FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

Hi !

What do you think - does it sounds feasible to completely close current minetest source code (or at least future versions), and find different licensing mechanism for it ?

I would be interested in joining development of minetest client side, however somehow I feel more comfortable in working under different licensing mechanism. I guess exact licensing terms and project ownership is negotiable.

Sorry, but no thanks.

There are several copyright holders since there are several contributors. Changing the license would require asking all of them. If they refuse, then you have to rewrite their code. Don't expect us to switch over to a proprietary license, too.

Same goes for minetest_game.

But feel free to use other engines like Terasology or Buildat, they are permissively licensed…

Tarmik wrote:I feel more comfortable in working under different licensing mechanism.

What do you mean with that? What license mechanism?????
I understand, what a other license is, but I don't understand, what a other license mechanism is...

I like licenses with a strong copyleft. So, I woudn't accept a chance at the license. And I think, many other minetest user too.

The only licence we could change to is GPL. We are using LGPL currently. Any other licence would require the permissions of all contributors.

I hope you're not asking to close the Minetest source. If that's your condition for contributing, then go away.

We like open source.
We like contributing.
We like modding others mods.
We like sharing our work for others to change if seem fit.
We like Minetest as it is, freedom.

rubenwardy wrote:I hope you're not asking to close the Minetest source. If that's your condition for contributing, then go away.

+1000
Reading this while drinking coffee bad. I may need another keyboard :P

Tarmik wrote:does it sounds feasible to completely close current minetest source code (or at least future versions), and find different licensing mechanism for it ?

No, it doesn't sound feasible. Plus you haven't suggested an alternative, so there isn't much to talk about.

I would be interested in joining development of minetest client side, however somehow I feel more comfortable in working under different licensing mechanism. I guess exact licensing terms and project ownership is negotiable.

No, it probably isn't negotiable.

However, if you do have ideas about how the client (or any other aspects of the game) could be improved; you are confident you can present them effectively and are prepared to argue your corner you are welcome to get involved.

solars wrote:

Tarmik wrote:I feel more comfortable in working under different licensing mechanism.

What do you mean with that? What license mechanism?????
I understand, what a other license is, but I don't understand, what a other license mechanism is...

Eventually I would like to drive all code towards ownership by someone. For example if one game is written by two contributors - 50% by 50% source code, that would make one own 50%, and another own 50% of whatever they can make up from selling that game. For source code this could be source code lines percentage, or feature percentage. This also would help to switch partners as needed - e.g. rewrite 50% of code and you own whole project.

maikerumine wrote:We like open source.
We like contributing.
We like modding others mods.
We like sharing our work for others to change if seem fit.
We like Minetest as it is, freedom.

But software developments costs - time, money.
I would open up source code after development effort invested into it pays off.
Meaning that if 1.0 is open. If I invest 5 hours to make v1.1 - I would open code after gets paid off for those 5 hours. :-)

afflatus wrote:

Tarmik wrote:does it sounds feasible to completely close current minetest source code (or at least future versions), and find different licensing mechanism for it ?

No, it doesn't sound feasible. Plus you haven't suggested an alternative, so there isn't much to talk about.

You own now 100% of minetest, so you have full rights to define what it's license should be. I can make suggestions, but you probably make a decision.

From my perspective LGPL and other licenses are bit too complex to define what is really needed. If me / you would spend one day - we can rewrite license easily and specify precisely what we want to achieve.

LGPL's "open" now contradicts with software development costs.

If it would be possible to put emotions aside, and think this from practical / "business" perspective. :-)

I think you entirely miss the point of this project. It's not about making a commercially viable game-engine (forget your "business").
Minetest is open-source, community driven software. Do u even FOSS ?

Tarmik wrote:But software developments costs - time, money.
I would open up source code after development effort invested into it pays off.
Meaning that if 1.0 is open. If I invest 5 hours to make v1.1 - I would open code after gets paid off for those 5 hours. :-)

That is called ransoming. Very bad, and against the objective of FOSS. Read the definition of the word 'ransom' and SnowDrift's article.

Tarmik wrote:Eventually I would like to drive all code towards ownership by someone. For example if one game is written by two contributors - 50% by 50% source code, that would make one own 50%, and another own 50% of whatever they can make up from selling that game.

The LGPL license allows you to sell the game and any forks of the game, however if you change code written by Minetest, you must give that to people who get your game. You don't have to give the code of mods and subgames, or the code of wrappers if they are written from scratch.

indriApollo wrote:I think you entirely miss the point of this project. It's not about making a commercially viable game-engine (forget your "business").
Minetest is open-source, community driven software. Do u even FOSS ?

Exactly this.

Minetest is written by volunteers for the love of gaming. It's not about making money.

rubenwardy wrote:
Exactly this.

