Civ2's source code petition

[Eivind IV]

@yaro: It's Eivind btw, not Evivind

[Leonidas]

Add my name to the list as well

[Mercator]

Originally posted by CapTVK
As long as the license its released under is ok (e.a NOT the CtP2 one!) count me in.

Does that really matter? I'd rather have a bad license than no source code at all. Something like the CtP2 license is probably about the best we can expect anyway.

And else there's always Freeciv. Why not take a look there?

Wouldn't Freeciv'ers also be interested in the civ2 source? If one of their goals is full Civ2 compatibility, the civ2 source sure would be helpful. In fact, a colaboration between the two would probably be beneficial to both... There's no chance in hell Civ2 will be released under the GNU license, though, so that would get in the way of sharing code on both ends.

[yaroslav]

Eivind, Leonidas, done

[yaroslav]

Originally posted by Mercator


Does that really matter? I'd rather have a bad license than no source code at all. Something like the CtP2 license is probably about the best we can expect anyway.

I agree. Much better any license that no source code, as far as we can modifiy the game and release the patches... and I don't see any problem with Atari asking for people OWNING the game... We don't want to release it for free, we're buyers that have bougth a copy of the best game of all history and want to improve it

[Eivind IV]

What is freeciv?

[El León]

Count me in, por supuesto.

[Case]

Originally posted by Kobra
What is freeciv?

A free open-source version of civilisation 1/2. It's been in development for at least 5 years now, and is aparently fairly good.

See: www.freeciv.org/ and http://apolyton.net/forums/forumdisp...s=&forumid=111

[sezoN]

Your also find here some infos about freeciv - http://www.civ.org.pl/news.php?lang=Eng&type=Freeciv

[yaroslav]

SlowThinker added to the list.

[CapTVK]

Originally posted by Mercator


Does that really matter? I'd rather have a bad license than no source code at all. Something like the CtP2 license is probably about the best we can expect anyway.

And else there's always Freeciv. Why not take a look there?

Wouldn't Freeciv'ers also be interested in the civ2 source? If one of their goals is full Civ2 compatibility, the civ2 source sure would be helpful. In fact, a colaboration between the two would probably be beneficial to both... There's no chance in hell Civ2 will be released under the GNU license, though, so that would get in the way of sharing code on both ends.

If you want to use some code from Freeciv in an updated Civ2 or vice versa it would matter....

A mutual effort on Fc and Civ2 would indeed be helpful. No doubt about that. But there are some strict issues that have to be dealt with. If Civ2 is not released under GPL, cooperation would be difficult. So what does happen? Lets say Atari does its job well and releases just the code. Graphic and sound are excluded in the releases, the graphic DLL's are stripped bare except for placeholders...the code is completely cleansed of any possible copyright material. However, if it uses a non-GPL CtP2 type license...

For starters any code snippets in Fc from Civ2 are a nono, and viceversa. Sorry, no Freeciv ferrycode for you .

Game features/rules formulas are a different matter. They could 'probably' be included. Although Fc is at a point with about 90-95% of Civ2 already in. Unless you count features like the I-can-walk-on-water-trick and I-can-park-my-plane-in-midair-via-'sentry'-without-crashing as official Civ2 rules. Diplomacy was the last major hurdle.


Before I go on I must clear up some confusion. Even if released under GPL Atari ( Infogrames-Microprose) would still 'own' Civ2. They could continue to sell it commercially with all the original graphics and sounds. The code would be available for anyone who would like to tinker without any hassle.


In short i would LOVE to see the Civ2 source released. But I want to see a source that doesn't put a limit on your creativity. If you're going for the gold you don't settle for almost good enough .

[Angelo Scotto]

Originally posted by CapTVK
If you want to use some code from Freeciv in an updated Civ2 or vice versa it would matter....

A mutual effort on Fc and Civ2 would indeed be helpful. No doubt about that. But there are some strict issues that have to be dealt with. If Civ2 is not released under GPL, cooperation would be difficult. So what does happen? Lets say Atari does its job well and releases just the code. Graphic and sound are excluded in the releases, the graphic DLL's are stripped bare except for placeholders...the code is completely cleansed of any possible copyright material. However, if it uses a non-GPL CtP2 type license...
For starters any code snippets in Fc from Civ2 are a nono, and viceversa. Sorry, no Freeciv ferrycode for you .

Absolutely, but this is the well known problem with the GPL (i'm not starting a flame, it's just my PERSONAL opinion), it's not easy to integrate it with other licenses (not just CtP2, which, i agree, is not a very liberal license, but even with Apache License, Mozilla License and a lot of other licenses that OSI still recognize as open source licenses)
Even if Atari decide to release the code with Apache License or even BSD we still will be unable to take code from freeciv (but you will be able to take code from us).

I think that another interesting development of FreeCiv + Civ2 could be save game compatibility (i think Mercator was referring to it when talking about compatibility), i would love to see a save game saved with Civ2 being imported into FreeCiv and viceversa and this can be obtained independently from license type.
A guy looks at the Civ2 code and writes a complete document about save game format, and FreeCiv group look at these specs and implement the importer.

Anyway, i think that license problem is the last one actually...

Greetings,
Angelo

[yaroslav]

Four members of Civfanatics added.

[H Tower]

/me signs his name to the petition

[Dr. Nick]

How come I'm not on that list?