6 ms·

I am really impressed that EA went with the GPL v3 license. I would have expected them to use the MIT license.

by uncheckederror 6y ago

gentleman11 6y ago
They probably want it to remain free, and not get bundled into commercial projects. Great for end users though
- Jyaif 6y ago
  If destroy any possible commercial projects, it's not necessarily good for end users.
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
It's not surprising: The GPL mostly torpedoes commercial uses, and EA does not want to give their competitors code they can use in their own proprietary games.
- sedachv 6y ago
  There is nothing in the GPL that prohibits you from selling games: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMon...
  - learc83 6y ago
    Yeah but if I use this GPL licensed code as the basis of a new game, I have to release the source code for my new game as well. The vast majority of game studios aren't willing to do this, so effectively releasing it under the GPL means that it's much less likely that a competitor uses the code. Asset flips from other countries with more permissive (or just hard to access for foreigners) legal systems are already a problem for game developers--releasing the source code for your game would ensure that you'd be inundated with assets flips almost immediately if your game is any good.
  - johncolanduoni 6y ago
    It does effectively prohibit you from competing with someone else who compiles there code and puts up a download link for free. The “but you can still charge money for it” aspect has always fallen flat, especially since most people won’t pay for disks containing something they could download online these days.
    - iso-8859-1 6y ago
      But some will: http://wiki.flightgear.org/FlightProSim http://wiki.flightgear.org/FlightProSim
    - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
      You could presumably make a derivative game using the engine, and sell the game's assets, while complying with the licensing terms on the engine code. I don't know any examples of this happening, but we've seen the engine/assets distinction before when DOOM and Quake were opened. Their source code was released as Free and Open Source software, but the game assets remain payware to this day.
  - HorkHunter 6y ago
    Oh god you're going to get bombarded by the "I want to use free software and lock my product" people
FartyMcFarter 6y ago
What is impressive about it? The MIT license is more permissive, so using that would accomplish everything GPL does and more, no? I'm not a lawyer.
- sandov 6y ago
  Technically yes, but it's understandabe that they don't want someone else to take the code, add functionality and make it closed source.
- bloodorange 6y ago
  Well, the MIT license fails to make people release their changes if they release some work based on it.
secondwtq 6y ago
Gamedev is really a special case (if we consider Web Development to be the "common case"). The fact is, when a company open sources one of it's projects, it expects to "benefit" from open source, i.e. taking community contributions, and make these contributions into its other closed-source products to generate profits. GPL forbids this, and naturally most companies open sources with MIT/BSD. And follows a repository on GitHub, many issues and PRs, CI, periodic releases (feel free to replace "GitHub" with "GitLab" or some server on some university, replace issues with mailing lists etc.) - that's what we typically expect from an "open source project" backed by other companies, in some other industries (most notably web development). It doesn't work this way in games (at least for now), EA is only releasing part of the code for modding purpose, EA doesn't expect an "open source community" established on this codebase, and I also don't think EA has the intention to take contributions directly from community (by "directly" I mean, in code). If you have something you don't like about the game, post a comment in Steam and if you are lucky the devs are going to fix it themselves. It has always been working in this way in games, and it's not changing despite the "open source" action. So in this case, GPL is actually more helpful for EA, as illustrated by other replies. But what I really want to say is, being a C&C modder myself (I've been modding RA2/YR from 2009 and also briefly worked on C&C3 later), I wholeheartedly support EA's decision to use GPL. Not because it's good for EA, not because I'm also a fan of RMS, it's because of the specific situation of the modding community. If we take a simplistic view of a mod, it's roughly composed of "assets" and "code" (the same could be said for full games but it'll be more complicated). For assets, there are awesome free content creation software such as Blender and Krita, and tons of learning resources on the Internet. One can easily become a quasi-professional artist given enough exercise (I, personally, have undergone such a process). Well there is also things like music, but they all work the same way in which you "just create something in some external application (which is usually very powerful and extendable) and throw it in the game". You are not really limited in terms of asset. The real problem is in "code" - modders are ultimately constrained by a proprietary engine, which heavily limits the possibility of mods. Just think about it: when you're making a real game, you can think about "What is the most interesting stuff I can come up with?" and then implemented it in the game engine. But when making a mod, whenever a fancy idea pops up, you're obligated to consider "Can it be implemented in the engine?". Unfortunately, most of the time, the answer is no. And this goes on and on, till a point where your imagination is imprisoned by the capability of the engine, that you lost the inspiration to design anything novel. Why the engine is so limited? I think we can just imagine the scenario: in the crunch of getting the game finished, the devs don't really care about moddability, they just want to get it working ASAP, then they do all kinds of hack all the way along. In the end the game works, but modding it sucks. They hardcoded many stuff directly into the game engine binary, which is perfectly reflected by this set of search result: https://www.google.com/search?q=hardcode+site%3Amodenc.renegadeprojects.com https://www.google.com/search?q=hardcode+site%3Amodenc.reneg... ... Oh and this is only about modifying existing stuff, we haven't started talking about adding a completely new system yet ... To overcome these limitations, modders did a tremendous amount of efforts over the years: There are attempts to reverse engineer the binary and patch it for workarounds: https://modenc.renegadeprojects.com/RockPatch https://modenc.renegadeprojects.com/RockPatch Then this approach evolved, they analyzed the binary to get the class hierarchy of the game, then use C++ to write new logic, inject the compiled routines into the binary: https://ares.strategy-x.com https://ares.strategy-x.com There are attempts to rebuild the complete source code of the engine by incremental reverse-engineering: https://github.com/TheAssemblyArmada/Thyme https://github.com/TheAssemblyArmada/Thyme There are attempts to rewrite the whole game: https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA https://github.com/OpenSAGE/OpenSAGE https://github.com/OpenSAGE/OpenSAGE

