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Microsoft Releases Allegiance Game Source
Zenin writes "Microsoft has graciously released the source code to Allegiance for free on their site. Allegiance was released back in 2000, and rated the 'Best Game No One Played' by GameSpot - this little- known multiplayer space-combat/team-RTS was pretty innovative, yet never took off in the mainstream. Nevertheless it quickly developed a fanatical following - a dedicated community who reverse engineered the game to enable complete mods, expand server power, and much more. A million thanks to Joel 'solap' Dehlin and the rest of the Allegiance development team for making this happen!"
the license could be better, particularly the part about them being granted back the rights to any modifications, but its nice to see microsoft releasing the source for anything at this point. :)
It's an alright license, so long as you make danged sure they don't have patents that cover the code, and you're not going to sell it.
It's very annoying that nobody's allowed to sell any derivatives but Microsoft. The GPL it ain't.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
Not one but two instances of content-free karma whoring! Amazing.
If you're not in a hurry to just download the archive (warning: this is fucking huge, specifically 511MB), let's take a closer look at some of the pertinent points of that licence:
My opinion (for all the piddling amount that an anonymous coward's opinion counts for)? Fuck this and find a Sourceforge or Freshmeat project to chip in on.
I appluad MS for doing this. (-1 Troll i know)
I would like to see it happen much more often.
They can't be making money off this game anymore, so why not give back to the community.
Let those who love the game make it better, or atlest better to them.
Relic recently released the source to HomeWorld 1, and i know many people (including myself to a small extent) have been pouring through it to implement the features that we thought should be in the game. Right click movement, better combat, simpler camera control, better UI, ect.
The multiplayer nature of Allegaince may make it less friendly to such changes, but i do look forward to seeing the creativity of the community at work. (and who knows, an allegiance single player campaign may come from this)
As a big fan of Allegiance, I can say I'm just relieved to see the source made available.. Allegiance required a server, hosted by Microsoft, to play, and when MS rolled up the Allegiance servers due to "lack of interest", the community was devastated. Looks like 100-200 active users at any given moment, most paying a subscription fee, was an underwhelming success in their eyes.
Weapons of Mass Analysis
*yawn*, whatever
For any commercial software company to do this much is amazing, doubly so for a game company, and a hundred fold over for MS to do it. So this doesn't help you make a million bucks with "your" brand new video game or further the agenda of the misnamed FSF. So what? This release does exactly what it was intended to do and it does it extremely well: It allows those of us who love the game and have been working hard to improve it for years a huge new arsenal with which to go about said improvements.
If you want to make a brand new space sim free to the public, go right ahead; it lets you do that too.
But really, boo-*&^$!ing-hoo that perhaps you can't throw yet another app into a KitchenSink(tm) Linux install. Who cares? FreeBSD solved such simple issues very cleanly nearly a decade ago now with the ports system, why can't Linux?
My
[What do they have to lose?]
/. has been known to generate.
time and effort.
who in the open source community would buy a commercial version of a free toy? unless of course, the commercial version sported worthwhile content not available for free. in that case, who cares if microsoft is putting worthwhile content onto linux?
more likely, they wouldn't advertise a linux port the same way they didn't advertise the windows version, so they'd just be throwing more time and money at a project that would ultimately be a loss. if they weren't going to honestly try to make money off a windows version, i sincerely doubt they'd try to make money off a linux port.
microsoft has never been an opponent of open source software in general. even in their thickest fud they've only labelled it as inappropriate for commercial use.
seeing as how they're releasing this expressly forbidding commercial use, they're still being consistent - though the action does contradict the rabidly anti-MS propaganda that
simply, this is a work of Microsoft Research - and they're forward looking enough to decide to release this to their rabid fan-base, rather than leaving all that fan-content legally actionable.
the license is worded solely to prevent any competitors from profiting directly off MS's innovation, while retaining their existing rights and preventing themselves from being legally actionable should they ever sell another product that used some of that code.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
You may use this Software for any non-commercial purpose, subject to the restrictions in this License."
What is the probem here? Microsoft doesn't want you selling their game. Why should SuSE or Mandrake make money off of a product Microsoft paid for?
"If any of the Software is in binary format, you will not attempt to modify such portions of the Software, or to reverse engineer or decompile them, except and only to the extent authorized by law."
This is probably for the benefit of tech that MS has liscensed, but has not been given rights to distribute the source for. Most likely the reverse engineering for interoperability clause would apply here in the case that you were reverse engineering formats.
"Microsoft is granted back, without any limitations and on a royalty free basis, the rights to reproduce, install, use, modify, distribute and transfer your modifications to the Software source code or data."
Wow, that sounds just like the GPL (must give back modifications). Effects will be the same as the GPL, if you use it for personal (non-distributed) use, your modifications are your own (how will MS know about them), but if you ditribute it, they have rights to the changes.
If you breach this MSR-SSLA or if you sue anyone over patents that you think may apply to the Software or anyone's use of the Software, your license to the Software ends automatically and you shall destroy all of your copies of the Software immediately. Section 5 of this MSR-SSLA [the self-granting of unlimited distribution rights, just quoted] shall survive any termination of this license.
Again, this is the same as any liscense (GPL included). If you don't agree with the liscense or violate it, you aren't granted any additional rights (the rights to use the game, and distribute modifications) other than what copyright allows. The GPL does the exact same thing. The patents part it to protect against incidents like SCO. The Apache liscense has the same clause.
