Tremulous Forum
General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Shadowgandor on April 19, 2007, 08:57:50 am
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Hey all, i was wondering what was needed to be done to make this game freeware. I personally love this game but i don't understand why most ppl don't make mods freeware (well, i think it's a lot of work, that's why i ask this question). but just keep it a need for buying the game.
I have to rush this question because there's a teacher behind me. Will finish the Q if it is not clear.
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Why are you asking ? Does it matter to you if it's freeware or not ? Seems like the answer is no to me.
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Its not freeware because we are all greedy. As a matter of fact, I just checked the database and you are past due for your quarterly subscription fees. The basic pricing structure is $50 for the base game + $5 for each additional map you've downloaded. (Man, I hope you downloaded the Volcano map, thats another $5 in my pocket :D )
Just kidding...
Now read the last section of this page (http://tremulous.net/about/) very carefully.
If you are still having trouble, try reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tremulous and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL.
I do still encourage sending me $5 :D though it isn't mandatory.
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one thing - it's not 'freeware', it's 'free software' (yes, there is a difference in definitions of those terms - 'freeware' means generally 'free of charge' while 'free software' means widely understood freedom (see the link about GPL) :wink: )
And why?
hmm... at the begining of 'computer era' every piece of software was free (it's freedom wasn't 'regulated' as today is - the software wasn't licensed as coders didn't see any need to do so - they just shared their work (the code, the binaries) with others).
But one day somebody got an idea to make money on software, and that's how proprietary software appeared.
(the whole story: http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/, or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_as_in_Freedom)
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Well the difrences between today and when first personal computers came are huge. fact that you wrote programs to tempotary memory with 8-bit hex console and had to write down all memory addresess on papper and their connent to make proper program. ^^
Those were mostly simple programs to guide machinery.
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Why are you asking ? Does it matter to you if it's freeware or not ? Seems like the answer is no to me.
Do you have something against curiosity?
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Why are you asking ? Does it matter to you if it's freeware or not ? Seems like the answer is no to me.
Do you have something against curiosity?
Chalk another thing up on the "Types-of-people-Sleekslacker-enjoys-flaming" list...
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tremulous is not freeware
it is open source
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Well the difrences between today and when first personal computers came are huge. fact that you wrote programs to tempotary memory with 8-bit hex console and had to write down all memory addresess on papper and their connent to make proper program. ^^
Those were mostly simple programs to guide machinery.
yet still there are people who write free software. and it doesn't make any difference for them if they write a machine code themselves or if they code in some high-level language.
How much code they write, also doesn't make the difference.
it's all about the freedom, nothin' more, nothin' less
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Just wanted to remind everyone that you owe me $60 for each revision of Balance mod.
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But seriously, there is a place in the world for both proprietary and free software. Ideally, companies should follow iD's lead and open up their old products. But saying that here is preaching to the choir isn't it? :)
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I'm not sure on this but by using the game engine (IOQ3) you have to make available the code to other people, I think I'm mistaking here.
Just wanted to remind everyone that you owe me $60 for each revision of Balance mod.
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But seriously, there is a place in the world for both proprietary and free software. Ideally, companies should follow iD's lead and open up their old products. But saying that here is preaching to the choir isn't it?
Risujin, you should make your own game ;). Ohh and is the 60$ part true or just a joke?
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id Software releasing the Quake III Arena sourcecode under the GPL license.
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Why are you asking ? Does it matter to you if it's freeware or not ? Seems like the answer is no to me.
Do you have something against curiosity?
Chalk another thing up on the "Types-of-people-Sleekslacker-enjoys-flaming" list...
You should have seen his original post! He got a clue and edited. Of course, depending on timezone, it could have been very late in the day. It was for me when I posted and forgot to make the distinction of freeware and free software.
Send me money...
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You downloaded this game from the official website for free. The developers didn't make it mandatory for you to pay to play the game. Guess what ? It's freeware.
I'm not flaming here. I'm sure he plays the game while knowing he hasn't paid anything. What kind of people use something, and then ask if it's free later ? Thus the question, does it matter to you if it's freeware or not ?
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You downloaded this game from the official website for free. The developers didn't make it mandatory for you to pay to play the game. Guess what ? It's freeware.
not exactly - the developers also released the source code and let you modify it. It means that they released the game under a specific license, which makes trem a 'free software'.
The difference is that 'free software' is much wider term than 'freeware'.
As someone wrote somewhere on this forum - "it's more than freeware - it's free software".
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You downloaded this game from the official website for free. The developers didn't make it mandatory for you to pay to play the game. Guess what ? It's freeware.
