They are not gaming companies either.

Their customers are mainly corporations who don't mind paying the support fees.

if people have a choice between paying for software, or getting it for free, what do you think they'll choose?

if it readily becomes the norm to get stuff and then pass it off for free, no one will pay for it anymore. it may take years, but it will happen.

Wait, are we talking about gaming companies, because you mentioned Ubuntu, and you know, that's Cannonical...

I wonder how Wolfire stays in business, I mean he open sourced his game code and engine for Lugaru. I wonder how... oh you know what, fuck it. We could go around all day and I don't give a fuck.

You're conflating freedom and free beer in your post and Elenarie is misrepresenting the views of Stallman, not like either is rare on the internet. Ironically I don't even agree with everything that Stallman says, but at least I have the good grace to not misrepresent him, make fun of his hygiene, or confuse people about what software freedom means.

I don't recall specifically mentioning Ubuntu, but the OP was talking about open-source mentality being applied to gaming.

http://www.wolfire.com/lugaru

I don't see a "download code and redistribute is for free" link anywhere.

Guess that's how.

Maybe we should advertise it better so that people really know they don't have to pay for it if what you claim is true.

Heck, I should probably open up a server right now and offer to redistribute his game for a minimal fee (just enough to cover hosting costs).

Not really. I'm wondering how you can apply Linux freedom without the other.

For comments about Stallman, you can talk about it with Elenarie. That particular topic is of no interest to me.

I'm more interested in the practical aspect of the philosophy as applied to particulars like the gaming industry.

You can open source code without open sourcing assets. This is what Firefox does, this is what Wolfire and others did as part of Humble Bundle (the first one) and you can Google up any of the code repos that have mods to his source code (or the original in it), should take the time to google "lugaru source code" to find all the info you'd need on it. Interestingly enough the first link is to his blog announcement that you couldn't find.

There's a million ways to make open source pay, the entire conversation is pointless, just take a look at the millions of people making a living with it, go to an open source conference, whatever. If that doesn't convince you the whole forum dance of me giving an example and you finding some reason why it doesn't work certainly won't, so I bow out. Have fun.

Ok, so then they are not really completely open source.

They make select parts of it open, but they cannot rightly claim to fully adhere to the open source philosophy.

I mean, they can decide to keep the juiciest parts locked under key and throw the crumbs.

In a way, I'm open source then.

Heck, I'm making a browser game and the client side will be open...

That clarifies a lot of things.

You know what, scratch that, go read the gnu site, if you want the answer.

I did before and I just did it again.

The program must be open source and have no restrictive clause regarding re-distribution to be free.

If parts of the program are closed or limited in how it can be distributed, then the program isn't 100% free as per the GNU definition.

Btw, in your example (Lugaru), the game was declared open source like 5 years after it's release (basically, when it had already done the vast majority of it's potential sales).

It's an admirable thing to do and a good compromise (though it would definitely kill GOG's business model), but it does put things in perspective concerning the potential revenue for "free" games.

Furthermore, the "Open Source" clause is announced in an old entry of the blog which I know for a fact many people will skip over (like me).

Just a few things to keep in mind, before you make this game a poster child for success given strict adherence of what GNU meant by free.

Really, the GNU definition of free makes it possible to make a living if you create software that will require a lot of support (either complex software or one that has a very lousy GUI or that is just awfully written... do you really want to encourage the last 2 practices?), but otherwise, it's a dead end financially.

A solution might be the "minimum donations required for release" model, but that only works if you have visibility and credibility to start with.

I didn't say Luguru was a "poster child", you just asked for a game that had been open sourced, and it was one. It was open sourced as part of the Humble Bundle and the open source shit was announced on many tech sites, including Slashdot, pretty much the audience that could make use of the source code knew it was happening before it even happened. The only condition they put on it were on the assets and that's just releasing them under a different license, I'm sure you're familiar with things like that. Trademarks and logos often fall under the same issue, you are free to do whatever the hell you want with Mozilla Firefox, you just can't call it Firefox or use their trademarked image. That's open source.

And so, in fact, is Luguru, you can do whatever you want with the program, you simply have to distribute your changes per the GPL. You can even sell your changes, again per the GPL, you simply can't include the assets if you wish to do so.

This has been the way it's been for ages, anyone who's claimed otherwise has had a poor understanding of GPLed software or the GNU philosophy. Software freedom is the freedom to tinker and make your shit work, you don't need someone else's icon to do that, but you do need the source and adequate build scripts. That's what the GPL covers. Luguru is free per the spirit of the GNU.

There's open source games, there's Kickstarter which is essentially modern day patronnage, if you cannot see how open source games could work I'd simply suggest you need to spend some more time mulling the idea over, because it's not rocket science. I don't know that anyone's going to fund an Assassin's Creed scale game on Kickstarter and open source it, but there's tons of games that have been open sourced and given back to the community, it's not that rare.

GNU free software allows tons of ways to make a living. There's easily 10s of thousands of developers doing it right now, today, that do not write shitty software. There's no need to pawn spaghetti code off on some unsuspecting users to do this. Most open source software looks pretty good, you know people are going to be reading your commits, that's usually your real name on there, you want to be the guy who commits the subpar code on the stellar project? Exactly.

Why do you think support is the only way to make a living? I've made bank for years adding feature sets that didn't exist. Yeah the base code is shitty and I spend a lot of time cleaning it up (I didn't write it) but the big money is in the new stuff, I don't often get the chance to bill people for bug fixes, bug fixes are simply expected. I doubt the work I do on a daily basis looks a whole lot different than yours, business users, business requirements, funding, plan, architect, code the new stuff, etc.

I don't know why people think there's some super secret sauce to making a living off open source software. I swear some just hate the idea because it flies in the face of capitalism, which is "god's way" (not you per se, but believe me the concept rankles some people). I still write made to order software too, I don't get to spend my entire time on open source, but depending on the month it's 40-60% which is fine by me. I suppose if I tried really hard I could make it 100% but I don't currently feel the need.

To state it again very clearly: The software part has to be free in order for a program to be free-as-in-freedom-not-as-in-gratis software, but not models, levels, textures, etc.

The game engine works as a runtime environment for the related data files and is comparable to a DVD player software - just because the player is free software you don't have to make all DVDs free-as-in-freedom, too.

I can modify the Arx Fatalis, Doom 1+3, Duke Nukem 3D, Lugaru, Return to Caste Wolfenstein, Quake 1-3, etc.[1] game engines however I want, but I still have to buy the game data to play the game. Or I have to create my own levels, textures, etc.

In the case of Arx Fatalis, for instance, releasing the source code as free software lead to a Linux version of the game.

[1] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_games#Free_engine.2C_proprietary_content