In a similar spirit to Freedoom, for Quake fans perhaps you'll want to take a look at LibreQuake, which aims to do a similar thing to allow you to play Quake content with completely open source software.
copyright used to only by 14 years plus a one time extention of another 14 years. Since quake 1 was released in 1996, it would be free for all to play with. Imagine being free to play with our own culture without all these work around.
Imagine being free. I can't honestly. Like a fish ,whose entire life was in a bowel, trying to imagine a ocean.
All of the Quake data files remain copyrighted and licensed under the
original terms, so you cannot redistribute data from the original game, but if
you do a true total conversion, you can create a standalone game based on
this code.
As I understand it the engine is Foss but the assets aren’t, like the doom engine vs the doom wad.
Do I understand it right that it's a free replacement of the still copyrighted game assists such as textures and models, and not the code itself? I'm curios if the level design wouldn't also fall into this.
Wait, so there’s multiple engines?
Someone explain this to me—if I wanted to play free Quake in the simplest way, what exactly would I need to install?
This is not an engine, this is the freedoom equivalent for quake. You will need a quake engine like QuakeSpasmSpiked and then follow the how to play instructions.