Descent-2 VS fs2open.github.com

Try not to read too much into that, the MIT license was in the original blank repo I started with. There are a few questions I need to get answered, so the lack of that file doesn't necessarily mean anything about the license. The previous Descent 1&2 releases were under the license seen here, I would expect that at minimum (minimum permissibility-wise):

https://github.com/OpenSourcedGames/Descent-2

I'm hoping the owners will be able to agree to MIT, but we're doing due diligence right now.

Yeah, D2's source code was released way back in 1999!

Freespace is open source.

I am not familure with the.. um.. I guess you could call it the landscape of the freespace community but this was a top search result.

https://www.hard-light.net/

and here is a github project that looks correct.

https://github.com/scp-fs2open/fs2open.github.com

And now, for free, an opinion. I enjoyed decent, but did not like freespace, I am sure there is fun subtlety to the game, but I bounces off it hard, combat in open space ended up being just these really boring circle battles. Much funner combat when you have tight claustrophobic corridors to deal with.

You want some Hard Light, I got it.

I mean...

That last one is an open source engine for a trio of existing free games, but if we count open source engines for commercial games the amount of famous examples grows exponentially. All id Software games up to Doom 3 have had their engines made open source and have a huge number of modern versions available for all of them. So Arcane Dimensions, the greatest by a mile Quake campaign ever made, was completed just three years ago and you need a modern open source engine like vkQuake to play it - even the Quake Remastered engine can't handle the huge AD maps. There's also an open source Morrowind engine, an open source Freespace 1/2 engine (Diaspora above actually runs on this), an open source point and click engine called ScummVM that runs so many old adventure games it's almost an emulator...

If you want those, you can download them through fan-made launcher here: https://www.hard-light.net/ (scroll down until you find Knossos Mod Manager). The minimal size of the download is 3+ GB, and it defaulted the in-game resolution to 4K, which I had to change in the launcher's settings. If you want to install that, look for "Freespace Upgrade MediaVPs" in the "Explore" tab.

Please visit the official Hard Light Productions network and HLP Discord some time for more FreeSpace and FSO related resources, information, and help.