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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Anybody up to writing good directory software?
Tue, 2007-02-20 11:17 — David JonathanSince the very beginning, directories (of any kind) have had a very central role in the internet. (I have recently grown fond of Free Web Directory. Even Slashdot can be considered a directory: a collection of great news and invaluable user-generated comments. As far as software is concerned, doing a quick search on Google about software directories will return the free (as in freedom) software directories like Savannah, SourceForge, Freshmeat and so on, followed by shareware and freeware sites such as FileBuzz, PCWin Download Center and All Freeware (great if you're looking for shareware and freeware, but definitely less comprehensive than their free-as-in-freedom counterparts).
Is better education the key to finding better software?
Sat, 2007-03-03 03:25 — Edward RusselI read David Jonathon's article Anybody Up To Writing Good Directory Software? the other day, which got me thinking about software directories in general. As David mentioned, many of the software directories one finds when doing a quick google search are free as in beer, not as in freedom. But what interests me is the software directories that already exist, providing a combination of both free as in beer software, and open source software. Sites such as Freeware Downloads and Shareware Download don't advertise themselves as providing free as in liberty software, but each of them have a good selection of open source software available... if you know where to look.
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merc
4 years 23 weeks 4 days 19 hours 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.
underthelinux
4 years 23 weeks 4 days 16 hours 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."
dave
4 years 23 weeks 4 days 15 hours 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.
Quadduc
4 years 23 weeks 3 days 9 hours 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
dave
4 years 23 weeks 2 days 10 hours 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.
mattflaschen
4 years 23 weeks 2 days 14 hours ago
FUD
It's under the GPLv3. See http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=projects/micropolis-activity;a=blob;f=README... for yet more evidence.