[IGDA_indies] open source commercial games

[Ben Sawyer]

A few inspired comments based on this post... not sure how useful it is
to the intent of your post...

Virtual U www.virtual-u.org is public source for reasons of sharing it
with Academics and for PR value, and someday maybe some community
development.  It is also given away for free.  Despite that we are still
selling copies (2 here, 3 there, etc.) to our core users who appreciate
printed manuals, support, etc.

Our market is different than say a core commercial game.  I'd say that
public source (the superset of open-source/GPL) availability has its
pluses and minuses, hacking being a big minus as Brian pointed out.  In
terms of pluses, it can be a good way to build more community, it can be
important to certain non-entertainment oriented game markets, and it can
be the ultimate option for attracting modding capabilities.

Aside from the hacking issues with public source what I'd also advise,
in having spent some time on this issue, that you really spend time
familiarizing yourself with the various licenses that are out there in
the open and public source field.  There are dozens, each with their own
nuances both legal and business model-wise.  There is an excellent open
source discussion list which I used to learn more when I was working on
the VU project.  We chose a public source license to modify for a
variety of reasons.

The big difference between public and open source is in the reusability
and restrictions that most public source licenses create vs. GPL or
other derivative open-source licenses.  Some people have hard times
accepting public source license models, etc.  However, I like what Jack
Moffit (creator of Ogg Vorbis) told me when I talked to him about it
(and I'm paraphrasing) - "Anything that promotes more sharing of
source-code and ability to view sourcecode I like - I like it even more
when I can use it too."  So depending on your needs don't be afraid to
stop short of full open source.

Certainly try for it - anyone who supports open source will be thankful,
but don't discount other forms of pushing source code out to the public.

- Ben

p.s. yes I know the link to our source is broke on our site - yes I'm
going to fix it...