Matthew Garrett: How-To Drive Developers From OS X To Linux

[Luke_Wolf]

Fair point, although I have to admit I have concluded that open development is far from being able to compete on AAA games. I believe the main obstacle is the need for massive investment over a short amount of time with lots going to graphical designers.

Well there's actually plenty of gratis games capable of competing strongly against others in their field, Again "Wing Commander - The Darkest Hour" being a prime example. However none of these gratis games are libre which indicates to me a cultural issue rather than issues of development cost or time. The only other theoretical argument I could see being made is the one Hamish brought up, although that could possibly be solved by how the project management is structured.

Qt uses copyright transfer, so it is plagued by many of the same issues as with permissive licensing. I just hope it won't turn on us again, looked a bit spooky when Microsoft got Nokia by the balls. Yes, CUPS is a good example of Apple coming in and destroying it in terms of community (they still employ its only developer I believe), again copyright was all in one hand enabling proprietary extensions, ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUPS#History Truth be told, I have not done any attempt to figure out what Apple added for their own use. So yes, I am specifically thinking of copy-left with distributed copyright in my earlier posts in this thread. Like linux, samba, debian, pulseaudio, git, gnome, kde, xfce, openwrt, red hat and systemd uses. They all can live well along side their proprietary competition. They also provide an atmosphere where multiple open projects can co-exist without destroying each other.

Well I think that that's a feature of distributed copyright (which I think we both agree is a Really Good Thing (TM)), as opposed to copyleft vs permissive licensing, for example if we look at the BSDs you'll note that there are 4 of them Free, Net, Open, and Dragonfly (alongside various distributions of BSDs such as PC-BSD). They're happily living alongside Orbis OS (the OS on the PS4), JunOS (Cisco) and other proprietary competitors, and the BSDs complement each other as opposed to resulting in self-destruction.

[Luke_Wolf]

And your art and sound assets. If you make all the models and textures available under a CC license, plus the music, you won't see a 5% drop in sales on Steam because most people will prefer supporting the dev and having the Steam convenience than getting a maybe-works repackage of the whole thing made by someone else. Assuming you don't try to price gouge the steam version and sell, say, a 2d sidescroller for $5 rather than $30. And of course you seek financing from those who want your products to continue producing games outside charitable convenience store sales.

You sir have way too much faith in people. Asking a game developer to open source their engine is one thing because they're not actually selling the the engine (unless they are in which case this sentence is the inverse), freely licensing content while intending to make a profit off of it is an exceedingly bad idea. Now on the other hand a license which basically says that you can use and modify it however you like however you can only distribute it to people who also have a license to the game content could possibly work.

[Hamish Wilson]

Just which games are you comparing here? The only complex completely OSS games I can come up that compare to indies are VegaStrike, Wesnoth, and Xonotic, however I'm not aware of what Indie games fit into the categories against them.

I bring up Indies because they are also made by small teams with little to no resources, just like most OSS games are. The fact that you have trouble finding OSS titles that compare to them actually goes a long way in the end to furthering my own argument.

Also the writing thing is why I think that if there were to be a complex OSS game (as in having real stories and such) it would need to be designed like Neverwinter Nights or Wesnoth such that you have your core assets, engine, editor, and some basic scripts as the "base" game, and then you have modules of stories (and you could allow people to sell proprietary story modules if you so liked if you wanted to keep the incentive of profit)

Which is indeed how Wesnoth got to be so successful, but not every game can be made to work in this way, and those that do not function under such a model suffer under more open development. Some games need to be custom tailored, and having all games just be drop in modules for an established engines would stifle innovation and diversity if it were the only method that was applied. Most games can not be developed like this.

Well here's my question with that, would a game be considered a derivative work of an engine or more specifically does it taint the license (if the engine was GPL)? It's not as clear cut to me as say using an IDE or a compiler as you're actually linking to and using the game engine itself for your scripts. If it does then while the developers of the original game/engine are protected from it's effects subsequent commercial developers can't use it without opensourcing everything. Which means we're back to square one because they're not going to use that because they want to sell their content, unless all you're after is a balkanized field of game engines and letting their individual games run everywhere.

