[MUD-Dev] Quake II has gone GPL

[Eli Stevens]

From: "Jeremy Noetzelman" <jjn at kriln.com>
> On Sun, 13 Jan 2002, Noplex wrote:

>> Yes, but again, the Torque engine (Tribes 2) is alot better than
>> Quake 2 (in some areas) the license restrictions would probably
>> push people away, Quake 2 is GPL, Torque has it's own license.

> Without opening up the licensing ball of wax, I'd argue that for
> MUD projects the GPL is quite a poor choice, due to the 'open
> code' restrictions.  I certainly wouldn't want every player to see
> the guts of the client I distribute, as that allows them to do bad
> things much easier than if they don't have source code.

Two points:

  - Any sufficently devoted cracker would buy the Torque engine (or
  pickup a priate copy) to see what s/he could learn about your game
  from it (so you might as well consider the Torque engine open
  source, even if your client is not).

  - Relying on the cracker not having the source is security through
  obscurity.  Granted, you have to trust the client to some extent
  (otherwise, why bother?) and obscuring the ways to cheat is nice.
  However, if people care, they will find away around not haing the
  source (though I suppose this is the inverse of "much easier" that
  you mention above).

Just my two cents,
Eli

--
Give a man some mud, and he plays for a day.
Teach a man to mud, and he plays for a lifetime.


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