On: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code r...

[mannerheim]

If you read between the lines, this is the very reason why Id released the source code as GPL instead of BSD: They didn't want their competitors to take their engine, make proprietary improvements, and deprive Id of revenue using their own work.

[squeaky-clean → mannerheim]

They never open-sourced any of their engines until after they had published a game with the next iteration of their engine.

[mannerheim → squeaky-clean]

Sure, but that just means they had multiple methods of ensuring they had created a suitable moat against competitors, the GPL being just one of them.

[thrower123 → mannerheim]

They didn't release any of this code as open-source until they'd wrung every dime of engine licensing out of it and it had been completely obsoleted.

It's free-as-in-couch software.