It is not back to square one for the developer that wants the benefits of having his or her source code out without encouraging proprietary development in opposition to themselves. This is a corporate friendly aspect of copy-left you have up to now completely ignored.

LGPL or looser doesn't have that derivative works problem and so commercial developers can build off of the engines without the same issues (going under the assumption that games are considered a derivative work of the engine). So from the game developer perspective looser is better. If games are not derivative works of their engines then game developers are license agnostic as regards the engine, and it's a question of technical benefit.

Again, it is not better for the original game developer who does not want to encourage proprietary offshoots of their products.

I heartily advise you to take a look at the freespace community, all of the major mods are very high quality and full games unto themselves.

None of those are made from the ground up, and I already agreed that it can often work for fan made expansion content.

[Luke_Wolf]

Well Luke here are my thoughts without my personal perspective on them on the copyleft vs copyfree/copycenter.

Thanks, I'm just trying to avoid having this discussion turn into a flamewar.

Most devs I know agree that copyleft is designed to protect the copyright of the developer by making a program such as a game commercially unviable unless you pay for a commercial license, like Prey 2's developer is doing for the GPL'd source code of id tech 4. For them, they honestly don't want their work to be shared with the community and I respect their right to do so. I'll probably play Prey 2 when it comes out. id tech engine games have a reputation for normally being good. So the GPL is counterintuitive to indie game development because it makes it very difficult for a game to be kept closed unless you pay out of the nose for a commercial license.

Right, selling licenses commercially is one of the objective as opposed to theoretical reasons to choose to go with a proprietary license, as using an open source license (short of the License-Holder open source style license I mentioned before) means that you can't use software licensing as your business model. As someone will just take the source build binary versions of it and give it away for free.

However depending on what exactly is the product, a model called open core can be used for example open sourcing a game engine while keeping the content proprietary. Permissive licenses are both cleaner and more fair than GPL + CLA for this purpose and allow for others to create their own open core products, rather than having to either build their own version in house or go to a proprietary vendor. GPL + CLA just resulting in a situation where you're just working for free helping that company develop it's own product. Obviously a company is not going to go just straight GPL for a current product that they sell as opposed to unsupported product as they want to be able to sell the changes, whereas they might be willing to do a permissive license and then sell added value on top of it since they can take other people's changes without binding themselves to copy-left under a permissive license.

[Hamish Wilson]

Most devs I know agree that copyleft is designed to protect the copyright of the developer by making a program such as a game commercially unviable unless you pay for a commercial license ... So the GPL is counterintuitive to indie game development because it makes it very difficult for a game to be kept closed unless you pay out of the nose for a commercial license. On the other hand the copyfree licenses are great for indie game development as you can add onto an existing game, and release the code if you feel like it. It gives secondary and tertiary developers more freedom.

Again, it depends on the motives of the independent developer in question. If the developer themselves is releasing the code they may have their own reasons for not wanting it to appear in a proprietary competitors games.

Further, it is still possible and indeed quite common for a company to rely on a GPL licensed engine or any other component in conjunction to their proprietary code without releasing any of their own code themselves:

http://lwn.net/Articles/61292/

[Hamish Wilson]

The link above is actually to an article explaining that the GPL does not force a company to release all of their code even if some of it does violate the GPL. A useful bit of information in this context, but not relevant to the main point I was addressing.

