Did you know that the GPL allows some sort of commercial use?

[NeonSturm]

GNU says "Please help spread the awareness that free commercial software is possible. You can do this by making an effort not to say “commercial” when you mean “proprietary.”"

Commercial software
“Commercial” and “proprietary” are not the same! Commercial software is software developed by a business as part of its business. Most commercial software is proprietary, but there is commercial free software, and there is noncommercial nonfree software.

For example, GNU Ada is developed by a company. It is always distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL, and every copy is free software; but its developers sell support contracts. When their salesmen speak to prospective customers, sometimes the customers say, “We would feel safer with a commercial compiler.” The salesmen reply, “GNU Ada is a commercial compiler; it happens to be free software.”

For the GNU Project, the priorities are in the other order: the important thing is that GNU Ada is free software; that it is commercial is just a detail. However, the additional development of GNU Ada that results from its being commercial is definitely beneficial.

Please help spread the awareness that free commercial software is possible. You can do this by making an effort not to say “commercial” when you mean “proprietary.”

“Free software” does not mean “noncommercial”. A free program must be available for commercial use, commercial development, and commercial distribution. Commercial development of free software is no longer unusual; such free commercial software is very important. You may have paid money to get copies of free software, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies.
[...]
Open Source?
Another group has started using the term “open source” to mean something close (but not identical) to “free software”. We prefer the term “free software” because, once you have heard that it refers to freedom rather than price, it calls to mind freedom. The word “open” never refers to freedom.

• 1. Why is Star-Made not "Free software" too?

• 2. What are the barriers which avoid it being free?

• 3. Does there need to be a GPL-deriviat with a

• • "You are allowed to distribute it along a few GUI-themes with more restrictive rights"-paragraph
  • to make it possible?

• 4. Does there need to be a GPL-deriviat with a

• • "You are allowed to distribute it after [enter date < x years]"-paragraph"
  • to make it possible?

(0) The freedom to run the program as you wish, for whatever purpose.
(1) The freedom to study the program's “source code”, and change it, so the program does your computing as you wish.
(2) The freedom to make and distribute exact copies when you wish.
(3) The freedom to make and distribute copies of your modified versions, when you wish.

 

[Tydeth]

1. Why is Star-Made not "Free software" too?

• 2. What are the barriers which avoid it being free?

1. Schema wanted StarMade to be Proprietary, hence the "All Rights Reserved."

2. The barrier to it becoming Free Software is Schema's decision regarding changing the license.

 

[Viridis00]

A lot of games are closed source for whatever reason, not everyone is interested in using the GPL. I like Free as in Freedom software as much as the next guy, but I can respect if a programmer wants to keep their code proprietary. Schema has been working on this project for a couple of years now (I don't remember how far back his development on the engine itself goes) so if I had to guess it's because he wants the game to move towards his vision and he doesn't want someone forking it over a design difference. Can't blame him myself either. If I was a dev I'd stay proprietary too.

Considering how much the team listens to the community though, I certainly can't complain about Starmade staying proprietary.

 

[NeonSturm]

But what if every purchase from anybody would release a half hour of work?
Say 300..400 purchases and schema would release the source code of one month, starting from his very first code-base...

I don't know if this would violate the GPL or be OK because you could use some dual-licensing-rule to reason it, but that is NOT what I asked.
I asked WHAT exactly - what is the minimum - that a license has to offer to be good for StarMade.



Not that I want to blame a specific human for behaving like this in the world we were born into.

But Imagine which games we could have if SpaceEngineers, StarMade, VoxelLand and MineCraft could use the source of each other.​

Economy, Faction-stuff, Storages, Logic, Fuel, air-tight rooms, ... I could do all this equally or better if it would be as easy as HTML+JavaScript (GUI) and I have a renderer for a game.

It is the barrier of getting to this level, implement java|C-shader interaction and have no way to not write duplicated|ugly source code which prevented me from having a functional code rather than many not-functional source code files in arbitrary languages (mixed Haskell, C, Java, JavaScript, PHP, ...) as I failed to find the bug in compiling Haskell, hate the C-code-constructs as much as everybody else, JavaScripts performance, ...

Just count the source-code or semi-source-code in MY OWN suggestions here + old forum and you get probably 5'000 lines + 100'000 lines if everything I said is written in math/java/c.
I have put all that - especially the alternatives which aren't implemented in SM right now - into a folder, playing around with little independent pieces of code and test-files for no progress, just out of boredom.​

 

[jayman38]

The problem is Chinese software copy houses (and those of other nationalities while we're at it) that don't care about the details of the license. They will re-release open source software if it's popular enough, making money for themselves, sometimes, with the added bonus of malware for the end user. It has happened with OpenOffice and untold hundreds of apps. It harms the reputation of the original software.

 

[NeonSturm]

The problem is Chinese software copy houses (and those of other nationalities while we're at it) that don't care about the details of the license.

Who says it's the Chinese peoples? Maybe they are Microsoft's and Google's peoples doing a false-flag operation against free software.
(( I do NOT say that this definitely is it, just that you may just as likely do what these companies wants you to do. ))

What if -hypothetically- some organisation has bought a security leak from Windows itself and use it to infected schemas PC to

• release binaries containing malware?
• just steal SM.
• inject proprietary binaries into builds after compilation and use it as a base to fight a legal war.

If there are independent indexes of free software in countries which care about the issue, you could simply verify that it is original.

If not, somebody may notice it and as soon as you request an information about the software, it points you to the original alternative.​

• The dangers of being a too popular and an easy target are far greater.

We live right inside the Third World War - it's a digital one.

It is a war about money, a war about intellectual property, about the freedom to use the mightiest tool of mankind and can influence the the "right" to use AI or statistical tools which already exist and which power most peoples are unable to comprehend.

Imagine how fast you could write a game if you could link your mind to a computer...
...some may be able to write all software a common PC has installed today completely by themselves.

We all set the base for our near future.​

 

[jayman38]

There was indeed a huge uproar several years ago, where it was found that Microsoft had used some open-source software in their server OS. Oh boy, did they get in some trouble over that!

And Google already uses open source software in significant ways. Android is a modified Linux, after all.

However, these large companies normally won't risk being caught releasing malware on purpose. Their legal department (the weasels!) won't allow it in most cases, so typically any open-source shenanigans will be caused by techs without permission from higher up. Even if they think they might be able to get away with it, they know that one little slip-up will expose them, and they know that most software projects usually have at least several slip-ups.

Certain places are well-known to have a lack of respect for both copyright laws and personal creativity (at least the creativity of people they don't consider their own). Go ahead and bookmark Brian Krebs' blog. He's an excellent investigator who can normally track down the root and location of malware sources. (Typically a great read!)