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Classic Shooters Heretic and Hexen Released Under GPL
phanboy_iv writes "Fans of both of the Raven classics, Heretic and Hexen, have been trying for almost a decade to convince Raven Software to release engine source code for the games under the GPL, much like the DOOM engine on which both of them are based. Well, they finally did it! Source code is available at Sourceforge. Both of these games have had the source available for a while, but under a restrictive license that hindered ports and modifications. Now, thanks to dedicated fans, that's no longer a problem."
I thought some of the Doom engines out there supported both of those already.
Someone cares, even if you don't.
If I've learned anything from my time on Slashdot, it's that there's a community for everything. No matter how weird or insignificant a software project is, there will be a dedicated community around it.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
Mostly because it's now legal to GPL derivatives. Ports like ZDoom and GZDoom were in violation before. (And still are because of BUILD code.)
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{shrug}. You can get all of the Doom IWADs for $10 with the collector's edition CD, and on Steam you can buy Heretic for $5 and Hexen and its expansion for $5 each. It's not much.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Many of the Doom source modifications out there use code from the Heretic and Hexen source bases in order to create a combined port that can support all games, and support the additional engine features that were brought by Hexen in the older games.
However since the Doom source is GPL while the Heretic and Hexen code bases were not, any project doing so was actively violating the GPL, until now.
My sucking at this and other FPS games is what lead me to becoming a programmer. Hex editing binaries, cheat patches, etc. led me to open source and hacking.
So yeah these are old news now, but there is some serious nostalgia for some us.
ZDoom's problem isn't that it was using non-GPL code, it was that it was trying to use GPL code: version 1.16 used the minilzo decompressor and Qmus2midi, and the whole thing was released as GPL. Version 1.22 had Qmus2midi ripped out, but minilzo was still there and there was nothing in the source indicating what license the whole thing could be distributed under. Well, we know now that it couldn't be distributed due to the mixing of Doom Source Licensed code with GPLed code (not to mention the Hexen bits that were in there), but I don't know what it claimed to be under at the time.
I don't have the source for any 2.0 versions except 2.0.96 handy. That one has no GPL code, although a few files have an exception that if they're used outside of ZDoom or one of its derivatives, then they fall under the GPL. The only piece of GPL code in GZDoom is Fragglescript, and the author of that has granted an exception so it can be linked with GZDoom. The author of GZDoom has put a lot of his own code under the LGPL, mostly to make it more difficult for closed-source ZDoom derivatives ZDaemon and Skulltag to use it...