The main oolite repository is [1] and the repository for the launcher is [2]. Everything, including art assets and configuration files, is under the GNU GPL 2-or-later [3]. You can alternatively use the art assets and config files under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License version 3.0, a proprietary license.
Is there a name for the data format (".dat") oolite uses for its models? Is it specific to oolite, or is it a format used elsewhere as well? Apparently they convert them to/from wavefront OBJ files with some python scripts[1] to modify them, but looking at some of them, you kind of wonder why, since the formats seem pretty similar to one another. Oddly enough, I wrote a parser in C for oolite's .dat files for my own open source space game, though I never ended up using any of the oolite models. I think it's fairly common practice to upgrade all the models from the basic stuff that's in the github repo among the oolite community, or so I gather from perusing the lengthy screenshots thread[2]. Edit: it looks like maybe the forums moved sometime over the years and many screenshots were lost, but recent-ish (last ~10 years) entries have screenshots.
> Is there a name for the data format (".dat") oolite uses for its models?
I'd guess not.
> Is it specific to oolite, or is it a format used elsewhere as well?
The .dat format used by Oolite is specific to Oolite [1]. Oolite uses .dat as its own consistent format. (In contrast, the Quake engine used the .dat extension for multiple different kinds of files [2].)
Interesting, but I could only find the information I was looking for on the wikipedia page for the game: it's a single-person game, not a multi-player game (like Elite Dangerous).
Btw, an Oolite is a kind of sediment composed of egg-like stones:
Reposting an old comment[1] which may be of interest to Oolite players:
> Elite: "The game that couldn't be written"
> An hour long video essay about the classic game Elite, the BBC Micro, and how Elite was able to deliver an open-world 3D experience in the 1980s. The creator is "Alexander the ok."
[1] https://github.com/OoliteProject/oolite
[2] https://github.com/HiranChaudhuri/OoliteStarter
[3] https://github.com/OoliteProject/oolite/blob/master/Doc/LICE...