back and it sounds great (I love squad based game play, admitedly they are basicly ignoring all cannon from the SR universe, but I can live, I am not THAT big of a fanboy)
There are about 3 or 4 new MMOs coming out that I am interested in poking around at (I love MMOs, just that the ones I tend to like don't have enough of a player base to keep them running properly, so I always hope for a new one)
BioShock sounds like an atempt to make a new version of SS, and that always makes me happy (though a lack of Shodan is sorta sad...)
HL2 Ep2, TF2, and Portal are probably what I am waiting for the most. If you havn't played Narbacular Drop drop (What Portal grew out of) I highly recomend it.
ET:QW is another FPS game I am eager for (I loved W:ET)
And ofcourse there is Spore.

If you want to play Portal right now, you could try it's predecessor, Narbacular Drop.

This won the student showcase prize at the Independant Games Festival, and the designers used it to demonstrate the concept of the 'Portal mod' to Valve.

/K

you can just play the 'original' portal game instead, not as nice graphics but I think it's about the same gameplay (or so I've heard, I haven't installed it yet)

http://www.nuclearmonkeysoftware.com/narbaculardro p.html

That is exactly what I was going to say. Prey's got nothing on Portal.

BTW, have you played Narbacular Drop?

As I went to the web site to confirm the URL, I just noticed that there are 15 new fan-made levels. I must play them when I get home.

I believe this was the first game to come up with the concept of "portals" in FPS. It was originally a student's project.

http://www.nuclearmonkeysoftware.com/narbaculardro p.html

I believe this was the first game to come up with the concept of "portals" in FPS. It was originally a student's project.

http://www.nuclearmonkeysoftware.com/narbaculardro p.html

I really liked the demo: It gave me a very good impression of the game (both single player, as multiplayer), and immedeately bought the game.

The innovative gravity-shifting is great, and the other extra options make a great base for some fun mods/maps.
Also funny to note is that the main weapon in Valve's Portal, has been recreated in Prey; Still a few bugs, but the basic idea (shooting an entrance-portal, then shooting the exit-portal) seems to be working.

Also, last night I found out that Portal has been based on Narbacular Drop (afaik the Digipen students got either hired, or at least compensated for their initial idea), which you can download from here.

Ok, back on topic: I've bought Prey, and am very happy with it; This has partly to do that I create maps myself, and there are alot of options that these new gamemechanics bring.
The single player (think I am halfway through at the moment) is great, and gives me enough diversion to not bore me: The multiplayer is also quite good, definitely considering I never quite liked DM other than Quake 1; But the wall-walking definitely adds some groovy... sometimes nausiating... new gameplay.
Only lacking thing, as always with single player shooters, is the AI; Which isn't too complicated, and has some flaws where enemies don't quite react the right way, or are stuck in their loop of walking from one spot to the other.

Portal is based on a game called Narbacular Drop that was developed by a group of seniors at the DigiPen Institute of Technology. Valve ended up contracting the entire programming team to work on Portal. It's interesting to see how a game school's relatively small-time project has become front-page news on dozens of gaming sites.