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Quake 2 Source Code Released Under The GPL

Posted by chrisd on from the thanks-again-john dept.

Masem (and many others) writes: "The source code for Quake 2 is now available until the GPL license. The .plan file for John Carmack has the details." The Id Software site is of course slammed with demand for the code. Hopefully other mirrors will be available.

4 of 371 comments (clear)

  1. Lint by Oily+Tuna · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Someone needs a copy of Lint

    gamex86.dll - 0 error(s), 332 warning(s)

    Flamebait maybe - but if a build of my project generated 332 warnings I'd be fired.

    --
    Mmmmmmm ... sushi.
  2. first impressions... by markj02 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Looks like nice, clean, readable C code. It's not all that large--175kloc. Memory management via functions wrapping malloc, using some kind of zone strategy. It's interesting that there don't seem to be that many complex data structures--that's probably why this code can still be written reasonably nicely in C with manual storage management.

    This code looks very different from what CS courses teach you or expensive OOP consultants recommend. It's kind of reminiscent of the traditional UNIX code: very concrete and just tries to get the job done.

  3. How widely applicable is this release model? by gonerill · · Score: 4, Interesting
    First, like every other sensible person here I think it's terrific that Carmack and ID have this strategy for releasing older code under the GPL. I've noticed that a lot of comments have argued that this is a strategy that many or all software firms should adopt with the GPL --- develop commercially and profit in the short run, release source to community when development cycle has moved two products down the road.

    I wonder, though, whether ID find it much easier to pursue this strategy because they're in the game market? Games (and *especially* FPS/Multiplayer games) are a market segment where most buyers want the newest engine, best graphics, etc. Could a company that made Wordprocessors or Spreadsheets pursue this model as easily and still make profit like ID? I'm not saying it would be impossible, but it seems to me that many users would have a much higher tolerance for using a free, three-year-old version of their wordprocessor than using a pricely new version (assuming the company didn't do nasty things like change the .doc format, etc). This isn't true of games. So while I like this "Develop-Sell-Wait-GPL" approach, I'd bet that the "Wait" time of a company like ID is amongst the shortest of any software market segment.

  4. Thanks by John+Carmack · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Thanks for the kind comments, it helps me brace a bit for some of the really vile hate mail that is already starting to come in from the people worried about cheating.

    Bill Heineman is preparing the mac source code for Q2 for a release.

    We will see about getting the 3.21 changes we missed into an updated release.

    I am also happy to say that another old game's code will be released under the GPL soon. We can always hope that it becomes a trend...

    John Carmack