So in the aftermath of my rather hastily put together article about Steam coming for Linux, I thought I should balance it out. After the masses of comments (hey it was a lot for us here!) and chatting to Cheese, I have been educated!
So, free and open source games are preferable yes but as we know they are not always an option, we won't be seeing the likes of Left For Dead 2 from Valve having any kind of source code release for example. Sidenote I will still buy commercial closed source games but I get why having the source is much preferred...well better late for me than never right!
What is stopping game developers going open source?
The way I see it from seeing the comments and from other developers I have spoken to personally it boils down to 4 things:
1) Developers don't understand how they can make money if they open up their source code
2) If they get the above then they are afraid that someone will completely rip their game off - it can happen but people can and will do this anyway
3) They don't know how to deal with code contributions/don't want to deal with contributions including copyright issues and the time it can take to manage it all
4) We need a good list of examples to show that it can be done
How can we solve these issues as a community?
Educating not only the developers themselves but the gamers, the people who actually purchase their games, let them understand why it is important to have the source code available which includes but is not limited to:
How to make money from opening up your code?
Well there are a good few ways to do it, rather than mumble on you should look the examples below to see exactly how they do it, I am a gamer after all not a developer so you would understand it more seeing from their side. Arx Fatalis is currently my favourite example of this in action:
Games that have done it!
Licensing/Copyright issues
One of the best ways to license the code (this is my opinion) is to put it under a GPL license that way any modifications to the code anyone uses would need to also be open source under the GPL (if my understanding is indeed correct). It doesn’t mean you need to put your art, sounds etc under the GPL either so don't think that!
So if say someone ported your engine to a new platform, they would need to release it under the GPL and you would still be free to use it for yourself as the original creator (eg. listing it on your website for sale along with the art, sound etc assets for that platform) as long as it still stays under the GPL (it would of course be double nice to credit the person/people who did the work for you ;)).
The only thing to remember about doing it that way is if you wanted to re-license the work, you would need permission from all contributors who's code you put back into the main branch of the code.
That is just one of the many ways to deal with the copyright and licensing issues, to each their own path but that's usually the most popular one.
So if in future if you know a developer who is beating hard on not opening up code or a gamer who just doesn’t care or understand why it is important, maybe send them to this article?
What are your thoughts you lovely bunch of outspoken gamers? Hopefully this time I hit the correct mark. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
So, free and open source games are preferable yes but as we know they are not always an option, we won't be seeing the likes of Left For Dead 2 from Valve having any kind of source code release for example. Sidenote I will still buy commercial closed source games but I get why having the source is much preferred...well better late for me than never right!
What is stopping game developers going open source?
The way I see it from seeing the comments and from other developers I have spoken to personally it boils down to 4 things:
1) Developers don't understand how they can make money if they open up their source code
2) If they get the above then they are afraid that someone will completely rip their game off - it can happen but people can and will do this anyway
3) They don't know how to deal with code contributions/don't want to deal with contributions including copyright issues and the time it can take to manage it all
4) We need a good list of examples to show that it can be done
How can we solve these issues as a community?
Educating not only the developers themselves but the gamers, the people who actually purchase their games, let them understand why it is important to have the source code available which includes but is not limited to:
- More trust between the developer and their player base, which yes can increase sales!
- People can offer bug fixes and improvements
- People can and will port them to other platforms (see games list below)
How to make money from opening up your code?
Well there are a good few ways to do it, rather than mumble on you should look the examples below to see exactly how they do it, I am a gamer after all not a developer so you would understand it more seeing from their side. Arx Fatalis is currently my favourite example of this in action:
Games that have done it!
- Arx Fatalis opened up their engine but kept their assets closed (so you still need to buy the game, but the code is freely distributable under the GPL). Out of that has come Arx Libertatis which is a port of the games engine to run under different operating systems - Linux included with of course bug fixes along the way.
- Frogatto - GPL code with a dual license, if you contribute they accept the submissions and put it into the GPL code base for the official engine but you transfer your copyright to them (so they can still use it to make money) they sell the game on ios and Android for example.
- iD software frequently release their game engines as open source once they have been out for some time, out of these releases come projects like ioquake3 (so you can run games like Quake 3 Arena etc with improvements) and also iodoom3 (same sort of thing)
- Wikipedia's list of open-source games with some form of closed assets is probably thought the single best place to look for a list
- Wikipedia’s list of commercial games released as freeware is also a good place to pick up info from
Licensing/Copyright issues
One of the best ways to license the code (this is my opinion) is to put it under a GPL license that way any modifications to the code anyone uses would need to also be open source under the GPL (if my understanding is indeed correct). It doesn’t mean you need to put your art, sounds etc under the GPL either so don't think that!
So if say someone ported your engine to a new platform, they would need to release it under the GPL and you would still be free to use it for yourself as the original creator (eg. listing it on your website for sale along with the art, sound etc assets for that platform) as long as it still stays under the GPL (it would of course be double nice to credit the person/people who did the work for you ;)).
The only thing to remember about doing it that way is if you wanted to re-license the work, you would need permission from all contributors who's code you put back into the main branch of the code.
That is just one of the many ways to deal with the copyright and licensing issues, to each their own path but that's usually the most popular one.
So if in future if you know a developer who is beating hard on not opening up code or a gamer who just doesn’t care or understand why it is important, maybe send them to this article?
