4 ms·

I really wish Epic and/or CryTek would release their engines under a strong copyleft license such as AGPL, with the option to purchase a proprietary license for

I really wish Epic and/or CryTek would release their engines under a strong copyleft license such as AGPL, with the option to purchase a proprietary license for developers who do not want to release their games as free software. This would allow developers of free (as in freedom) games to use the engine while also allowing the company behind the engine to make money.

jordigh 10y ago
Yeah, GPL or AGPL would be way less ridiculous than their current license. I'm not sure why are they so concerned if you make an offensive game.
- gravypod 10y ago
  I agree. There are a lot of things that I'd want to do with this engine that involves security research that I just can't do. Does this also mean that flight simulators cannot be written on this engine? I used to play a lot of those for fun, but that could fall under "serious software".
SXX 10y ago
That would be great, but both Epic and Crytek have no reason to do that. Releasing under copyleft would mean there will be forks with changes they can't use for their proprietary branch. They of course have no reason to use permissive licensing too since that would mean someone else can make money off it.
- mappu 10y ago
  The x264 library is GPL (i.e. not LGPL). To use it in a closed-source product you can pay for an interesting kind of commercial license, the terms of which are you /must/ submit your changes upstream (privately). The upstream can choose to accept anything that's possibly useful, and will reject anything that was application-specific.
  - SXX 10y ago
    I have no idea if this business model work for x264, but I sure it's work for Qt and few other open projects. Unfortunately companies that developing game engines not going to benefit from copyleft licensing since there is no demand for GPL from real game developers. After all there is very few open source games around and only bunch of them aren't clone of something else. Probably none of these projects ever going to need anything as complex as CryEngine: there is enough of good open source engines for indie games. So if they release engine as GPL they simply won't get any more developers in community. At best there will be few incompatible forks made by developers who only want to release changes under GPL. PS: So just keep in mind that in case of CryEngine "source available" offer appear because it's only way to compete with other commercial engines and make money. They intentionaly keep it proprietary instead of going open source since it's better for their business.

jordigh 10y ago

Yeah, GPL or AGPL would be way less ridiculous than their current license. I'm not sure why are they so concerned if you make an offensive game.

gravypod 10y ago
I agree. There are a lot of things that I'd want to do with this engine that involves security research that I just can't do. Does this also mean that flight simulators cannot be written on this engine? I used to play a lot of those for fun, but that could fall under "serious software".

SXX 10y ago

That would be great, but both Epic and Crytek have no reason to do that. Releasing under copyleft would mean there will be forks with changes they can't use for their proprietary branch. They of course have no reason to use permissive licensing too since that would mean someone else can make money off it.

mappu 10y ago
The x264 library is GPL (i.e. not LGPL). To use it in a closed-source product you can pay for an interesting kind of commercial license, the terms of which are you /must/ submit your changes upstream (privately). The upstream can choose to accept anything that's possibly useful, and will reject anything that was application-specific.
- SXX 10y ago
  I have no idea if this business model work for x264, but I sure it's work for Qt and few other open projects. Unfortunately companies that developing game engines not going to benefit from copyleft licensing since there is no demand for GPL from real game developers. After all there is very few open source games around and only bunch of them aren't clone of something else. Probably none of these projects ever going to need anything as complex as CryEngine: there is enough of good open source engines for indie games. So if they release engine as GPL they simply won't get any more developers in community. At best there will be few incompatible forks made by developers who only want to release changes under GPL. PS: So just keep in mind that in case of CryEngine "source available" offer appear because it's only way to compete with other commercial engines and make money. They intentionaly keep it proprietary instead of going open source since it's better for their business.