Open Source *Game* Programming License

Bryan George bgeorge at mitre.org
Thu Jan 18 16:41:02 UTC 2001


Ken Arromdee wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 18 Jan 2001, Henningsen wrote:
> > If one were to strip off the basic user interface from GPL'd game software
> > and keep that proprietary, that would indeed be a hole. But most game
> > graphics is large world files, and you can run the game software with
> > different versions of these files to visit different worlds/play different
> > games.
> 
> But those files make up a large portion of the game.  The game is useless
> without them.  Oh, you could make a new world file, but by that reasoning,
> couldn't I make a program that needs readline, distribute it without readline,
> and tell the user to make a new readline function?  World files are at least
> as important to a game like Quake as readline is to a program that uses it.

Yes - likewise, a Website is useless without its content, a CD is
useless without songs, a cell phone is useless without a service
contract.  Shall I go on?

This is actually a much better illustration of the "Free software vs.
free beer" concept than the one Mr. Schmid spent a great deal of
bandwidth trying to sell.  That reminds me - can I get this list in
digest form?  My "delete" finger is pretty calloused by now... :)

Bryan
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