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.
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Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
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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.
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Good article. Thanks for collecting all the issues/discussion in one place. And sorry for derailing your other thread! :oops:
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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
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whoops, that post was by me(didn't realize I wasn't signed in).
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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.
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[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".
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Re-reading your initial post oak, I'm a bit confused. It actually sounds like what you're arguing for is a lot more GPL-like rather than the opposite? Keep in mind that the GPL is a hack around copyright, it uses the system but for its own purposes.
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I must say that every exemple you are refering, where games whose the source code was released much later after the game launched.
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I must say that every exemple you are refering, where games whose the source code was released much later after the game launched.
Considering all the DRM they are adding to prevent copying, releasing the source code while the games are relevant will just make them a whole lot easier to crack.
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I doubt that's an issue. The pirated game is usually already available on day one.
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Good summary, but you didn't mention the Frogatto case, very interesting IMHO.
I don't think any developer should go open source without making sure it would be good for him/her. Free software should be a win for everyone, as much for the user as for the developer. It's worked for others, it could work for games too.
One reason for developers to go opensource is collaboration but this is where the game industry seams weak. There's a lot of competition and very little to no collaboration. Great amounts of collaboration could go on the technical level, I mean game engines, and the competition should be taken to the creative level. I think specially indie games could benefit from that collaboration. One way for indies to go opensource could be considering the use of free engines, tools and libraries and collaborate in their development, that way they're helping each other and saving money on licenses, making users happier and earning more money from their sales.
I don't think any developer should go open source without making sure it would be good for him/her. Free software should be a win for everyone, as much for the user as for the developer. It's worked for others, it could work for games too.
One reason for developers to go opensource is collaboration but this is where the game industry seams weak. There's a lot of competition and very little to no collaboration. Great amounts of collaboration could go on the technical level, I mean game engines, and the competition should be taken to the creative level. I think specially indie games could benefit from that collaboration. One way for indies to go opensource could be considering the use of free engines, tools and libraries and collaborate in their development, that way they're helping each other and saving money on licenses, making users happier and earning more money from their sales.
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Cheeseness 6 Jun 2012
Sorry, Liam - I should have mentioned that stuff like Frozenbyte's source releases were done so under non-free licences.
As berarma says, the big thing is making sure that a source release (or a Free Software release) must be in line with a developer's goals and visions, and they need to understand the implications are as well as what the impacts (both positive and negative) will be for their users/communities.
It's relatively unexplored territory, and understandably, many of those developers who are aware of and see positive aspects are still wary of the unknowns (mostly relating to whether or not it's possible to draw a revenue stream from an open sourced game). For most developers who have gone down that path (again, as berarma has pointed out), the way to mitigate those unknowns is to wait until a game has either recovered its development costs or passed its peak of profitability, and then release source. I'd be very interested to see how Doom 3's sales have been after their source release - I know that's when I bought it ;)
As berarma says, the big thing is making sure that a source release (or a Free Software release) must be in line with a developer's goals and visions, and they need to understand the implications are as well as what the impacts (both positive and negative) will be for their users/communities.
It's relatively unexplored territory, and understandably, many of those developers who are aware of and see positive aspects are still wary of the unknowns (mostly relating to whether or not it's possible to draw a revenue stream from an open sourced game). For most developers who have gone down that path (again, as berarma has pointed out), the way to mitigate those unknowns is to wait until a game has either recovered its development costs or passed its peak of profitability, and then release source. I'd be very interested to see how Doom 3's sales have been after their source release - I know that's when I bought it ;)
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Woohoo! Another license thread!
Oh well. I guess I'll chime in on BSD vs. GPL. I've had to program and do systems administration on UNIX in the bad old days when the most basic tasks had to be documented and coded a dozen different ways since there was the BSD way, the SysV way, the Solaris way, the Irix way, the AIX way, OSF-1 way, the HPUX way ... and on and on and on. Just look at an old version of the Armadillo book. Every example had to have several variations. It wasn't that one vendor did it better (and there certainly wasn't one that did everything better). It's that everyone started with the same basic source code and had to "differentiate" (aka try to obtain a lock-in). It was killing UNIX.
