''Warsow'', also stylized as ''War§ow'', is an
open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...
first-person shooter
A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game genre, video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a First person (video games), first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through t ...
video game.
Development
''Warsow'' was first publicly released on 8 June 2005 as an
alpha
Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter ''aleph'' , whose name comes from the West Semitic word for ' ...
version. The stable version 1.0 was released on 28 July 2012, after 7 years of development.
''Warsow''s
codebase
In software development, a codebase (or code base) is a collection of source code used to build a particular software system, application, or software component. Typically, a codebase includes only human-written source code system files; thu ...
is
free and open source software
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...
, distributed under the terms of the
GPLv2
The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or copyleft, ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was th ...
license; it is built upon
Qfusion
The ''Quake II'' engine (part of id Tech 2) is a game engine developed by id Software for use in their 1997 first-person shooter ''Quake II''. It is the successor to the Quake engine, ''Quake'' engine. Since its release, the ''Quake II'' engine ...
, an advanced modification of the
Quake II engine
The ''Quake II'' engine (part of id Tech 2) is a game engine developed by id Software for use in their 1997 first-person shooter ''Quake II''. It is the successor to the ''Quake'' engine. Since its release, the ''Quake II'' engine has been lic ...
.
The artwork and other media were originally licensed under the