I'm not flaming here. I'm sure he plays the game while knowing he hasn't paid anything. What kind of people use something, and then ask if it's free later ? Thus the question, does it matter to you if it's freeware or not ?
He was enquiring what aspects of tremulous needed to be added to the gpl-ed q3 engine to make trem free. This is not asking if it is free, this is asking what aspects of tremulous made it possible to be be downloaded free of charge and doing so because he wonders why not more mods go standalone.
To answer his question. The source itself was gpl-ed and thus free, no q3mod has to worry about that part.
But the assets (textures, models, maps, sound etc) that came with q3 were not part of the bargain. As such any mod that wishes to go standalone needs to make their own.
They cannot use the copyrighted material which may be used by mods. Why may mods use this? Because to play mods you still need to buy the game and thus you buy the right to play with those assets included.
It's a lot of work making those assets and it costs a lot of time.
Also sometimes the mods don't really allow themselves well for standalone. CPMA for example is a mod that is based around the q3 gameplay and maps and to make it standalone would have to use something like OpenArena. But that project itself still does not include many of the maps which are favorite among the fans.
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You downloaded this game from the official website for free. The developers didn't make it mandatory for you to pay to play the game. Guess what ? It's freeware.
I'm not flaming here. I'm sure he plays the game while knowing he hasn't paid anything. What kind of people use something, and then ask if it's free later ? Thus the question, does it matter to you if it's freeware or not ?
He was enquiring what aspects of tremulous needed to be added to the gpl-ed q3 engine to make trem free. This is not asking if it is free, this is asking what aspects of tremulous made it possible to be be downloaded free of charge and doing so because he wonders why not more mods go standalone.
To answer his question. The source itself was gpl-ed and thus free, no q3mod has to worry about that part.
But the assets (textures, models, maps, sound etc) that came with q3 were not part of the bargain. As such any mod that wishes to go standalone needs to make their own.
They cannot use the copyrighted material which may be used by mods. Why may mods use this? Because to play mods you still need to buy the game and thus you buy the right to play with those assets included.
It's a lot of work making those assets and it costs a lot of time.
Also sometimes the mods don't really allow themselves well for standalone. CPMA for example is a mod that is based around the q3 gameplay and maps and to make it standalone would have to use something like OpenArena. But that project itself still does not include many of the maps which are favorite among the fans.
Thanks for someone finally giving a sane answer... I had been wondering about the same thing as Shadowgandor.
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You downloaded this game from the official website for free. The developers didn't make it mandatory for you to pay to play the game. Guess what ? It's freeware.
Freeware = closed source, free of charge
Free software = open source but you may have to pay for it.
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You downloaded this game from the official website for free. The developers didn't make it mandatory for you to pay to play the game. Guess what ? It's freeware.
I'm not flaming here. I'm sure he plays the game while knowing he hasn't paid anything. What kind of people use something, and then ask if it's free later ? Thus the question, does it matter to you if it's freeware or not ?
He was enquiring what aspects of tremulous needed to be added to the gpl-ed q3 engine to make trem free. This is not asking if it is free, this is asking what aspects of tremulous made it possible to be be downloaded free of charge and doing so because he wonders why not more mods go standalone.
Well that was a flagrant misunderstanding :oops: . I really need to learn not to read forums at odd hours of the night.
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You downloaded this game from the official website for free. The developers didn't make it mandatory for you to pay to play the game. Guess what ? It's freeware.
Freeware = closed source, free of charge
Free software = open source but you may have to pay for it.
according to wikipedia:
The only criterion for being classified as "freeware" is that the software must be made available for use for an unlimited time at no cost.
so software can be both open source and freeware.
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Sorry about that. I guess I misunderstood the original post. I'll wait until his teacher goes away :D.
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sleek, I will ask you again.
Change your siganture.
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according to wikipedia:
The only criterion for being classified as "freeware" is that the software must be made available for use for an unlimited time at no cost.
so software can be both open source and freeware.
Ok, if you want wikiquote war, you got it:
Freeware is copyrighted computer software which is made available for use free of charge, for an unlimited time, as opposed to shareware where the user is required to pay (e.g. after some trial period or for additional fuctionality). Authors of freeware often want to "give something to the community", but also want credit for their software and to retain control of its future development. Sometimes when programmers decide to stop developing a freeware product, they will give the source code to another programmer or release the product's source code to the public as free software.
Free software, as defined by the Free Software Foundation, is software that can be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed with little or no restriction, in part by making its source code (the human-readable form of software) available. The free software movement was launched in 1983 to make these freedoms available to every computer user.
