Desura Game Client Is Looking To Go Open-Source

Desura, the digital distribution platform for games that is similar to Valve's Steam platform, is looking to have its Linux client open-sourced.

In the Desura Forums, the lone developer of the Desura client writes about his intentions to create an open-source project out of it under the GPLv3. The server-side portion of the distribution platform would remain closed-up.

As i'm the only one working on Desura client due to a number of reasons I was looking into open sourcing the client aspect of Desura it self to allow the community to help out implement features and bug fixes faster and contribute this back into the client to benefit all users.

As it stands, the license im looking at using is dual license; GPL v3 for the open source side and a commercial license for the company side how ever the trademark, icons and logos are not included with this. Was also thinking of using GitHub to host the project with wiki and bug tracker.

What is your thoughts and ideas on the subject?

Obviously this proposal is being very well received by its community. It would certainly be a delight to Linux users and could potentially see the client being ported to FreeBSD, in part there is already the Linux binary emulation that allows Linux games to run quite well on FreeBSD/PC-BSD. It could also open up new opportunities for integration into other areas of the Linux desktop stack.

This shouldn't pose any security issues since all of that is handled by the Desura servers. "Security in Desura is all on the web server so should be no harm in open sourcing it."

There's additional commentary from the Desura client developer in a follow-up post.

I as the only developer will always be around for a chat/help and direction of the client. Thanks for your tips and suggestions got a bit of reading/research to do before this goes through.

The duel license is so the company can do other things that the gpl doesnt allow and yes that would mean patch contributors going up stream would have to agree to this.

So at this point it does look very hopeful the Desura client will be open-sourced. Meanwhile the Desura Linux client is available, but account log-in is only supported for select beta testers at this point.

You can comment in this Desura forum thread to voice your opinions about this likely open-sourcing of the Desura client.