Considered by many as "just another mod" for iD software's Doom, the FreeDOOM Project fulfills a much wider goal than it meets the eye at first. It offers a complete Doom IWAD 100% sprite-by-sprite compatible with the original game, that other modders can build on, just like the original Doom ones, and in an exact manner of Free Software, that encourages people to hack and mod it at will. Before FreeDOOM was released in 2003, the only other alternative to this was to either purchase the original game files (rarity given the discontinuation) or to pirate them (which misses the point of software freedom). FreeDOOM solved these both, and with the added benefit: $0 price tag. So before you laugh and dismiss FreeDOOM as an old-school, badly drawn game way out of its glory days, re-think this from a Free Software perspective. I think of FreeDOOM as being to gaming what GNU/Linux is to operating systems. What are your thoughts on FreeDOOM? Do you think it's just a mod? Let me know! Links: Playing free software Doom in FreeBSD and Alpine Linux (works for other OSes too)
