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> The Quake engine was also released under the GPL, and went on to be highly influential, serving as the basis for dozens of games, including time-honored favorites such as the Half Life series. Large swaths of the gaming canon were made possible thanks to the generous contributions of free software game publishers.

This seems misleading. Half-Life was released in 1998, but the Quake engine's source code wasn't released under the GPL until 1999, so presumably Valve had a non-Free Software license to use the code.



It's not just misleading. It's wrong. The timeline and order of those events is wrong.


I was going to say "it depends on how you parse the sentence", but after re-reading the second sentence: yes, it's just plain wrong. Half-Life and Valve would have happened regardless of Quake's source code being released.


My dad went to Harvard and played football. He then went to USC and got his MBA.

He tells people, as a joke: I went to Harvard. I got my MBA. I went to USC. I played football.

Each, individually, are true statements. But their sequence communicates a very different meaning. :)


The phrase says "dozens of games" not only Half Life from 1998. So if after 1999 some games used the engine, the phrase is still correct.


The article implies that Quake’s source code being released led to these games being created.

As far as I know, all the popular games were proprietary, so I’d still say it’s incorrect.


Can't let historical facts get in the way of dogmatic furor.


Your presumption is correct. Valve was working directly with id Software after licensing the (still closed-source at the time) Quake engine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoldSrc




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