The actual link I wanted to add is this:

The GPL is a source of much confusion in the software development world, much of it promulgated by closed-source software companies spreading a form of propaganda known as Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD.) Any GPL-licensed id Software engine - or any other software released under the GPL - can be used to create a closed-source, proprietary game which can be sold for profit. The licence only requires that the source code for the GPL-licensed portions, plus any modifications made therein, is published under the same licence - not the entire source code tree for the whole game.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2012/11/27/doom-3-code/1

[Luke_Wolf]

I bring up Indies because they are also made by small teams with little to no resources, just like most OSS games are. The fact that you have trouble finding OSS titles that compare to them actually goes a long way in the end to furthering my own argument.

Not really, no. The problem is that all the development that would probably happen under OSS is happening under proprietary gratis licenses. For example do you know of any actual OSS First Person Shooters, that aren't arena shooters, that weren't just licensing established game content under OSS? Because I sure as hell don't. How about a proper RPG? Well you've got FreeDink, Ardentryst, and FreeDroidRPG but I don't know of any others off the top of my head. Yet if you know where to look you can find plenty on the gratis side.

It's a culture thing not a technical issue.

Which is indeed how Wesnoth got to be so successful, but not every game can be made to work in this way, and those that do not function under such a model suffer under more open development. Some games need to be custom tailored, and having all games just be drop in modules for an established engines would stifle innovation and diversity if it were the only method that was applied. Most games can not be developed like this.

What games exactly would those be? Any game with a story can operate on a Campaign as a Module basis. See FEAR 2, and The Witcher as examples for FPSes and RPGs respectively. Command and Conquer, and [star,war]craft both effectively work on a module system for their campaigns. Wesnoth is an example of turn based strategy. Point and Click adventure games are effectively a module plugged into an engine (be it SCUMM, LUA or something else). Combat Simulators (such as mechwarrior and x-wing alliance) are actually perfect for a module type system, although nobody ever did it that way. Am I missing anything?

It is not back to square one for the developer that wants the benefits of having his or her source code out without encouraging proprietary development in opposition to themselves. This is a corporate friendly aspect of copy-left you have up to now completely ignored.

From the single supplier point of view, yes GPL + CLA is the best because they can have their cake and eat it too. Also from the supplier point of view having a monopoly is awesome, because they don't have to compete with anyone and so can be lazy gits, and they can set the price to whatever they want and the customer will just bend over and take it because they don't have a choice.

However from the corporate consumer, and multiple corporate supplier point of view permissive licenses are better as anyone can create commercial open core products based off of it and not have to deal with a CLA.

For Corporations where their product is open source support, whether copy-left or permissive licenses are more friendly to them is a question of what brings more meaningful contributions: Being able to force people to release source while cutting out commercial users (and potentially contributors), or allowing commercial users (and thus contributors), while not being able to force people to release source. This last case is up for debate.

Again, it is not better for the original game developer who does not want to encourage proprietary offshoots of their products.

What's best for the original game developer is GPL+CLA, set up with opencore, and an enforced total monopoly on the market where they can do whatever they want. Neither of these things are good for the system or overall community however or end up with the best results.

[Luke_Wolf]

The link above is actually to an article explaining that the GPL does not force a company to release all of their code even if some of it does violate the GPL. A useful bit of information in this context, but not relevant to the main point I was addressing.

The actual link I wanted to add is this:

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/.../doom-3-code/1

The thing is that quote would be true if it was talking about the LGPL, The GPL brings in this very troublesome thing known as derivative works. That the GPL covers derivative works is why if just as an example I were to want to write an IDE that integrated a GPL compiler to do things like intellisense the entire work would have to be under the GPL *UNLESS* I had already set up a bunch of other backends and the GPL backend was just an additional module on top of those. This is how for instance AMD and Nvidia get away with having closed sourced graphics drivers on linux.

You also don't have to share the changes *IF* you never distribute the actual code. This means that you can have a website that is using GPLed code all over the place and you never have to release the code (which is why the AGPL came into existence).

And while you can just violate the GPL and ignore it like you could any license... well suffice it to say have fun with that if anyone ever finds out.

