[ Thanks to Joe Barr
for this link. ]
I discovered a third kind of free software recently. We’ve all
heard of ‘free as in beer’ software. It doesn’t cost any money, and
it may or may not be free according to the Free Software
Foundation’s definition. The FSF definition is for the ‘free as in
speech’ variety, which may or may not cost you money. The new kind
of free software is ‘free as in crack.’ It doesn’t cost any money,
but it’s deadly addicting. The first example of this new kind of
free software that I’ve found in the wild is Enemy Territory (ET),
developed by Splash Damage, published by Activision, and produced
by Id Software.“How addictive is it, you ask? Well, consider this. The final
version of ET was released at the end of May, and according to
GameSpy.com statistics, it is already the second most popular
on-line game out there. It trails Half Life, but has more on-line
players than such well-known first-person-shooter titles as
Battlefield: 1942, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Unreal
Tournament 2003, Quake 3: Arena, America’s Army, and Neverwinter
Nights.“Some people say that ET is a mod of Return to Castle
Wolfenstein (RTCW) that has somehow morphed its way into becoming a
standalone game. Others say that it is still just a mod of RTCW,
but a full conversion mod. I don’t know enough about it to argue
one way or the other, but here is what I do know. ET is based on
RTCW. The game play is very similar. However, you don’t need RTCW
to play ET, and as noted above, you can download the full version
for free…”