Racer Source Code will be published
Date 9-May-2003 14:27:06
Topic: Software News
| Ruud van Gaal plans to release the source code of the detailed car- and driving-simulation Racer v0.5.0 under GPL. Read more for the newsletter.
"As you might know, there seem to be a bunch of people in the Linux community who have a problem with Racer not being GPL'ed.
This might be a good time to take a crossroads. I plan to release the Racer v0.5.0 source code under GPL. I don't think I'll host that version after that, since we don't have that much bandwidth and would take time that I'd rather put in other things.
After the GPL release, I'll close the source for future versions. This does not have any impact on the strategy of Racer, which means a free executable version for the platforms (although I still have the problem of DRI executables for Linux, since I don't have such a set in my possession).
There are plans for commercial implementations using Racer, and you may have noticed things like 'ecol' or 'ecue'. Those are proprietary extensions. Probably RakNet (a quite cool networking library) will enter the game as well. It becomes harder to get clean source code out the door, free of rights. Also, since the multiplayer component might take a bit of a boost with RakNet (at least take out the 2-player limit at once), it would be too easy for hackers to create modified versions of Racer and find their way through the network protocol.
Although I'm sorry for all those interested in the source code, it seems like the right path. There's always the GPL spinoff that could be maintained. I'm not sure how that's going to turn out; I'm getting major support these days in putting realism and knowledge into Racer's physics and that is interesting for anyone.
The 2 Racer version will drift apart, that's for sure, if only because of the networking protocols, I'm afraid. I'm not convinced however that a GPL spinoff (with which I will have little to do) will go to bigger heights than a closed source one. Even though it potentially means more developers, it still takes a lot of devotion to make stable improved versions without hacking little bits in just for the day.
So with the GPL version you'd have OpenSource, but no license to commercially sell it. It just still seems a bit counterproductive almost to split the project into two.
Comments will be read with interest, although with these things I can imagine you'll have 2 groups; those that are for and those that are against, and nothing much will bring the 2 together.
www.racer.nl"
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