6 ms·

what an achievement, good job! I hope you'll get handsomely paid for it, cheers

by yohann305 7y ago

malnourish 7y ago
Unless the parent were to be hired in some capacity, why would they be paid for it? The project has the MIT License.
- behringer 7y ago
  and now the reason for the GNU GPL license becomes apparent. If some unfathomably wealthy corporation founded by one of the richest person to have ever lived isn't going to pay you for your work, at least you can get something out of it by making them open source their work.
  - steve_taylor 7y ago
    If this library was GPL licensed, Mojang/Microsft wouldn’t have bothered taking the time to even evaluate it.
    - nothrabannosir 7y ago
      How do you know? I always evaluate GPL code, keeping in mind I could try and offer the maintainer a fee for a private license. All code is implicitly dual licensed, for the right price. Only some of it explicitly so :)
      - kapep 7y ago
        It's only that simple if it's all written by the same person. A maintainer can't just re-license the whole project unless all other authors agree (or already agreed to that e.g. by accepting some contributor agreement). Or did you mean a price high enough to just ignore the existing license?
    - behringer 7y ago
      Then in that case a developer like the guy who made that library would have gotten paid!
    - ajnin 7y ago
      That's an interesting dilemma. If your goal is to get your source code to be used by lots of people, then it seems logical to use an as permisive license as possible to "compete" with other open source projects. But it might be short-sighted, because then if your code gets incorporated in proprietary projects it may become used a lot, but it won't propagate, it won't generate new projects that might get even more use. If on the other hand you want to get your source code into the hands of as many people as possible (that is not only users but empowered ones), that's different, and a licence like the GPL that is inherited (I don't like the term "viral" very much, it seems too pejorative) seems better, but then they can't compete against more permissive licences, so they can't "reproduce" that well either ! This is a "tragedy of the commons" of sorts. If all open source projects could collaborate and choose a single license, what would it be ?
      - ilovetux 7y ago
        > If all open source projects could collaborate and choose a single license, what would it be ? I don't think this is possible really. Even the FSF who IMO are some of the most vocal supporters of user and developer empowerment created the LGPL to solve this very problem. Some of their software (like glibc) is licensed under the more permissive LGPL instead of the GPL to foster adoption[0]. An except from [0]: > This is why we used the Lesser GPL for the GNU C library. After all, there are plenty of other C libraries; using the GPL for ours would have driven proprietary software developers to use another—no problem for them, only for us. [0] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html
      - doesnt_know 7y ago
        > That's an interesting dilemma. It's not a dilemma at all for those that explicitly choose the GPL over MIT because they believe in Free Software (others might choose GPL for other reasons....). Being Free and having every user of the software retain their Freedom is the literal point of the GPL. Saying "hey, your software would be used by lots more people if we make a proprietary product out of it" is undermining the entire point of the Free Software movement.... So it's more ethical if 10 people use your software and they retain their Freedom, then it is for 10 million to use it bundled in a proprietary product.
  - inglor 7y ago
    As a maintainer of several OS projects with millions of monthly downloads I'm entirely fine with them using it for free. I get too much compensation and recognition for those projects as is anyway IMO and the swag is nice. There are plenty of ways to monetise MIT like consulting, career building, training and so on - at least for smaller scale but popular projects. Plus OP can now say that a big game studio used his project and it could be a great conference talk :]
