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Let’s make games open source, so future generations can enjoy them (jairajdevadiga.com)

submitted 4 months ago by JairajDevadiga@lemmy.world to c/opensourcegames@lemmy.ml

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A lot of old games have become unplayable on modern hardware and operating systems. I wrote an article about how making games open source will keep them playable far into the future.

I also discuss how making games open source could be beneficial to developers and companies.

Feedback and constructive criticism are most welcome, and in keeping with the open source spirit, I will give you credit if I make any edits based on your feedback.

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[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Like many people, I have aspirations of making games. One thing I'm planning on is some sort of charter or agreement (which I could hopefully automate somehow) that 5 years after the last update that the code would go open source. Some sort of attribution, no commercial use license or something.

[–] jeinzi@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Great idea, that's what I would probably do as well if I wanted to make a commercial game.

Just remember, if you want something to be "Open Source" or "Free Software", the license can't prohibit commercial use [0][1]. If you really want others to be able to continue maintaining the project after you have stopped, they need to have permission to recoup their costs for servers, physical copies and to get paid for their development time. (Open Source) development needs to be financially sustainable; and if that is forbidden for future developers, it's not a community project anymore, i.e. not Open Source.

Also, if by "attribution, no commercial use" you mean some Creative Commons license, they explicitly discourage use of their licenses for software [3].

[0] https://opensource.org/osd

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#selling

[3] https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-commons-license-to-software