wh1ter0se

Licences& source

What this is built from, who wrote it, and under what terms. Including one thing that is currently not in order, said plainly rather than buried.

Last updated 14 September 2026

1. The engine

The GeneralsX engine is a modified build of Command & Conquer: Generals Zero Hour, licensed under the GNU General Public Licence, version 3.

Electronic Arts released the original source under GPL v3. From there the work passed through a chain of community projects before it reached me, and each of them did foundational work I did not do:

This is a modified version of that work, changed by me and not endorsed by any of the projects above.

2. Source availability

Stated plainly: the corresponding source for the current published builds is not available right now. The engine is GPL v3 software, and GPL v3 expects anyone who receives a binary to be able to get the source that produced it. My fork is not published at the moment, so that expectation is not being met. I am not going to dress that up as compliance.

If you have downloaded a build and you want the corresponding source, email me at wh1ter0seliveson@protonmail.com and say which build — the build id is in each filename and in the corner of the game’s main menu.

The upstream projects listed above are public, and their source is available from them directly. That covers the work they did; it does not cover my modifications.

When the fork is published this page will name the repository and the exact revision each binary was built from.

3. The launcher

The GeneralsX Launcher is a separate program. It is free to use, but it is closed source and is not licensed under the GPL. It downloads and starts the engine; it is not a modified version of it.

Where this site calls GeneralsX “open source”, that refers to the engine. The launcher is not.

4. Third-party components

The builds bundle libraries written by other people, under their own licences:

DXVK
zlib licence — Direct3D over Vulkan
MoltenVK
Apache Licence 2.0 — Vulkan over Metal, on macOS
SDL
zlib licence — windowing, input and audio
OpenAL Soft
LGPL v2.1 — audio. Dynamically linked, and replaceable.

Each remains the property of its authors and is used under its own terms. Their copyright notices travel with the builds.

5. Game data and artwork

No EA game data is included in or distributed by this project. No maps, models, textures, audio, video or text from the game ships in any download here. GeneralsX reads those files from a copy of Zero Hour that you already own and have a licence for.

Command & Conquer, Generals and Zero Hour are trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. EA has not endorsed and does not support this product. The names are used to say what this software is compatible with, and for no other purpose.

The project’s own icon and the map layout images on this site are original work made for this project, not derived from EA artwork.

6. This website

Typeface
Archivo, by Omnibus-Type, under the SIL Open Font Licence 1.1. Self-hosted, so your browser never contacts a font service. Licence text.
Map images
Rendered from the map generator’s own output. Original work.
Third-party logos
Company marks on the home page are the property of their respective owners and are shown to identify real working relationships, with permission.
Everything else
Written and built by me.

7. Requests

Licensing questions, source requests, and anything on this page that looks wrong to you: wh1ter0seliveson@protonmail.com. If you are a rights holder and something here concerns you, write to me and I will act on it rather than argue.