[MUD-Dev] Quake II has gone GPL

[Valerio Santinelli]

From: "Eli Stevens" <listsub at wickedgrey.com>
> 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.

>   - 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).

UO is a good example of this. I've been part of the UOX project from
those distant days in 1998 and I can assure everybody that whatever
Origin did to obscure the code and the communication protocol, we've
been always able to decript and understand it.

Having or not the source code is not the problem. It's always better
to have more eyes on your code, so bugs and security issues are
spotted earlier and often fixed by other people in no time.

And you always know who's doing what to against your servers. If a
hole is spotted, you get the same notice wanna-be-hackers do, and
you are aware of what to do in order to block them promptly.

--
c'ya!

Valerio Santinelli
tanis at mediacom.it
HateSeed Gaming Magazine http://www.hateseed.com/
My Lab http://tanis.hateseed.com/
In Flames Italia http://www.inflames.it/


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