What does releasing the source code mean?

Article View: alt.games.quake3

Article #287094

#287094

From: Todd
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2008 02:12

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With Id software, when the game goes beyond a certain age, they
release the source code.  What exactly does this mean?

I loved Quake2, but had problems with it in WindowsXP, then discovered
Unreal Tournament.  By the time I tried Quake 3, I was too used to the
feel of UT, that I wasn't able to get into q3.  Or maybe the q3 bots
are just too good for me.

But UT has its problems.  If there's a serverpackages line in the
ut.ini, but the package isn't the game folder, the game will crash.
After a few games, (with DirectX anyway) the game suddenly stops
responding to input, and the only thing I can do is wait until it
crashes (which is almost always does within a minute), or ctrl-alt-del
out.

I've been recently getting into Linux, where most everything is open
source.  But Id only releases the source code for their games after
the final patch, as far as I know.  Q2 is still 3.20, I believe, and
Q3 is 1.32?

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From: Todd <noone@nowhere.com>
Newsgroups: alt.games.quake3
Subject: What does releasing the source code mean?
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