What are your thoughts you lovely bunch of outspoken gamers? Hopefully this time I hit the correct mark. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
0 Likes
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The comments on this article are closed.
Technically I don't think neither Frozenbyte nor Introversion has released any games as FLOSS. The license for these is still non-commercial, and in the case of Introversion you can't even redistribute.
0 Likes
Good article. Thanks for collecting all the issues/discussion in one place. And sorry for derailing your other thread! :oops:
0 Likes
This sums it up for me:
Licenses reject freedom. Ideas and code are not property. To own ideas or any other form of thought is to control minds and the free flow of information. Code or any other idea is the opposite of land or tangible goods. To own land is reasonable because land is scarce; no two people can occupy the same exact space - it's physically impossible. In the world of computers, or the world of ideas, we can occupy the same place. There is no scarcity behind information or knowledge because we can create it infinitely. Copyright(often regarded erroneously as theft) is therefore also practically unenforceable.
So what would be a wonderful, realistic future market based on freedom? [URL='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_buy']Group buying[/URL]. Group buying is the future, it's what propelled crowd-sourcing platforms like Kickstarter. If controlling your product(an idea or code) is practically impossible(or immoral too), the best we can do is to demand the money you need upfront and release it to the public. No legal battles ensue because if you have an idea you own it. If you have data you own it. Do what you want with it - safeguard it, share it, build on it, whatever!
In my view, the man who releases his ideas to the public sphere has given up any privacy or right to those ideas thereof.
Well, there you go. If you find my prattling useful or interesting you can check this out: http://freenation.org/a/f31l1.html
Licenses reject freedom. Ideas and code are not property. To own ideas or any other form of thought is to control minds and the free flow of information. Code or any other idea is the opposite of land or tangible goods. To own land is reasonable because land is scarce; no two people can occupy the same exact space - it's physically impossible. In the world of computers, or the world of ideas, we can occupy the same place. There is no scarcity behind information or knowledge because we can create it infinitely. Copyright(often regarded erroneously as theft) is therefore also practically unenforceable.
So what would be a wonderful, realistic future market based on freedom? [URL='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_buy']Group buying[/URL]. Group buying is the future, it's what propelled crowd-sourcing platforms like Kickstarter. If controlling your product(an idea or code) is practically impossible(or immoral too), the best we can do is to demand the money you need upfront and release it to the public. No legal battles ensue because if you have an idea you own it. If you have data you own it. Do what you want with it - safeguard it, share it, build on it, whatever!
In my view, the man who releases his ideas to the public sphere has given up any privacy or right to those ideas thereof.
Well, there you go. If you find my prattling useful or interesting you can check this out: http://freenation.org/a/f31l1.html
0 Likes
whoops, that post was by me(didn't realize I wasn't signed in).
0 Likes
oak: I think it's important to note that the GPL is and was designed with _the user_ in mind, not the developer. Which is why some people seems to like to call it names and make it out to be a big and scary beast, it's really not though.
0 Likes
[LEFT]This is very interesting concerning licences for tools and libraries and the open source vs proprietary software developers[/LEFT]
[LEFT] [/LEFT]
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html
I never got this gospel-like ideas of FOSS, like there's a war going on. LGPL or less restrictive style licenses seem more ideal to me and feel "free-er" as in "free to do whatever you want with it".
[LEFT] [/LEFT]
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html
I never got this gospel-like ideas of FOSS, like there's a war going on. LGPL or less restrictive style licenses seem more ideal to me and feel "free-er" as in "free to do whatever you want with it".
0 Likes
Quoting: "whizse, post: 4531, member: 126"oak: I think it's important to note that the GPL is and was designed with _the user_ in mind, not the developer. Which is why some people seems to like to call it names and make it out to be a big and scary beast, it's really not though.
If people really valued the user, they would never have created the GPL and adopted the philosophy of whatever data gets onto your harddrive, you own it, so use it as you see fit. That is freedom, not forced contracts requiring you to share, etc. People aren't free or protected because the GPL says so.
0 Likes
If a developer only used BSD licensed libraries for a game and then decided to ship it as a proprietary product I as a user would have no source code, less rights to do anything with it and thus less freedom.
If the libraries where (L)GPL this wouldn't be an issue. This is the problem the GPL was designed to solve. Not to make life easier for the developer, but for me, the user.
If the libraries where (L)GPL this wouldn't be an issue. This is the problem the GPL was designed to solve. Not to make life easier for the developer, but for me, the user.
0 Likes
Quoting: "oak, post: 4538, member: 152"If people really valued the user, they would never have created the GPL and adopted the philosophy of whatever data gets onto your harddrive, you own it, so use it as you see fit. That is freedom, not forced contracts requiring you to share, etc. People aren't free or protected because the GPL says so.
Like Whizse says, the GPL was done with the final user in mind. If you want to redistribute modified binaries without source code you're not allowed, you're not the final user, you're someone who wants to benefit from the source code and take away freedom from your users.
The GPL doesn't force you to release any source code if the modifications are only used by you, it does just in case you're distributing to your own users.
The BSD license says you can do whatever you want, even closing the source code and hiding the modifications you made, effectively taking away the freedom from the final user to do what it wants with the source code.
0 Likes
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me