    - chrisfosterelli 7y ago
      > I get too much compensation and recognition for those projects as is anyway I think this is the first time I've heard an OSS maintainer say that!
      - inglor 7y ago
        I think that the micro-celebritism is tiring and toxic for our industry, most of my open source stuff is stuff other people could write and I'm just glad I have the privilege to help. I'm literally writing this comment from an airport at a country I wanted to visit and was flown into because of open source I wrote (they paid for a vacation for a conference). I'm having a hard time complaining :] It's not like maintainer burnout isn't real and there aren't issues in open source but we also really need to fix the culture around it IMO.
  - joshuamorton 7y ago
    GPL likely wouldn't have had any effect here. Classic is offered over the web, so only the AGPL would be relevant (or well, I'm not actually sure how GPL applies to JS apps served over the web but run in browser), and anyway, it's not like MS is making money from Minecraft classic, for a lot of people they did get something out of it: a cool game.
    - bonzini 7y ago
      When JavaScript is served to a browser, it is distributed and thus anything that uses a GPLed JavaScript library must be GPL too.
      - cjbprime 7y ago
        I don't think any experts (including the FSF who wrote the license) believe this to be true. That's why the AGPL exists.
        mikeash 7y ago
        The AGPL exists to close a loophole for code running on the server. Code being served to the client obviously needs the permission of the code’s copyright holder. Otherwise, all those movie piracy streaming sites wouldn’t get constantly shut down.
        kragen 7y ago
        Chris, you know better than this nonsense. No experts know the answer, but the FSF strongly advocates the position that JS running on your computer is just like any other software running on your computer. The AGPL was written to require a server operator to free their patches to software running on their server, not in your browser. https://www.fsf.org/news/announcing-js-labels https://www.fsf.org/news/announcing-js-labels https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.en.html It isn't at all clear how courts will decide the case if such a case ever comes to trial.
    - alxmdev 7y ago
  - LyndsySimon 7y ago
    This sort of thing is the entire purpose of the MIT License, though. It’s like saying “Hey world, I made a thing. You’re free to use it for whatever you’d like if you’re interested”
    - Nullabillity 7y ago
      Which is why we need to stop promoting it as the default choice for everything.
      - stale2002 7y ago
        Why? I think it is great that the default option is "hey world! Do whatever you want with this!". Anything that promoted the free flow of information, technology, and innovation is a good thing IMO.
        Nullabillity 7y ago
        > Anything that promoted the free flow of information, technology, and innovation is a good thing IMO. Absolutely. And MIT fails spectacularly on that, since it doesn't consider the behaviour of downstream dependees.
  - phreeza 7y ago
    Had it been licenced gpl, Mojang would probably not have used it.
    - behringer 7y ago
      Then someone would have gotten paid to make it.
heliophobicdude 7y ago
fenomas used a MIT license so Microsoft doesn’t have to pay them, unless Microsoft feels charitable.
- ergothus 7y ago
  Sure. Doesn't change the _hope_. There are lots of good things in this world that happen for reasons other than legal requirements. And it doesn't have to be charity either - MS could recognize a good chance to spend an insignificant (to them) amount to get good PR in an open source community they've been trying to warm up to.
ArlenBales 7y ago
The best compensation they could do is reach out to Microsoft/Mojang for a job. Being the author of the game engine for a company's product is probably #1 in qualifications.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Unfortunately Minecraft Classic is just a recreation of the game from 10 years ago in the browser. I doubt it's going to get further development. That said the author of the engine has definitely achieved something here.

