In case anyone had been wondering, the recent buyout of Bungie by Microsoft leaves MS owning the rights to the Marathon franchise, while Take Two gets the rights to Oni and Myth.

How does this affect the opening of the Marathon source code? Hopefully, not at all.

Derek Moeller, who maintains the FAQ for the Aleph One project had this to say:

There isn't reason to worry. Microsoft's research department regularly deals with GPL software, and, as far as can be seen, they adhere to it. There is an IPV6 capable web server, for example, which they have expanded on to, but kept the GPL license. It is freely available on their site.

So while it may be necessary to change the traditional battle cry to What vent cores would you like to frog blast today it does appear that open source developent on Aleph One will continue unabated.