Click on the image above for a full file listing of my Halo install directory.
In order to get Halo to run correctly on my laptop, I had to first run Halo with the -safemode option in order to tweak the video settings. I navigated to the install directory with my good old standby the dos command prompt. While I was there, I noticed xiph_license.txt as well as ogg.dll and vorbis.dll. Could Halo (distributed by Microsoft Games) be using cool and subversive open source technology?
The answer is “Hell yes” aparently.
The use of Ogg Vorbis in such a mainstream game from such a big company totally rocks. It’s not suprising really, just cool. The Xiph license is BSD-like, so there should be no licensing problems, and MS should not have any issues using it. That’s what the BSD license is for. No politics, just get it out there and use it. Of course Microsoft’s use of GPL software in Windows Services for Unix is more amusing from an open source at Microsoft point of view.
I’d love to know who decided to use Ogg Vorbis in Halo. I wonder if Bungie used it in the original Xbox title or if Gearbox added it in during the porting process. Was it similar to geeks deploying Linux boxes in the enterprise without telling their managers, or was it planned all along?
Regardless, my hat goes off to whomever decided to go ahead and use it.