No praise needed here. The Volition guys were really great people to deal with...they were very open to what we as fans wanted to do and hear from them. We organized IRC chat sessions (this was 1998 folks), e-mail interviews and question and answers, and they were even nice enough to allow a few of us to come and visit their offices in Champaign IL. That was a truly eye opening experience...I even had the pleasure of visiting twice. You really get a sense of what it is to be a part of a game development team and the kind of hours and dedication that are involved.
Its also rare that a company such as this would badger their publisher into a point where they would be allowed to release the games source code to the community. When I got the first e-mail in my inbox that something like that might happen I was truly floored. I think I needed a bucket to contain my drool...I'm not a programmer but I had a pretty good idea of what might be possible. And here we are...we're getting close to 10 years of FreeSpace.