Atomic Game Engine Open-Sourced

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Atomic Game Engine Open-Sourced

The cross-platform Atomic Game Engine has been open-sourced under the MIT license...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Atomic-Game-Engine-Opened

[Danny3]

I never heard of this game engine, but this is nice.
Big thanks to them!
BTW, anyone has any idea why they and other choose the MIT license instead of GPL?
As I can see here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3...vs-gpl-license
the MIT doesn't require modifications be open sourced whereas the GPL does.
Doesn't this mean that assholes will jut take the code, make a few changes like adding DRM or vendor lock-in features and then sell it for money?
Something like what Apple and others do?
I think that Bittorrent follows the same model as GPL.
You must share back what was shared with you. Very logical an ethical in my opinion...
I'm sorry but I don't get this.

[Michael_S]

I never heard of this game engine, but this is nice.
Big thanks to them!
BTW, anyone has any idea why they and other choose the MIT license instead of GPL?
As I can see here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3...vs-gpl-license
the MIT doesn't require modifications be open sourced whereas the GPL does.
Doesn't this mean that assholes will jut take the code, make a few changes like adding DRM or vendor lock-in features and then sell it for money?
Something like what Apple and others do?
I think that Bittorrent follows the same model as GPL.
You must share back what was shared with you. Very logical an ethical in my opinion...
I'm sorry but I don't get this.

Building a good game is a lot of work, so most people who put the time and effort into it want to get some money back. If you release your game under GPL, it's difficult to get money from it. Maybe one way to do it is like PlaneShift, which is a massive-multiplayer-online-roleplaying-game (MMORPG) released under a GPL license. You can use the code for free, but the game content has use restrictions.

I want the whole world to be GPL, but I do not blame people who use other licenses. You have to have enough money to buy food and pay for your home before you can write code to share.

[vadix]

I never heard of this game engine, but this is nice.
Big thanks to them!
BTW, anyone has any idea why they and other choose the MIT license instead of GPL?
As I can see here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3...vs-gpl-license
the MIT doesn't require modifications be open sourced whereas the GPL does.
Doesn't this mean that assholes will jut take the code, make a few changes like adding DRM or vendor lock-in features and then sell it for money?
Something like what Apple and others do?
I think that Bittorrent follows the same model as GPL.
You must share back what was shared with you. Very logical an ethical in my opinion...
I'm sorry but I don't get this.

Some people don't want to limit what their code can be used for. Sometimes people just want attribution for their work, so they use the BSD license so Apple and others attribute them appropriately. The GPL is particularly bad for a game engine because it forces anything that it links with or that links with it to also be open source unless it is a system library. That alone is bad, but companies that use the game engine might want to make completely separate additions or changes to the engine specific to their project, in which case you could license under the MPL so that only specific files covered by the MPL are copyleft (such as bug fixes), but proprietary engine code developed by the company doesn't need to be MPL licensed as well. It isn't as if the GPL is a license to end all others. Even the FSF made the LGPL knowing that developers wouldn't always be able to or want to use the GPL. MIT license is highly permissive, so it means you have less obligations regarding the source code.

[Luke_Wolf]

I never heard of this game engine, but this is nice.
Big thanks to them!
BTW, anyone has any idea why they and other choose the MIT license instead of GPL?
As I can see here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3...vs-gpl-license
the MIT doesn't require modifications be open sourced whereas the GPL does.
Doesn't this mean that assholes will jut take the code, make a few changes like adding DRM or vendor lock-in features and then sell it for money?
Something like what Apple and others do?
I think that Bittorrent follows the same model as GPL.
You must share back what was shared with you. Very logical an ethical in my opinion...
I'm sorry but I don't get this.

People taking and making commercial products out of the engine is kinda the whole point of their action. If they had licensed it as GPL they would have had to have had a CLA so that they could sell it under a commercial license that game developers would actually use, and thus create a situation of unequal rights. They chose MIT in order to open source it and not have all that hassle, and ethics being thrown at them.

[scorp]

GPL is probably really problematic for closed source projects, but I don't understand why companies are afraid of LGPL? Is it because of the same three dangerous letters in it? I don't know, however LGPL is a perfect license for all parties, the guys who open their code and the ones who would like to use it in there even closed source project. Everybody can link it dynamically without violating any license, it can coexist with closed implementation parts in separated shared libraries, and the community would get back the fixes and improvements to the common open code. I think, the problem is incompetence, most companies just don't really know the difference between open source license models.

[Luke_Wolf]

GPL is probably really problematic for closed source projects, but I don't understand why companies are afraid of LGPL? Is it because of the same three dangerous letters in it? I don't know, however LGPL is a perfect license for all parties, the guys who open their code and the ones who would like to use it in there even closed source project. Everybody can link it dynamically without violating any license, it can coexist with closed implementation parts in separated shared libraries, and the community would get back the fixes and improvements to the common open code. I think, the problem is incompetence, most companies just don't really know the difference between open source license models.

Don't think for a minute that companies don't know and understand the difference between the various license options before they release code, any substantial company has lawyers for this exact purpose, That said companies really only tend to use the GPL or other strong copyleft license if their actions aren't really in good faith, that is to say they're intending to restrict your usage of the code to non-commercial usage because they don't want someone to take their code and compete with them commercially. Meanwhile a company that is operating in good faith, that is to say... isn't intent on limiting usage and is instead just putting the code out there for everyone to use, will tend to go for more permissive licenses, like MIT or Apache. The few times where companies have gone with weak copyleft, usually it's either a matter of corporate pride and they're writing their own license see the MPL or the associated Microsoft Licenses or there is bad faith in play as was the case with the CDDL where it was intentionally made incompatible with the GPL because Sun Microsystems didn't want their code taken by Linux.

[log0]

It is derived from Urho3D which is MIT too. That might have been a factor in the choice of the license.

[gondur]

Doesn't this mean that assholes will jut take the code, make a few changes like adding DRM or vendor lock-in features and then sell it for money?
Something like what Apple and others do?

This is true, but...

I think that Bittorrent follows the same model as GPL.
You must share back what was shared with you. Very logical an ethical in my opinion...
I'm sorry but I don't get this.

...the point here is: the GPL is also "good" in preventing reasonable use cases with other free and open source software. (Where permissive licenses like MIT produce no problems)

Two examples: Currently the FSF/SFC blames Ubuntu for including ZFS a free and open source copyleft license file system into the GPLv2 licensed Linux kernel. Totally inside the spirit of both with source code available , but technically legal wise according to the FSF incompatible. therefore the FSF currently tries to prevent that people can use free software in linux (ZFS).

http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2016/03/10/ubuntu-zfs/

Second example: the GPLv2 is incompatible with the GPLv3. This lead to this absurd situation where FreeCAD (GPlv2) couldn't use the library meant for them libreDWG (GPLv3).
http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/e...-new-beginning

Ins hort, copyleft licenses, especially the GPL, can be a pain in the ass license compatibility wise (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_compatibility ), where permissive licenses are without problems. This is the core reason for the strong movement in direction of permissive licenses since some years (http://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2013/04...ive-licensing/ ). (As historical side note: the copyleft license problems became open visibly to everyone with the GPLv2/GPLv3 split in 2007)