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To give a concrete counterexample: one of my favorite video games, Descent, has been open source for about 15 years. I have four different source ports on my

To give a concrete counterexample: one of my favorite video games, Descent, has been open source for about 15 years. I have four different source ports on my system right now (d1x, rebirth, retro, and d2x-xl) each of which is free to download, install, run, and even modify. But some of the game assets (textures, ship polymodels) are not free; you must buy a copy of the game [0] to acquire a license to those asset files, or play using only the shareware assets [1]. [0] http://www.gog.com/game/descent_1_descent_2 http://www.gog.com/game/descent_1_descent_2 or http://steamcommunity.com/app/273570 http://steamcommunity.com/app/273570 [1] prepackaged with the rebirth/retro ports at http://descendentstudios.com/community/topic/1167-descent-shareware-unzip-and-play-works-on-windows-7-and-8/ http://descendentstudios.com/community/topic/1167-descent-sh... , where they're being used as a marketing tool for the currently-being-kickstarted Descent:Underground game at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/descendentstudios/descent-underground https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/descendentstudios/desce...

jordigh 12y ago
That's not a counterexample. The engine is free software and open source. There just isn't any free and open source material to run it on. The same situation happens with Doom and Freedoom, but the existence or not of Freedoom doesn't change whether the Doom engine itself is open source or free. After all, people are free to run the Doom engine on Freedoom. People are also free to do the same for Descent, I assume. If the Descent license were to forbid running Descent on your own custom-made game assets, then it would not be open source nor free software.
- jordigh 12y ago
  So I went to see what the license is. It says, "You are allowed to use this code only for non-commercial, non-revenue generating purposes only." Forbidding commercial use invalidates the Descent engine as being open source. The Doom engine does not have this restriction.
  - lotharbot 12y ago
    Interesting. I had no idea "open source" meant so much more than "here's the source code and it's OK to modify it". http://opensource.org/osd http://opensource.org/osd
    - jordigh 12y ago
      It's supposed to: http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/5-things-we-have-forgotten-about-open-source/ http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/5-things-we-have-forgot...

jordigh 12y ago

That's not a counterexample. The engine is free software and open source. There just isn't any free and open source material to run it on. The same situation happens with Doom and Freedoom, but the existence or not of Freedoom doesn't change whether the Doom engine itself is open source or free. After all, people are free to run the Doom engine on Freedoom. People are also free to do the same for Descent, I assume. If the Descent license were to forbid running Descent on your own custom-made game assets, then it would not be open source nor free software.

jordigh 12y ago
So I went to see what the license is. It says, "You are allowed to use this code only for non-commercial, non-revenue generating purposes only." Forbidding commercial use invalidates the Descent engine as being open source. The Doom engine does not have this restriction.
- lotharbot 12y ago
  Interesting. I had no idea "open source" meant so much more than "here's the source code and it's OK to modify it". http://opensource.org/osd http://opensource.org/osd
  - jordigh 12y ago
    It's supposed to: http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/5-things-we-have-forgotten-about-open-source/ http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/5-things-we-have-forgot...