Life before the GPL was a PITA for UNIX users and developers alike. Now I look at Apple, Google and Apache trying to push everything BSD-like licenses and I dread we will return to those days. The fact that it's easier and perhaps more profitable to not contribute code back will encourage history to repeat itself. Then add the likes of Canonical & Lennart regularly saying "Screw compatibility with the standards. We know better!" We're cursed by smart people with short memories.
Oh well. I guess I'll chime in on BSD vs. GPL. I've had to program and do systems administration on UNIX in the bad old days when the most basic tasks had to be documented and coded a dozen different ways since there was the BSD way, the SysV way, the Solaris way, the Irix way, the AIX way, OSF-1 way, the HPUX way ... and on and on and on. Just look at an old version of the Armadillo book. Every example had to have several variations. It wasn't that one vendor did it better (and there certainly wasn't one that did everything better). It's that everyone started with the same basic source code and had to "differentiate" (aka try to obtain a lock-in). It was killing UNIX.
Life before the GPL was a PITA for UNIX users and developers alike. Now I look at Apple, Google and Apache trying to push everything BSD-like licenses and I dread we will return to those days. The fact that it's easier and perhaps more profitable to not contribute code back will encourage history to repeat itself. Then add the likes of Canonical & Lennart regularly saying "Screw compatibility with the standards. We know better!" We're cursed by smart people with short memories.
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Frozenbyte and Introversion examples removed since they aren't very good ones.
Will look up frogatto forgot all about it :P
Will look up frogatto forgot all about it :P
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A vital article on this theme: [URL='http://blog.semisecretsoftware.com/open-sourcing-your-game-while-its-still-popul']Open Sourcing your Game while it's still Popular. [/URL]
It talks about the experience of open sourcing Canabalt.
It talks about the experience of open sourcing Canabalt.
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One reason for developers to go opensource is collaboration but this is where the game industry seams weak. There's a lot of competition and very little to no collaboration.
That's not quite true. I went to GDC back in 2004, and I was pleasantly surprised at how open and helpful game developers are (both indies and AAA devs). I was at the IGF Pavilion, demonstrating my Fashion Cents game which was a finalist that year, and lots of devs came by, looked at the game, and offered great suggestions for improving gameplay in areas I hadn't thought about (e.g., a 2-click alternative to drag and drop for laptop users with trackpads, printing the colors of the pieces on tooltips for color-blind users, ideas for additional power-ups, etc). They also offered publishing tips, and in some cases introduced me to publishers they knew. Most game developers I met weren't at all like the reclusive basement/bedroom coders that I envisioned.
Some indies also collaborate together on various things of mutual interest. I worked with with Gianfranco Berardi at GBGames, Roman Budzowski at Anawiki Games, and Ilya Olevsky at Valen Games (which has since closed up shop) on our Linux ports - we all worked together over e-mail to figure out how to build distribution-independent binaries, and freely shared information we learned. Erik Hermensen over at Caravel Games put me in touch with Jerry Jo Jellestad, who spent many patient weeks over e-mail teaching me the ins and outs of building Linux binaries and installers - he certainly didn't have to do that, given his busy schedule. Gianfranco and I still frequently collaborate to this day, helping test each other's games, sharing new Linux tips we come across, marketing tips, etc.
Going open source would certainly help devs collaborate better, though I don't see devs jumping in and helping code each other's games. Rather, I see devs looking at each other's code to see how they made something work. But then again, the aforementioned guys and I have privately shared some code over the years help each other get something working, so we didn't necessarily need to publicly open our source for that.
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A vital article on this theme: [URL='http://blog.semisecretsoftware.com/open-sourcing-your-game-while-its-still-popul']Open Sourcing your Game while it's still Popular. [/URL]
It talks about the experience of open sourcing Canabalt.
Great link! Thanks for sharing that!
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