Simcity on the OLPC XO

http://www.linuxworld.com –

In 1991, DUX Software licensed the rights to port Maxis Software's SimCity to Unix. Don Hopkins, working then as a contractor for DUX, rewrote the Mac version of the game to run on numerous Unix platforms. More recently, John Gilmore, an advisor to the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative, suggested the idea to Hopkins of bringing the game to the OLPC's XO laptop. Hopkins told SimCity creator Will Wright, who was enthusiastic about the idea and got the ball rolling at Electronic Arts, the current owner of Maxis.

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Created by underthelinux 38 weeks 1 day ago – Made popular 38 weeks 19 hours ago
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merc

38 weeks 1 day 13 hours 2 min ago

I don't think this is free software!

Hi,

While it's great that they are porting software to the OLPC, I don't think the game is free...

Merc.

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underthelinux

38 weeks 1 day 10 hours 11 min ago

good catch

I naturally assumed it was free since it came from Linuxworld and it was on the OLPC. Since it doesn't explicitly say free (in fact, it says they paid a licensing fee to develop it), i'm going to say it's not free, but (before you downvote it) note that it is on free software.

Feel free to vote accordingly.

EDIT: I found this quote from the article which lead me to believe that it IS free...
"Gilmore has been helping in debugging and sorting out intellectual property issues in order to have the game, under the name Micropolis, released under the GPL for the XO."

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dave

38 weeks 1 day 8 hours 33 min ago

Simcity only free as in beer

The makers of simcity have donated simcity to the OLPC project. However, I don't think they are donating the source code at all. They are just not charging the OLPC so they can include it on the system at no cost.

While this is not related to free software in the Simcity regard, it is related in the OLPC regard. So, I'll leave the story here.

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Quadduc

38 weeks 2 hours 43 min 13 sec ago

SimCity free as in speech too

Electronic Arts has actually liberated the game under the GPLv3. They are keeping the trademarks, so the unofficial version of the game will be called Micropolis: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Micropolis

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dave

37 weeks 6 days 4 hours 2 min ago

Alright. I'm happy to be corrected.

Thanks for adding the additional info. The articles I had read didn't mention it. I assumed (whoops) from the lack of mention that it must be free as in beer only. Usually, when it's free as in freedom, they will mention it. It's good to hear about games being freed.