what an achievement, good job! I hope you'll get handsomely paid for it, cheers

malnourish 7y ago

Unless the parent were to be hired in some capacity, why would they be paid for it? The project has the MIT License.

behringer 7y ago
and now the reason for the GNU GPL license becomes apparent. If some unfathomably wealthy corporation founded by one of the richest person to have ever lived isn't going to pay you for your work, at least you can get something out of it by making them open source their work.
- steve_taylor 7y ago
  If this library was GPL licensed, Mojang/Microsft wouldn’t have bothered taking the time to even evaluate it.
  - nothrabannosir 7y ago
    How do you know? I always evaluate GPL code, keeping in mind I could try and offer the maintainer a fee for a private license. All code is implicitly dual licensed, for the right price. Only some of it explicitly so :)
    - kapep 7y ago
      It's only that simple if it's all written by the same person. A maintainer can't just re-license the whole project unless all other authors agree (or already agreed to that e.g. by accepting some contributor agreement). Or did you mean a price high enough to just ignore the existing license?
  - behringer 7y ago
    Then in that case a developer like the guy who made that library would have gotten paid!
  - ajnin 7y ago
    That's an interesting dilemma. If your goal is to get your source code to be used by lots of people, then it seems logical to use an as permisive license as possible to "compete" with other open source projects. But it might be short-sighted, because then if your code gets incorporated in proprietary projects it may become used a lot, but it won't propagate, it won't generate new projects that might get even more use. If on the other hand you want to get your source code into the hands of as many people as possible (that is not only users but empowered ones), that's different, and a licence like the GPL that is inherited (I don't like the term "viral" very much, it seems too pejorative) seems better, but then they can't compete against more permissive licences, so they can't "reproduce" that well either ! This is a "tragedy of the commons" of sorts. If all open source projects could collaborate and choose a single license, what would it be ?
    - ilovetux 7y ago
      > If all open source projects could collaborate and choose a single license, what would it be ? I don't think this is possible really. Even the FSF who IMO are some of the most vocal supporters of user and developer empowerment created the LGPL to solve this very problem. Some of their software (like glibc) is licensed under the more permissive LGPL instead of the GPL to foster adoption[0]. An except from [0]: > This is why we used the Lesser GPL for the GNU C library. After all, there are plenty of other C libraries; using the GPL for ours would have driven proprietary software developers to use another—no problem for them, only for us. [0] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html
    - doesnt_know 7y ago
      > That's an interesting dilemma. It's not a dilemma at all for those that explicitly choose the GPL over MIT because they believe in Free Software (others might choose GPL for other reasons....). Being Free and having every user of the software retain their Freedom is the literal point of the GPL. Saying "hey, your software would be used by lots more people if we make a proprietary product out of it" is undermining the entire point of the Free Software movement.... So it's more ethical if 10 people use your software and they retain their Freedom, then it is for 10 million to use it bundled in a proprietary product.
- inglor 7y ago
  As a maintainer of several OS projects with millions of monthly downloads I'm entirely fine with them using it for free. I get too much compensation and recognition for those projects as is anyway IMO and the swag is nice. There are plenty of ways to monetise MIT like consulting, career building, training and so on - at least for smaller scale but popular projects. Plus OP can now say that a big game studio used his project and it could be a great conference talk :]
  - chrisfosterelli 7y ago
    > I get too much compensation and recognition for those projects as is anyway I think this is the first time I've heard an OSS maintainer say that!
    - inglor 7y ago
      I think that the micro-celebritism is tiring and toxic for our industry, most of my open source stuff is stuff other people could write and I'm just glad I have the privilege to help. I'm literally writing this comment from an airport at a country I wanted to visit and was flown into because of open source I wrote (they paid for a vacation for a conference). I'm having a hard time complaining :] It's not like maintainer burnout isn't real and there aren't issues in open source but we also really need to fix the culture around it IMO.
- joshuamorton 7y ago
  GPL likely wouldn't have had any effect here. Classic is offered over the web, so only the AGPL would be relevant (or well, I'm not actually sure how GPL applies to JS apps served over the web but run in browser), and anyway, it's not like MS is making money from Minecraft classic, for a lot of people they did get something out of it: a cool game.
  - bonzini 7y ago
    When JavaScript is served to a browser, it is distributed and thus anything that uses a GPLed JavaScript library must be GPL too.
    - cjbprime 7y ago
      I don't think any experts (including the FSF who wrote the license) believe this to be true. That's why the AGPL exists.
      - mikeash 7y ago
        The AGPL exists to close a loophole for code running on the server. Code being served to the client obviously needs the permission of the code’s copyright holder. Otherwise, all those movie piracy streaming sites wouldn’t get constantly shut down.
      - kragen 7y ago
        Chris, you know better than this nonsense. No experts know the answer, but the FSF strongly advocates the position that JS running on your computer is just like any other software running on your computer. The AGPL was written to require a server operator to free their patches to software running on their server, not in your browser. https://www.fsf.org/news/announcing-js-labels https://www.fsf.org/news/announcing-js-labels https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.en.html It isn't at all clear how courts will decide the case if such a case ever comes to trial.
  - alxmdev 7y ago
- LyndsySimon 7y ago
  This sort of thing is the entire purpose of the MIT License, though. It’s like saying “Hey world, I made a thing. You’re free to use it for whatever you’d like if you’re interested”
  - Nullabillity 7y ago
    Which is why we need to stop promoting it as the default choice for everything.
    - stale2002 7y ago
      Why? I think it is great that the default option is "hey world! Do whatever you want with this!". Anything that promoted the free flow of information, technology, and innovation is a good thing IMO.
      - Nullabillity 7y ago
        > Anything that promoted the free flow of information, technology, and innovation is a good thing IMO. Absolutely. And MIT fails spectacularly on that, since it doesn't consider the behaviour of downstream dependees.
- phreeza 7y ago
  Had it been licenced gpl, Mojang would probably not have used it.
  - behringer 7y ago
    Then someone would have gotten paid to make it.

heliophobicdude 7y ago

fenomas used a MIT license so Microsoft doesn’t have to pay them, unless Microsoft feels charitable.

ergothus 7y ago
Sure. Doesn't change the _hope_. There are lots of good things in this world that happen for reasons other than legal requirements. And it doesn't have to be charity either - MS could recognize a good chance to spend an insignificant (to them) amount to get good PR in an open source community they've been trying to warm up to.

ArlenBales 7y ago

The best compensation they could do is reach out to Microsoft/Mojang for a job. Being the author of the game engine for a company's product is probably #1 in qualifications.

cameronbrown 7y ago
Unfortunately Minecraft Classic is just a recreation of the game from 10 years ago in the browser. I doubt it's going to get further development. That said the author of the engine has definitely achieved something here.