I am really impressed that EA went with the GPL v3 license. I would have expected them to use the MIT license.

gentleman11 6y ago

They probably want it to remain free, and not get bundled into commercial projects. Great for end users though

Jyaif 6y ago
If destroy any possible commercial projects, it's not necessarily good for end users.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

It's not surprising: The GPL mostly torpedoes commercial uses, and EA does not want to give their competitors code they can use in their own proprietary games.

sedachv 6y ago
There is nothing in the GPL that prohibits you from selling games: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMon...
- learc83 6y ago
  Yeah but if I use this GPL licensed code as the basis of a new game, I have to release the source code for my new game as well. The vast majority of game studios aren't willing to do this, so effectively releasing it under the GPL means that it's much less likely that a competitor uses the code. Asset flips from other countries with more permissive (or just hard to access for foreigners) legal systems are already a problem for game developers--releasing the source code for your game would ensure that you'd be inundated with assets flips almost immediately if your game is any good.
- johncolanduoni 6y ago
  It does effectively prohibit you from competing with someone else who compiles there code and puts up a download link for free. The “but you can still charge money for it” aspect has always fallen flat, especially since most people won’t pay for disks containing something they could download online these days.
  - iso-8859-1 6y ago
    But some will: http://wiki.flightgear.org/FlightProSim http://wiki.flightgear.org/FlightProSim
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    You could presumably make a derivative game using the engine, and sell the game's assets, while complying with the licensing terms on the engine code. I don't know any examples of this happening, but we've seen the engine/assets distinction before when DOOM and Quake were opened. Their source code was released as Free and Open Source software, but the game assets remain payware to this day.
- HorkHunter 6y ago
  Oh god you're going to get bombarded by the "I want to use free software and lock my product" people

FartyMcFarter 6y ago

What is impressive about it? The MIT license is more permissive, so using that would accomplish everything GPL does and more, no? I'm not a lawyer.

sandov 6y ago
Technically yes, but it's understandabe that they don't want someone else to take the code, add functionality and make it closed source.
bloodorange 6y ago
Well, the MIT license fails to make people release their changes if they release some work based on it.

secondwtq 6y ago

Gamedev is really a special case (if we consider Web Development to be the "common case"). The fact is, when a company open sources one of it's projects, it expects to "benefit" from open source, i.e. taking community contributions, and make these contributions into its other closed-source products to generate profits. GPL forbids this, and naturally most companies open sources with MIT/BSD. And follows a repository on GitHub, many issues and PRs, CI, periodic releases (feel free to replace "GitHub" with "GitLab" or some server on some university, replace issues with mailing lists etc.) - that's what we typically expect from an "open source project" backed by other companies, in some other industries (most notably web development). It doesn't work this way in games (at least for now), EA is only releasing part of the code for modding purpose, EA doesn't expect an "open source community" established on this codebase, and I also don't think EA has the intention to take contributions directly from community (by "directly" I mean, in code). If you have something you don't like about the game, post a comment in Steam and if you are lucky the devs are going to fix it themselves. It has always been working in this way in games, and it's not changing despite the "open source" action. So in this case, GPL is actually more helpful for EA, as illustrated by other replies. But what I really want to say is, being a C&C modder myself (I've been modding RA2/YR from 2009 and also briefly worked on C&C3 later), I wholeheartedly support EA's decision to use GPL. Not because it's good for EA, not because I'm also a fan of RMS, it's because of the specific situation of the modding community. If we take a simplistic view of a mod, it's roughly composed of "assets" and "code" (the same could be said for full games but it'll be more complicated). For assets, there are awesome free content creation software such as Blender and Krita, and tons of learning resources on the Internet. One can easily become a quasi-professional artist given enough exercise (I, personally, have undergone such a process). Well there is also things like music, but they all work the same way in which you "just create something in some external application (which is usually very powerful and extendable) and throw it in the game". You are not really limited in terms of asset. The real problem is in "code" - modders are ultimately constrained by a proprietary engine, which heavily limits the possibility of mods. Just think about it: when you're making a real game, you can think about "What is the most interesting stuff I can come up with?" and then implemented it in the game engine. But when making a mod, whenever a fancy idea pops up, you're obligated to consider "Can it be implemented in the engine?". Unfortunately, most of the time, the answer is no. And this goes on and on, till a point where your imagination is imprisoned by the capability of the engine, that you lost the inspiration to design anything novel. Why the engine is so limited? I think we can just imagine the scenario: in the crunch of getting the game finished, the devs don't really care about moddability, they just want to get it working ASAP, then they do all kinds of hack all the way along. In the end the game works, but modding it sucks. They hardcoded many stuff directly into the game engine binary, which is perfectly reflected by this set of search result: https://www.google.com/search?q=hardcode+site%3Amodenc.renegadeprojects.com https://www.google.com/search?q=hardcode+site%3Amodenc.reneg... ... Oh and this is only about modifying existing stuff, we haven't started talking about adding a completely new system yet ... To overcome these limitations, modders did a tremendous amount of efforts over the years: There are attempts to reverse engineer the binary and patch it for workarounds: https://modenc.renegadeprojects.com/RockPatch https://modenc.renegadeprojects.com/RockPatch Then this approach evolved, they analyzed the binary to get the class hierarchy of the game, then use C++ to write new logic, inject the compiled routines into the binary: https://ares.strategy-x.com https://ares.strategy-x.com There are attempts to rebuild the complete source code of the engine by incremental reverse-engineering: https://github.com/TheAssemblyArmada/Thyme https://github.com/TheAssemblyArmada/Thyme There are attempts to rewrite the whole game: https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA https://github.com/OpenSAGE/OpenSAGE https://github.com/OpenSAGE/OpenSAGE