Source Code to Homeworld Released

ceejayoz writes "The source code for Relic Entertainment's 1999 Game of the Year, Homeworld, has just been released. Details are available at Homeworld Universe. Not GPL'ed, but pretty nifty all the same." Note that any sort of property aside from the source such as graphics or codecs have been stripped out, but it's still cool to look through the game engine.

Comments

Re:If copyright were abolished, we'd see more sour

[ceejayoz]

Imagine a world without copyright.

Imagine a world without any good games.

Re:steal?

[ceejayoz]

So, I suppose you wouldn't care if someone took your GPL'ed work, violated the license, and released it - with their name on it, deleting all credit and the GPL license?

The copyright owner of the code may not be losing the code itself, but that doesn't change the fact that they have the right to say how their code is used and who gets it.

Re:steal?

[Drantin]

Have you not heard of the perfectly valid term "Copyright infringement" ? This describes exactly that situation of people using your code in ways that violate the licensing terms of the GPL... Why you would want to call a spade a chicken rather than a spade is beyond me...

Re:steal?

[Quill_28]

Bull crap.

So I can take your song, book, or designs, publish them and not be stealing from you.

Where do you come up with such nonsense? I'm curious really I am.

Re:steal?

[Pofy]

Ehh as long as you are just copying those song books and such, no, you would not be stealing, you would be infringing on copyright. Copyright laws would deal with it. On the other hand, stealing is handled by a completely different set of laws that would not be applicable at all here. So no, it would not be stealing.

Re:I still have my song, book, design.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also a term for dwelling on meaningless differences in definition to hide the lack of a real argument. Its called semantics.

Private Eye...

[leonbrooks]

...(a UK rag) had an insightful cartoon. A tall-ship captain is being confronted by cutless-waving pirate, who says:

We're going to copy all of your sea-shanties [songs] and not pay you anything

The argument is made: but without a barrier to entry, there wouldn't be so much incentive to produce good music; to which I respond: "Oh, you mean boy bands?" I think supporting artists is a good idea, I think forcing and industrialising that support sucks.

Do we really need a large music "industry"? I think not. I suspect that what happened to The Santa Cruz Operation (opening them to subsequent abuse from The Canopy Group) and is happening to Sun and Microsoft is about to happen to the RIAA and their cronies. It's become feasible once more for a garage-band sized operation to publish their stuff widely.

If you are a musician, please consider sticking your stuff up on a page somewhere and aiming a few of the music sites at it. If you want to sell stuff rather than just have people appreciate it or make a name for yourself, put up low-quality compressed or truncated versions and tell people that they're crippled. Some people will be happy to listen to highly compressed versions of your music - fine, count that as free advertising. If enough people hear it, some of them will want better.