FSF France enters Free Software Gaming
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, Paris 31 October 2002
Nevrax, the video game company releasing NeL under the GNU GPL decided to outsource the Free Software community management to FSF France. The fifteen developers working on NeL at Nevrax will continue to operate under high pressure to meet their deadlines while FSF France will be in charge of connecting them with the Free Software world.
NeL is an essential component of any 3D games. It provides the 3D graphics engine, networking and artificial intelligence that are necessary to develop multiplayer online games. It ultimately intends to compete with high end proprietary middlewares and largely intersects with Free Software libraries such as Crystalspace or Ogre.
FSF France first became involved in the gaming field by helping with the release of Blender under the GNU GPL. "We are now working to make sure games can be produced and distributed in freedom." says Loïc Dachary, FSF speaker, "Game developers who have the courage to endorse Free Software as a moral principle should know about NeL". Since it is released under the GNU GPL, it guarantees the contributors and authors that it won't be abused by proprietary software vendors. People are welcome to use NeL and build on it as long as they are willing to participate to the Free Software movement.
Nevrax's engineers have been developing NeL during the past three years. The company was seduced by the Free Software philosphy and acknowledged that a service based business model is compatible with it. "We are about to release our first game based on NeL." says Daniel Miller, Nevrax CTO, "We need to rely on the FSF France to interface between our overloaded staff and the Free Software community." Nevrax decided to move the NeL CVS tree and the mailing lists to Savannah, the development hosting facility of the GNU project, so that the Free Software community benefits from an integrated contributive environment.
Those interested in improving NeL are encouraged to subscribe to the NeL mailing list. For more information please visit http://nongnu.org/projects/nel/
About FSF France
The FSF France is a non-profit organization dedicated to all aspects of Free Software. Access to software determines who may participate in a digital society. Therefore the freedoms to use, copy, modify and redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition - allow equal participation in the information age. Creating awareness for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving people freedom by supporting development of Free Software are central issues of the FSF France.
About Nevrax
Nevrax is a specialist in the development of massively multi-user online worlds and a fervent believer in Free Software. It currently has teams developing a leading edge Free Software technology platform called NeL, and a state of the art massively multiplayer online role-playing game called Ryzom. Details on NeL can be found at www.nevrax.org. Details on Ryzom can be found at www.ryzom.com.