Minetest is written by volunteers for the love of gaming. It's not about making money.

AMEN.

Some people just "don't get it."

As time goes on, I grow more concerned about infiltrators and shills entering the Minetest community and trying to take the project over. Yet another sign of the times that we are living in, I am afraid.

Minetest is open-source and it shall stay that way as long as the world system does not render such impossible (you better keep a good eye on what it is up to, by the way.) So, Tarmik, if you really do wish to contribute to Minetest, you will do so under the current license. That is how everyone else works on it.

Tarmik wrote:Meaning that if 1.0 is open. If I invest 5 hours to make v1.1 - I would open code after gets paid off for those 5 hours. :-)

You have now idea how much time some people here spend on the code. It wont ever pay of for that work.

Looks like this guy has a history of trolling for money on licensing: http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=40846
Imagine that, same replies as well.

Wow that guy is annoying :/

rubenwardy wrote:That is called ransoming. Very bad, and against the objective of FOSS. Read the definition of the word 'ransom' and SnowDrift's article.
...
Minetest is written by volunteers for the love of gaming. It's not about making money.

Sounds like a religious thinking, non-practical. Unfortunately I don't want to fight against your religion.

indriApollo wrote:I think you entirely miss the point of this project. It's not about making a commercially viable game-engine (forget your "business").
Minetest is open-source, community driven software. Do u even FOSS ?

May be we have slightly different targets then - I think eventually I want to get bits and pieces under my own ownership.

indriApollo wrote:Wow that guy is annoying :/

Yes, I even had idea of just passing a link to this forum, but I suspected "read that behind link" won't work - taking also replies from that forum. Thanks for posting that link here, I think some there ideas applies also to minetest.

Btw - what I've initially analyzed minetest code, looks like working, however - I see small lags in 3d engine. (Windows, 32 bit release (no optimizations) + debug build combined). I however prefer premake5 over cmake.

Let me check how deep I'll go into that code. (I already can commit some bug fixes related to windows builds)

Tarmik wrote:Sounds like a religious thinking, non-practical.

No, its practical thinking. If you will produce somthing for free and wan't other to help you and not get the Code stolen, then strong copyleft licenses are practical. Practical. PRACTICAL!

Tarmik wrote:Unfortunately I don't want to fight against your religion.

Then don't do it. Listen to Ignutius from the church of Emacs and don't fight our religion.

Tarmik wrote:May be we have slightly different targets then - I think eventually I want to get bits and pieces under my own ownership.

Then write your own bits and pieces. Don't trie to steal the code of other people. ;)

Tarmik wrote:Btw - what I've initially analyzed minetest code, looks like working, however - I see small lags in 3d engine. (Windows, 32 bit release (no optimizations) + debug build combined).

You can build your own Windows 32 Bit Version with optimations and without debug information. This are only flags in the compiler... And how can THIS be lags on the 3d engine? Do the flags alter the code, that runs on the graphics-card?

Tarmik wrote:I however prefer premake5 over cmake.

Its fine if you prefer a alpha version of a rarely used build system against the commonly used stable version of cmake. But there is no practical reason to change the build system of a existing project from cmake to the alpha version of premake.

Tarmik wrote:Let me check how deep I'll go into that code. (I already can commit some bug fixes related to windows builds)

If you accept the licence of minetest, you can do that. ;)
What bugs have you found?

I'm not as religious as other members. As a user I use what is convenient and works well, although I prefer FOSS over proprietary systems where possible.

I am a Minetest developer/contributor to the Minetest engine and game. If you want to make a proprietary game, make it yourself. I contributed my changes knowing that it won't be made closed source and that I am not the slave of any proprietary entity.

Tl;Dr: as a user, I don't mind using proprietary products, but as a developer, I don't want my efforts which I intended to be FOSS to be used in a closed source project.

lol

You can take our lives, but you can never take our freedoms!

Zeno wrote:lol

Yeah really. I was expecting the guy to jump into worthless corporate business speak.

With our unique cross-platform marketplace position we can synergize our efforts into a world class product. By transitioning into a fully monetized corporate entity we can deliver a bleeding edge, next generation experience for the end user.

solars wrote:

Tarmik wrote:Btw - what I've initially analyzed minetest code, looks like working, however - I see small lags in 3d engine. (Windows, 32 bit release (no optimizations) + debug build combined).

You can build your own Windows 32 Bit Version with optimations and without debug information. This are only flags in the compiler... And how can THIS be lags on the 3d engine? Do the flags alter the code, that runs on the graphics-card?

...
What bugs have you found?

I've tuned projects to work that way. Let me fork separate thread on windows compilation issues.

rubenwardy wrote:I'm not as religious as other members. As a user I use what is convenient and works well, although I prefer FOSS over proprietary systems where possible.

