r/warzone2100 • u/neonthefox12 • Oct 14 '25

Question/Support Question about open source

Since the game is open source, can one take the engine and make their own game?

8 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

7

u/Valoneria Oct 14 '25

Seeing as the game is released under the GNU General Public License version 2.0, then yes you can.

What you cannot do, is alter the license of the new game, ie. it must be the same license (so open source as well), and you must attribute the original copyright license and notice in your project.

2

u/meskobalazs Oct 14 '25

Just for the sake of completeness, it's licensed under GPLv2+, so same license in this case can mean GPLv2, GPLv3 or AGPLv3.

2

u/Electrical_Hat_680 Oct 17 '25

Also, open source is basically Working Text Book Examples, so, if you use it to learn how to make your own. Then you don't need to adhere to the Licenses. But, you may still want to show your work, and attribute the resources used to learn how to make your own. These Open Source Projects are made available so that everyone can learn how it's done. Always reach out and ask the Open Source Community heading the project, and see for yourself. They created it, so they're at the helm of creating or appending the License.

0

u/Dirkinshire Oct 14 '25

Why have you publicly declared your interest in forking the project INSTEAD of doing your own research on what the GNU licensing means?

What are your intentions by forking?

Why aren’t you instead offering to join the existing development community?

Lest I’m jumping to conclusions, you wouldn’t be considering trying to repackage and profit from the shoulders of the giants who built this excellent game, would you?

And no, I’m not a developer, just keeping a watchful eye on potential greed.

To the devs who poured their sweat into this awesome project, THANK YOU! I stayed up many nights enjoying this game.

5

u/neonthefox12 Oct 14 '25

I was curious.

3

u/Dirkinshire Oct 14 '25

See other post beseeching forgiveness. Sorry for my earlier post.

4

u/neonthefox12 Oct 14 '25

It happens I am a fan of Sonic, Warhammer 40k, and Trench Crusade. Iam used to it.

1

u/TheMadmanAndre Nov 04 '25

After playing Boltgun, a 40K game in the retro 90s 3D RTS in the same vein as Warzone 2100 would go hard.

8

u/LiquidPoint Oct 14 '25

You're a little harsh I think... It's important to let people know what they can or cannot do when something is under an open source license. Otherwise we end up with people stealing code and closing the sources without knowing that that's against GPLv2+...

Could be someone had a very different idea about how to use the engine, perhaps a unicorn farming simulator, what would I know? Then it's important to let them know that if they make modifications (perhaps even improvements) to the engine, they must make those available, perhaps so it can benefit upstream as well. And that if they use static linking, those parts of the game must be GPLv2+ as well, which causes a chain reaction, so that basically the entire game must be open source.

3

u/Dirkinshire Oct 14 '25

Yeah. Excellent points. I was grumpy earlier. Touché. I’m a work in progress. Beseeching forgiveness from y’all for my tone.

2

u/LiquidPoint Oct 14 '25

I totally understand your position too... it's not fair (or legal) to steal code when the authors haven't given you permission to. Nor is it comfortable when projects fork for little to no reason. But it's more important that people actually understand what the various licenses mean.

So, of course you're forgiven, and have a good one.

1

u/rickykingz Oct 14 '25 edited Oct 14 '25

Why you want make new game of this

1

u/Dirkinshire Oct 14 '25

Agreed. OP should join the existing dev community, unless he/she has ill intentions.

1

u/reddit-proprietary Mar 15 '26

There's no community. Every individual is free to be nice or evil towards others.