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Comment by 29athrowaway | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if id Software will continue the tradition of open sourcing stuff under Bethesda.

The last id engine released under the GPL was id tech 4, i.e. the Doom 3 engine (and the updated BFG version)*. id tech 5, 6, and 7 have since been used in Rage (2011), Doom (2016), and Doom Eternal (2020). Carmack was the only guy who both cared about open-source and had the juice to make it happen, but he left in 2013. So I kinda doubt it.

* https://github.com/id-Software

Another possible reason is that newer game engines tend to have dependencies on external libraries that aren't easy/legal to open-source or reimplement.

Nope. It stopped because he wasn't there to help make it happen. id Tech 5 was supposed to get an OSS release, but Carmack resigned before it could be completed.

They could still dump the remainder of the engine and people would fill in the holes.

re: Carmack. I wish we'd see GPL Oculus firmware.

From Facebook?

https://github.com/TTimo also cared about open sourcing these engines

They did release the DOOM 3 engine as open source in 2011 after being bought by Bethesda in 2009. Microsoft owns them and Bethesda now and they have been getting more open source lately. Although I think it was more Carmack who was pushing for the engine's to be open sourced.

Yeah, something like open sourcing an engine is a “default no” for companies unless you have someone very high up as a champion. That was Carmack and he’s gone now.

That's one of the reasons I won't do game development anymore, the industry as a whole is still very hostile to the idea of open source. I don't see that changing any time soon.

Pretty much a hard no. Bethesda has stated that Id engines are to be used for internal projects only.

I don't think they have open-sourced anything since they were bought by Bethesda.

You mean under Microsoft, right?

Microsoft has embraced server-oriented Linux initiatives, but they abstain to participate on Linux desktop and Linux gaming related initiatives.

I do not expect to see Office for Linux, a proper release of Minecraft for Linux with feature parity with Windows, etc. I also do not expect to see Xamarin development on Linux. I do not expect to see a proper release of Skype on Linux either. The only exception to this trend is VS code.

Edge for Linux doesn't bring anything new to the Linux desktop. There are already plenty of browsers such as Firefox and Chrome and others.

And I am deeply thankful that Microsoft won't buy Discord. Discord works very well on Linux and I hope it stays that way.

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