Valve: Steam’d Penguins [LWN.net]

Valve: Steam’d Penguins

Posted Jul 19, 2012 10:35 UTC (Thu) by njwhite (subscriber, #51848)
In reply to: Valve: Steam’d Penguins by iabervon
Parent article: Valve: Steam’d Penguins

> I wouldn't be surprised if, in the future, we had top-quality open-source
> game engines, as well as vast libraries of art assets that may be freely
> used and tweaked in various ways, but games were generally not open
> source.

I actually wouldn't mind this as an outcome, really. For example ScummVM and the various interactive fiction interpreters all treat the games this way, and the end result is pretty great. Good quality games, no worries about lack of source for what's executing on the PC (and great quality code,) and the actual 'game' itself *can* be hacked around if your care enough (though redistribution may be an issue, but generally I think I'm OK with the original author having some control over this.)

I've never been too sure about RMS' view of different classes of works being treated differently by the copyright system, but perhaps this is an example of where it makes some sense. But yes, I remain unsure, and am certainly sway-able.

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Valve: Steam’d Penguins

Posted Jul 19, 2012 20:46 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

It seems to me like RMS's feelings are described in the Free Software Definition, where he lays out what the freedoms are for. It seems critical to me that the purpose of software is functionality, rather than artistic merit (or entertainment). As you move away from functional works towards works for art's sake, the freedoms make less sense, although there is middle ground like art assets, whose purpose may be "to give the appearance of wood" (i.e., a functional aspect of the effect of the work they are in) or may be artistic on their own. But, for most of the reasons that RMS has talked about for GPL-style licensing, the goals don't make sense when you're talking about Zork or Monkey Island and you've separately taken care of the "I can't play it on a modern computer" issues.