Parsec To Be Released As Open Source

Mark Bainter writes "The Parsec creators have announced today that they are going to release the Parsec project source code early next month. From the site: 'The source release will include platform support for Win32, MacOS X, and Linux, and contain both OpenGL and Glide rendering code. It will include almost everything that has been part of the earlier LAN-Test releases, as well as our new client/server code that is already far along in development. However, it is our hope that this release will be picked up by the Parsec community for further development, supported by members of the original Parsec Project. This release will be the last official release of the original Parsec Project. It had been our intention to achieve a full-featured release including Internet game play in 2002. However, we were always doing this in our spare time, and since it is taking us too long to reach our original goal, we do not want to keep the Parsec community waiting any longer and have thus decided that it is time to change Parsec's development model to an open source approach.'"

Glide?

[ruiner13]

Does anyone still use Voodoo cards? Do they work with win2k or XP?

finally!

[blaine]

I've been watching this project with anticipation for years, but it's always been "almost ready". That, and the guys running it had what seemed an unnatural fear of open source. Their argument against in in the past was basically "we don't want outside help, so no open source". As if opening the source meant they had to accept changes. It was very strange.

So yeah. Yay! Maybe we'll see a finished game finally. It definately has the potential to be a kickass game.

Re:finally!

[CoolVibe]

They had no unnatural fear of open source. If they really feared open source, they wouldn't have made linux binaries available at all. If I remember correctly, they wanted to make a solid base for the game first, and later decide if they were going open source (for whatever reason).

Clearly, they both haven't got the time to maintain it, and they don't want to see the project die. Open sourcing it is the natural choice to let it live forever.

We should thank these guys, they gave us (the OSS community) a very cool and spiffy looking 3D space engine to muck with. I'll sure be mucking with it.

But What Licence

[BadlandZ]

I read it, and I must be missing something. I re-read it. I still missed it. What licence will it use? Unless it's a clear licence, viewing the source may not be helpful.

What if they don't allow people to submit patches? What if they won't let you use the source to fork off your own project because they retain some rights to it? What good is seeing the source then?

Open source just means you can see thier code, and CQF doesn't really mean anything to me. Can someone point me to some info that may make the meaning of this announcement a little clearer to me?

Re:But What Licence

[CoolVibe]

OSS Licenses (of which there are many) don't need to be compatible with GPL to be truly open. Take off those GPL blinds. Take a gander at the open source website [opensource.org] sometime and educate yourself.

The original authors will always retain their copyright, no matter how open a license they choose. But I guess that's not what you mean. If they choose GPL, you must make code available if you release anyway, and release that under the GPL license too. So GPL isn't really as free (as in speech) as you think.

Of course if they choose BSD, you can fork and do with the code what you pretty well please (with some caveats though).

We'll see what they'll do.

Oddly similar to terminus?

[ward]

Does noone else find this game to be terribly similar to Terminus? You know, Terminus, the persistent universe online space combat/trading game available for Win, Mac, and Linux?

I remember lots of Linux folks drooling over it and babbling about how they'd all buy it as soon as it shipped, because it would have Linux binaries on the CD.

Nobody did, of course. That's probably why nobody remembers the game.