[Del_]

Well there's actually plenty of gratis games capable of competing strongly against others in their field, Again "Wing Commander - The Darkest Hour" being a prime example. However none of these gratis games are libre which indicates to me a cultural issue rather than issues of development cost or time..

Could be, but in the mean time I will cough up the bucks for linux steam games and enjoy the beautiful graphics.

Well I think that that's a feature of distributed copyright (which I think we both agree is a Really Good Thing (TM)), as opposed to copyleft vs permissive licensing, for example if we look at the BSDs you'll note that there are 4 of them Free, Net, Open, and Dragonfly (alongside various distributions of BSDs such as PC-BSD). They're happily living alongside Orbis OS (the OS on the PS4), JunOS (Cisco) and other proprietary competitors, and the BSDs complement each other as opposed to resulting in self-destruction.

I wouldn't say happily. To me Free, Net and Dragonfly all seem to be marginalized. Fed some crumbs from their exploiters to barely stay alive. The only one that seems to get any traction is FreeBSD, and in free software it is only because it embraced ZFS and CDDL (not a very happy move that one). Moreover, I have a hard time seeing exactly what they contribute of value to society. The only BSD I have seen success from is OpenBSD, and I believe it is specifically because they are very clear on what they want to accomplish. They don't sell out to anybody. Not sure happy is a good description though Of course, concepts like success, valuable and happy are very ambiguous, so this is all in the eye of the beholder, simply sharing my five cents on it.

[Luke_Wolf]

I wouldn't say happily. To me Free, Net and Dragonfly all seem to be marginalized. Fed some crumbs from their exploiters to barely stay alive.

Well yes the BSDs have been marginalized, but this basically has to do with historical reasons, as opposed to the license in and of itself:

Linux came about in 1991, whereas the BSDs took until 1993 to really become public, this has two major consequences.
1). Torvalds himself is on record for stating that if the BSDs had been around when he was starting linux, Linux probably would have never happened
2). Early Linux developers had 2 years to become entrenched into developing Linux and as a result would have become less inclined to work on an alternative kernels.

Red Hat managed to become exceedingly successful, and as a result corporate support followed.

The BSDs had a lawsuit hanging over their heads during the 90s thus putting a cramp on their marketshare during this critical period.
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These three things meant that Linux won out over BSD in the the critical period of the 90s and early 2000s
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Canonical took advantage of the fact that the internet of the early 2000s was crappy and sent out free cds to anyone who asked, along with a lot of internal marketing inside the OSS community boosting it's share and marginalizing alternatives to the point where it made it's name synonymous with Linux for the average person. I have no doubt this also marginalized the BSDs even more as most users would be staring at you blankly if you brought up the name "BSD".

going by PC-BSD (If you know one earlier please do tell) it took until 2006 for the BSDs to get the concept of having preconfigured distributions available as opposed to only having ones you have to build from the ground up. It's pretty obvious how and why this would marginalize them.

The BSDs have lagged pretty severely in picking up things like KMS drivers, and virtualization, both of which are very important right now.
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These meant that BSD was DoA on the desktop until 2006 for the non 1337 user. Which was all too late.

The only one that seems to get any traction is FreeBSD, and in free software it is only because it embraced ZFS and CDDL (not a very happy move that one).

NetBSD also has ZFS since 2007 and it doesn't seem to be helping it's share any. So I'm rather inclined to think that it has nothing to do with ZFS. I'm far more inclined to believe that it has to deal with the existence of PC-BSD, and FreeBSD being focused on the desktop as opposed to security (OpenBSD) or portability (NetBSD).

Moreover, I have a hard time seeing exactly what they contribute of value to society. The only BSD I have seen success from is OpenBSD, and I believe it is specifically because they are very clear on what they want to accomplish. They don't sell out to anybody. Not sure happy is a good description though Of course, concepts like success, valuable and happy are very ambiguous, so this is all in the eye of the beholder, simply sharing my five cents on it.

Eh... "Happily" in this case means that they're positively as opposed to negatively effecting each other.