Breakthrough for Free Software Gaming
Re-posted by request from http://dev.ryzom.com/news/13
PARIS, FRANCE, May 6, 2010 -- Winch Gate Properties Ltd, the developer
and publisher of massively-multiplayer online science-fantasy role
playing games, is proud to announce the release of the source code and
artistic assets of the popular MMORPG Ryzom (www.ryzom.com) to the Free
Software Development Community.
Developers can now access the source code of the end-user client,
content creation tools and server in order to make modifications,
enhancements or to create their own virtual worlds. This move marks a
milestone in Ryzom's long history and dedication to the free software
movement. In order to ensure that Ryzom continues to grow and foster as
a free software project, Winch Gate is now releasing Ryzom under the
terms of the Free Software Foundation's GNU Affero General Public
License (GNU AGPLv3).
Winch Gate is also excited to provide the free software community with
high quality professional artistic assets including 3D objects,
animation tracks, particle effects and thousands of textures. All of the
Ryzom artistic assets will be licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) to ensure that they and any derivative
art will be available to all free software projects. These assets will
be hosted in a new online repository in partnership with the Free
Software Foundation.
By freeing Ryzom code, Winch Gate is transforming the MMORPG marketplace
and is setting a precedent for how gaming software should evolve--in
freedom. The source code released totals over two (2) million lines of
source code and over 20,000 high quality textures and thousands of 3D
objects.
Welcoming the news, Free Software Foundation executive director Peter
Brown said, "This is a unique opportunity for the free software movement
and the emerging free gaming field to accelerate the production of free
games and 3D worlds. We recognize the importance of gaming and the
current dominance of proprietary gaming software, so today represents a
significant breakthrough from which our community can benefit". The FSF
has published more information about the scope of today's release, and
suggested ways for developers to get involved, at:
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/ryzom-free-software
Vianney Lecroart, Chief Technology Officer of Winch Gate says, "The Free
Software community often has a difficult time finding great graphical
assets that they can use in their own projects. We are sure that the
thousands of textures and 3D objects we are releasing under the CC BY-SA
will help a lot of Free Software projects."
Winch Gate intends to incorporate certain code changes and enhancements
into the official version of the Ryzom game. All code developed outside
Winch Gate's in-house development staff will be thoroughly reviewed to
ensure quality standards, stability and security. In order to engage and
foster growth in the Ryzom project, Ryzom will have a group of
community managers who can manage patch submissions and feature
requests. Support will continue to be given for the official Ryzom
software only, with third-party projects unsupported by Winch Gate.
Initial projects will include bug fixes and porting to operating systems
such as GNU/Linux and Apple Mac OS X. Timeframes for these enhancements
will vary depending on the scale of the project and the project team.
The level and world data associated with Ryzom will not be released as
free content and their use will remain exclusive to players of the Ryzom
game.
The source code and additional information will be available from the
Ryzom Core Development Portal at: http://dev.ryzom.com/projects/ryzom
The Ryzom's free media assets are available from Ryzom's Asset
Repository at: http://media.ryzom.com
See the full press release at http://dev.ryzom.com/news/13
About Winch Gate
Winch Gate Properties Ltd is the developer and publisher of the
massively-multiplayer online science fantasy role playing game Ryzom
since 2009. Former employees from Nevrax joined the company to continue
to work on Ryzom.
For more information contact:
Vianney Lecroart, Chief Technology Officer
vl@ryzom.com
http://www.ryzom.com
http://www.ryzom.com/en/ryzom_ring.html
http://dev.ryzom.com/projects/ryzom
http://media.ryzom.com
irc: #ryzom on irc.freenode.net
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