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Comment by roschdal | Hacker News Reader

Great game. If only they could release the game under a GPL license as well. That would be a great way for open source developers who want to learn from the code, and possibly improve the original game.

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Then they won't be able to port it to new platforms and sell it again.

John Carmack did just this with Wolfenstein on the iPhone.

Since I wasn't sure what you were referring to, I looked it up. Wolfenstein 3D was ported to the iPhone and open sourced, then sometime later was put on the App Store.

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/45679/John-Carmack-Release...

Are you comparing Id to EA?

Totally different corporate cultures.

No, he's not. He's saying that if id did it it can be legally done.

I'm sure it is a licensing issue. If they had agreements for the models or the sound files they'd have to pay those people. I think doom was released without the original sound files. Perhaps that was quake.

It was not a licensing issue that prevented id game assets from being released. Carmack wanted to share the technology, the knowledge, so others could learn from it and improve on it. Letting people play doom/quake for free was not the purpose at all.

I very much doubt that. Generally, either the publisher or (sometimes) the developer owns it all. In the case of EA, those entities are the same. I can't see EA open-sourcing anything, ever, though.

Are the Wolfenstein graphics and sound files freely available too?

No, the data files are copyright by Id. The game is still for sale, e.g. on the 3D Realms website.

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