Yes, I know to what proprietary systems leads to. But also open source code driven project might suffer also from being not up-to-date, not updated, not much volunteers and so on. For normal daily work I can spend 40h / week, for something that is open / free - I cannot spend so much time - simply because I don't gain anything from it. It's a hobby, something interesting to do at week end, something to forget, and throw away when not it's not interesting anymore.
If project would be both - open source code and proprietary - it would be best combination. It would give opportunity to turn hobby into real work. How to achieve such combination - that's bit complex / tricky.

My desire is whatever I code, I want to plug it in any 3-rd party project and unplug it from there and plug it into another project without big pain. Project can be commercial or open source code.

I can understand the commercial-only games. People need a job to earn money and making games is a good thing but here, in a FOSS project, we don't pay for the engine codes.
Minetest gets developed with free time and motivation which doesn't have the money in mind.

LGPL 2.1 allows commerical use of the codes, so if you really want, you could try to sell (as example) your Win/Linux/Unix builds and use the money to life and develop Minetest with that money.

Make your own proprietary / commercial / whatever game, and get off our lawn.

(please note that open source products can be commercial)

Tarmik wrote:For normal daily work I can spend 40h / week, for something that is open / free - I cannot spend so much time - simply because I don't gain anything from it.

If you get a commercial opensource project, you can do it. Many people are working in companies at open source programs.

Tarmik wrote:If project would be both - open source code and proprietary - it would be best combination.

No it isn't. You can see it at the OpenOffice/LibreOffice story. At the time, where Oracle has owned OpenOffice, they thought like you. And so, they lost the most of the programmers to the pure open source fork LibreOffice and gave away OpenOffice to the Apache Foundation.

Tarmik wrote:It would give opportunity to turn hobby into real work. How to achieve such combination - that's bit complex / tricky.

You are funny. It would bring death to the project, not real work. If you think differently about this, start a new project, and show us, how it works. ;)

Tarmik wrote:My desire is whatever I code, I want to plug it in any 3-rd party project and unplug it from there and plug it into another project without big pain. Project can be commercial or open source code.

A project can commercial and open source at the same time. I have worked at many projects that are commercial and open source. Most time with the GPL, sometimes with the Artistic License.

But I think, you mean proprietary software. You can link proprietary software against LGPL licensed software. So you can link commercial proprietary software to minetest. So, you can plug non free software to minetest, if you do it only per linking, when the license of the proprietary software allows it.

So, what is your problem with the license of minetest?

I think the fundamental problem here is that you neither understand nor appreciate the principles of Open Source / Free Software Tarmik. It is far from a religious thing, in fact it's a pretty hard-headed and practical approach to enshrining freedoms.

Might I suggest that a moderator lock this topic? I don't think discussing further will lead to anything productive.

solars wrote:So, what is your problem with the license of minetest?

(1) Let's take an example. I have made support for joystick in my own commercial software. In theory I could integrate that joystick driver in minetest (may be you support it already, but just to get the idea), but this narrows into question whether company for which I work for will allow this. And I suspect it wont. Now.... I could do this vice versa - develop on my free time joystick driver and embedd into minetest. Now... I would like to pick up that h/cpp code and embed it into commercial software - but LGPL will probably not allow this. (Or will it ?) - since code became part of minetest already.

Could I license joystick.h/cpp with MIT license and place it whereever I want or even with LGPL.
So minetest with LGPL and joystick driver with LGPL, both narrowed to specific module part.

This is about basic modularity.

(2) But also about minetest as 3d rendering engine. What if I would like to upgrade it to my own 3d rendering engine, used for example for other cases besides gaming - I still would need to open up source codes of my own modifications, isn't ? That custom 3d engine cannot be exactly sold, since anyone can start competing with me - just by using my own source codes against me.

This is about branching your code and turning it into commercial product.

I'm bit surprised how many angry posts I see here.

It might be that eventually open source code will win, since engine is developed by volunteers, that's free software developers. Why to hire someone, when we have a lot of volunteers working in this software.

Can you give a proposal of how you see LGPL licensed software development in commercial approach, taking into account that company would stay alive more than 1 year.

You are the one who keeps bringing profit and a company upfront. Minetest has a clear licence and contribution policy. If you don't want to comply, then leave. I think everyone here expressed his objection to your ideas, so ther's nothing more to discuss.

Tarmik wrote:What if I would like to upgrade it to my own 3d rendering engine, used for example for other cases besides gaming - I still would need to open up source codes of my own modifications, isn't ?

That's the very idea behind that license. That's why it was chosen. If you don't like it then don't use free software, go to Mojang and discuss with them.