I take it you do not play any online games then, because they all need some ports open to play.
Sleep is for the weak.
Wow, that sounds just like the GPL (must give back modifications).
Except with the GPL you get compensation in kind with what the free software community receives (ie: the code becomes free for all). With the MS license, MS can use your code to make money, but you can't use theirs to make money.
In other words, the GPL is an equal two-way street, while MS's is a one-way street in which they have allowed a few pedestrians to walk in the opposite direction.
How would you feel if you enhanced this game only to find these enhancements rolled into a new game without receiving compensation? Potentially, one could take this MS source and write what would essentially be Alliance 2, which MS could take back and sell as Alliance 2, and you can do nothing about it (except buy the new version for $59 at Electronics Boutique like everyone else).
This is a case of what's Microsoft's is Microsoft's and what's yours is Microsoft's.
Why do you think MS hates Open Source so much? Because they can't keep control once they give it up. MS can't play well with others. It's not in their DNA. Compare this with Apple who distributes an OS (Darwin), server apps (QuickTime/Darwin Streaming Server), a web browser (Konqueror/Safari), and probably more, under an Open Source license.
No, this license is decidedly unlike the GPL. This license is somewhat akin to the Mozilla Public License (which was dropped due to people complaining). Basically, Microsoft and Microsoft alone gets rights roughly equivalent (though slightly more in their favor) than the BSD license. They get royalty-free rights to do anything they want to with your code.
On the other hand, the rights granted to *non*-Microsoft entities are much more restrictive -- non-commercial only.
Effectively, this makes you a free coder for Microsoft -- the only company that can ever financially benefit from the code you produce is Microsoft.
This is *not* a turnaround for Microsoft (other than the fact that they are opening some of their own code, which is a change). From a commercial standpoint, they are giving up zero IP (they do not allow you to use copyrighted or patented information, which may be present in their release. This is very different from the GPL, where copyrighted data must be available for commercial use, and you *cannot* have patents on methods used in the software. Microsoft has previously promoted BSD-like licenses that would allow them profit. This license is notable in that it is GPL-incompatible.
From a strategic point of view, there is little Microsoft stands to risk here. The program is, as others have pointed out, written in DirectX, and would be difficult to port to anything other than Windows (well, perhaps other than the X-Box). It might assist a small amount in improving WINE, but that's about it.
I'm not sure whether this includes a data file release -- this is the only thing that weirds me out, as doing so would be extremely unusual. I would expect not, but ~600 MB seems excessive for source code alone. Perhaps if someone could check this out?
That being said, I'm certainly not going to complain -- I see very few ways in which we are worse off after this release. This is a clear win for former fans and players of the game. Microsoft *has* done a few notable things that I would not have expected of them. They have not placed legal restrictions on porting, though there may be a practical limitation. I suppose one could argue that Microsoft is hoping to start a trend of companies doing open-source releases chosing not to use the GPL, but that seems a bit conspiracy theory-oriented even for Slashdot.
The only concern I can think of is Microsoft's worries about PR with this move. It may not be much of an issue -- recently, there has been a good amount of business hyping of "open source". Microsoft hasn't been bashing "open source" much in the past year or so -- just the GPL. It's a reasonable supposition that this has been intentional from a strategic standpoint.
Another weird thing is that Microsoft Research is the organization doing the release. That's very, very odd. I strongly suspect that Microsoft Research is *not* where the entertainment division is located (Bungie isn't a subdivision of Microsoft Reesearch), so unless they are responsible for old software, I can't see why they're involved. Could be that they're a bit more academia-oriented, and that there's some scientist pushing for open-sourcing something that doesn't have significant IP value to Microsoft any more.
If Microsoft wants to test the waters for non-GPL open source possibilities, this is a very good, safe way for them to do so. This game still has active users. Game technology moves so quickly that a four-year-old-game has little that folks might steal from them -- and in any case, Microsoft is not releasing any of their previous IP.
I *really* wish Microsoft would open-source the Close Combat series (they probably don't own copyright on it, but it's a nice thought). Microsoft or no, I'd be willing to buy copies of all of the series if I could get an open source Linux-compatible copy -- that series is phenomenal.
May we never see th
What would happen, if a small portion of the code got used in another game under a license for example the GPL. Microsoft would come down on them like a ton of bricks.
I'm sure that Microsoft would be more than enthusiastic about turnabout. This is *precisely* what they've been complaining about with the GPL -- that it's risky that an engineer with a tight timeline might simply grab all that tanalizing open source sitting out in the open to solve a problem, then claim that the software was written by him. We have to play by the same rules that Microsoft does -- following rules on each side is only fair.
And if Microsoft incorporated, say, chunks of glibc into Windows's closed-source C runtime, I think it's a fair bet to say that the FSF would drag them through the coals both legally and from a PR standpoint.
May we never see th
I hate Microsoft as much as the next /.er, but I think you're over-reacting. SuSE uses some similar terms in the license for Yast, as does id in the QPL, as does even the FSF in the GPL. There's nothing onerous here.
Better to focus on what it doesn't prevent you from doing, I say. I see nothing there that prevents me from porting it to Linux, for example. Nor do I see anything preventing me from redistributing it, as long is it's not for a commercial purpose.
This is a big step for MS, and an important one, I think. We should not discourage them.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.