Specifically, software is free software if its source code is available with a software licence which grants recipients these permissions, or if the source code is in the public domain.
The antonym of free software is proprietary software. Free software is not to be confused with "Freeware", which is software made available free of charge. Freeware may or may not be proprietary. From the late 90s onward, some alternative terms for free software came into common usage including "open-source software", "software libre", "FLOSS", and "FOSS".
Bus is a vehicle but if you mean bus, you say "bus", not "vehicle".
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You downloaded this game from the official website for free. The developers didn't make it mandatory for you to pay to play the game. Guess what ? It's freeware.
I'm not flaming here. I'm sure he plays the game while knowing he hasn't paid anything. What kind of people use something, and then ask if it's free later ? Thus the question, does it matter to you if it's freeware or not ?
He was enquiring what aspects of tremulous needed to be added to the gpl-ed q3 engine to make trem free. This is not asking if it is free, this is asking what aspects of tremulous made it possible to be be downloaded free of charge and doing so because he wonders why not more mods go standalone.
To answer his question. The source itself was gpl-ed and thus free, no q3mod has to worry about that part.
But the assets (textures, models, maps, sound etc) that came with q3 were not part of the bargain. As such any mod that wishes to go standalone needs to make their own.
They cannot use the copyrighted material which may be used by mods. Why may mods use this? Because to play mods you still need to buy the game and thus you buy the right to play with those assets included.
It's a lot of work making those assets and it costs a lot of time.
Also sometimes the mods don't really allow themselves well for standalone. CPMA for example is a mod that is based around the q3 gameplay and maps and to make it standalone would have to use something like OpenArena. But that project itself still does not include many of the maps which are favorite among the fans.
Thanks, this gave a clear answer to my question :)
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Ok, if you want wikiquote war, you got it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace
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according to wikipedia:
The only criterion for being classified as "freeware" is that the software must be made available for use for an unlimited time at no cost.
so software can be both open source and freeware.
Ok, if you want wikiquote war, you got it:
Freeware is copyrighted computer software which is made available for use free of charge, for an unlimited time, as opposed to shareware where the user is required to pay (e.g. after some trial period or for additional fuctionality). Authors of freeware often want to "give something to the community", but also want credit for their software and to retain control of its future development. Sometimes when programmers decide to stop developing a freeware product, they will give the source code to another programmer or release the product's source code to the public as free software.
Free software, as defined by the Free Software Foundation, is software that can be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed with little or no restriction, in part by making its source code (the human-readable form of software) available. The free software movement was launched in 1983 to make these freedoms available to every computer user.
Specifically, software is free software if its source code is available with a software licence which grants recipients these permissions, or if the source code is in the public domain.
The antonym of free software is proprietary software. Free software is not to be confused with "Freeware", which is software made available free of charge. Freeware may or may not be proprietary. From the late 90s onward, some alternative terms for free software came into common usage including "open-source software", "software libre", "FLOSS", and "FOSS".
Bus is a vehicle but if you mean bus, you say "bus", not "vehicle".
omg wikipedia noobs
dont trust wikipedia ever
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according to wikipedia:
The only criterion for being classified as "freeware" is that the software must be made available for use for an unlimited time at no cost.
so software can be both open source and freeware.
Ok, if you want wikiquote war, you got it:
Freeware is copyrighted computer software which is made available for use free of charge, for an unlimited time, as opposed to shareware where the user is required to pay (e.g. after some trial period or for additional fuctionality). Authors of freeware often want to "give something to the community", but also want credit for their software and to retain control of its future development. Sometimes when programmers decide to stop developing a freeware product, they will give the source code to another programmer or release the product's source code to the public as free software.
Free software, as defined by the Free Software Foundation, is software that can be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed with little or no restriction, in part by making its source code (the human-readable form of software) available. The free software movement was launched in 1983 to make these freedoms available to every computer user.
Specifically, software is free software if its source code is available with a software licence which grants recipients these permissions, or if the source code is in the public domain.
The antonym of free software is proprietary software. Free software is not to be confused with "Freeware", which is software made available free of charge. Freeware may or may not be proprietary. From the late 90s onward, some alternative terms for free software came into common usage including "open-source software", "software libre", "FLOSS", and "FOSS".
Bus is a vehicle but if you mean bus, you say "bus", not "vehicle".
omg wikipedia noobs
dont trust wikipedia ever
+1. Wikipedia is bullshit.
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But sometimes it does give you links to good stuff. I found an Anansi legend I was looking for by using Wiki. But I do admit I wouldn't base anything important off of it.