Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 263 posts

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#251

Post by Octopodes »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #225
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least with OpenRA you can legally download the original game content ISO CD images (EA released them as free(beer)-ware a while ago) - the only thing missing is about half of the single-player campaign missions as OpenRA can’t play the original game missions directly so the project’s contributors recreate them by-hand,

> you can legally download the original game content ISO CD images (EA released them as free(beer)-ware a while ago) Is it possible to download these ISOs from EA today? On Origin, Red Alert is only available as part of the Command & Conquer The Ultimate Collection, which isn't free of charge.

Looks like they're on archive.org, if not from EA itself.

https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22Red+Alert%...

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#252

Post by dang »

malux85 wrote: post #198
alexeldeib wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From GitHub: Electronic Arts: 27 repos Azure: 1.8k repos n.b., I work in Azure, make your own conclusions.

Typical Azure response, this is such a summary of azure it’s funny. Chose some metric where you look good and tout that as the deciding factor. Ignore the fact that the metric is irrelevant, and hope that your reductive (and incorrect) summary gains momentum among the masses who are too intellectually lazy to think for themselves and just want a number to trumpet on the front lines Also ignore the fact that your inco…

Posting like this will get you banned here regardless of how right you are or feel you are. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

We've had to ask you this before recently, too, which is not good. Would you please take the intended spirit of the site more to heart?

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#253

Post by xtracto »

josefx wrote: post #234
xtracto wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That´s good learning by Microsoft: In the 1990s they "competed" against Netscape with the "free" web browser... it was shocking that they gave it for free, but in reality they were buying eyeballs. Nowadays, they have seen that if they provide software as "open source", and not only "free", not only do they get eyeballs, they also get "feel good" points from the community, and I assume they use that to attract custom…

> it was shocking that they gave it for free It certainly shocked the developers of its engine. They licensed it to Microsoft for a share of the profit and ended up suing Microsoft over that stunt.

That's very interesting! Do you happen to have any reference where I can read more about it? (a search on internet explorer profit licensed lawsuit didn't show anything relevant).

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#254

Post by thejynxed »

_jal wrote: post #150
NoInputSignal wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, I think this counters a philosophical point of open source software. The open code to the software we use should not be a handout or a gift ex post facto. The open code to the software should be an invitation: to collaborate on it, audit it, or frankly do anything you want with it (e.g. WTFPL); before, during, and after using it.

There are times to hold fast to ideals, and times when demanding purity is self-destructive. (And of course wisdom is knowing the difference, and much harder than it looks.) Open source should be a big tent - it should be an answer to questions people have many different motives for asking. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

The old cathedral vs bazaar argument never goes away ;)

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#255

Post by josefx »

xtracto wrote: post #253
josefx wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it was shocking that they gave it for free It certainly shocked the developers of its engine. They licensed it to Microsoft for a share of the profit and ended up suing Microsoft over that stunt.

That's very interesting! Do you happen to have any reference where I can read more about it? (a search on internet explorer profit licensed lawsuit didn't show anything relevant).

They may not have actually sued, just threatened Microsoft with an audit.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyglass,_Inc.#Browser_wars

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#256

Post by EamonnMR »

djmips wrote: post #191
EamonnMR wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explanation of RTs networking in that period: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131503/1500_archers_o... I did a Python implementation here: https://github.com/eamonnmr/openlockstep

Any bites? Anybody make a game with your tech?

None yet, but I don't really blame them. As-is it uses TCP rather than UDP. Also, if you want to prototype an RTS you'd probably make a mod for Starcraft II - the air is, I think, well and truly sucked out of the room.

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#257

Post by alexhutcheson »

mokus wrote: post #173
rrdharan wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically of course WTFPL is in fact not "do anything you want with it" despite the claims of the author and fans of the license. https://opensource.google/docs/thirdparty/licenses/#wtfpl-no... https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/29718/is-the-wtfpl-g...

It’s really quite infuriating to me that I can’t just say “yeah I made this, but anyone can have it.” I mean, really. It just seems batshit insane to me that this is problematic.

https://opensource.org/licenses/0BSD

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#258

Post by MaxBarraclough »

johncolanduoni wrote: post #93
sedachv wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing in the GPL that prohibits you from selling games: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMon...

It does effectively prohibit you from competing with someone else who compiles there code and puts up a download link for free. The “but you can still charge money for it” aspect has always fallen flat, especially since most people won’t pay for disks containing something they could download online these days.

You could presumably make a derivative game using the engine, and sell the game's assets, while complying with the licensing terms on the engine code.

I don't know any examples of this happening, but we've seen the engine/assets distinction before when DOOM and Quake were opened. Their source code was released as Free and Open Source software, but the game assets remain payware to this day.

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#259

Post by WorldMaker »

gitgud wrote: post #217
nindalf wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VSCode was not a fork of Atom. They started afresh. This is possibly why it’s much more performant than Atom.

Interesting, I always thought VSCode was a fork of Atom. After some research, it looks like electron was previously called Atom-shell , which is where the confusion comes from for a lot of people. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17221917

It's also interesting to note that the core editor component/library of VSCode (called Monaco) predates Atom. It was used in a variety of places in Azure even before Atom built Atom-shell/Electron, and got a lot of early stress testing in powering the Dev Tools source code views in IE as far back as at least IE 10, IIRC.

Re: EA will be releasing the C&C Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert source code under GPL3

#260

Post by WorldMaker »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #71
capableweb wrote: post #9

One of the best things that could happen to the gaming landscape would be if companies like EA and similar learned from Microsoft's move to open sourcing more software and involving the community more gives them a lot more goodwill and business as a side-effect. And then us gamers get more long-lived games as a benefit as well.

I wonder if we could create a tax incentive for this. For example, if a publisher commits to open sourcing N years after release, they get a break on sales. Or get to capitalise R&D more aggressively during development.

It's the original spirit/sentiment behind patent law and copyright law. Copyright sort of lost the thread on that one over the course of its extensions, but in the case of the book the "source code" to construct the book is very similar to the contents of the book and a limited copyright term was supposed to imply that eventually the public would have access to it after the brief monopoly rights granted to the creators of the work.

As copyright pushed to things beyond books that also made it easy to forget that original "open source" idealism behind copyright. It's tougher to build a new movie out of the components of a published movie than to build books from the components of published books.

Patent law is where the idea was applied to something that needed "source control preserved": describe an invention in complete detail in a public registry so that others can recreate and get a powerful limited monopoly on it, but as soon as that limit hits everyone should be able to recreate it.

Software patents have long been a mockery of that original spirit of patent law, but "open source projects by companies get stronger piracy protection/what have you for the first X years of their registered life" is really what software patents should have been in the first place, based on the original goals of what patents were for.

Post reply on HN