One of the big winners of the Unity debacle is the free and open source Godot Engine, which has seen its funding soar to a much more impressive level as Unity basically gave them free advertising.

One of the big winners of the Unity debacle is the free and open source Godot Engine, which has seen its funding soar to a much more impressive level as Unity basically gave them free advertising.

  • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.worldEnglish
    835·
    1 year ago

    Yeah, now I’m concerned this might happen with Unreal Engine, even though they’ve given no indication that it will. Once Godot works out the kinks with level and texture streaming, and has a landscape editor I will be going back to Godot.

          • jimbo@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1615·
            1 year ago

            When did the term “open source” start including specifics about licensing terms? My understanding from the past few decades was that “open source” meant the source was available for people to look at and compile.

            • WaterSword@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
              205·
              1 year ago

              Open source has always meant under a free license. Being able to fork and publish your own versions is integral to the open source philosophy.

              • abbotsbury@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1115·
                1 year ago

                Being able to fork and publish your own versions is integral to the open source philosophy

                No, that is an enumerated freedom of the free software movement, not open source

                • WaterSword@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
                  20·
                  1 year ago

                  Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. from Wikipedia

                  The same article also talks about the difference between open source and source available:

                  Although the OSI definition of “open-source software” is widely accepted, a small number of people and organizations use the term to refer to software where the source is available for viewing, but which may not legally be modified or redistributed. Such software is more often referred to as source-available, or as shared source, a term coined by Microsoft in 2001

                  • abbotsbury@lemmy.worldEnglish
                    113·
                    1 year ago

                    Under that strict definition, software under the GNU GPL would not be “open source” because the license stays with the code, and is not truly “for any purpose,” which is the same deal with the Epic license: you may use, study, change, and distribute the Unreal source code, but it stays under Epic’s license.

                    If you are talking about the FREEDOM to fork and publish and share and whatever, then you mean Free software.

            • AProfessional@lemmy.worldEnglish
              6·
              1 year ago

              Ideas started in the 70s, Free Software Movement happened in the 80s, the term Open Source from the 90s as an alternative to “free” to be more clear.

              It always meant this.

          • abbotsbury@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1314·
            1 year ago

            It is source available

            Yes, open source.

            Not Open Source

            You mean free/libre? Open source literally just means you can see the source.

            • AProfessional@lemmy.worldEnglish
              132·
              1 year ago

              Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code,[1] design documents,[2] or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration.

              https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source

              • AstridWipenaugh@lemmy.worldEnglish
                12·
                1 year ago

                And then later on…

                Generally, open source refers to a computer program in which the source code is available to the general public for use or modification from its original design.

                Unreal Engine is technically open source, because it’s source code is made available to the general public. But it is licensed under a restrictive EULA instead of any of the normal licenses you’d expect for an open source project (MIT, Apache, GPL3, etc).

                This is definitely pedantic, but “open source” is a colloquial term, not a technical one. Most people mean FOSS when they say open source, but the terms aren’t exactly equivalent. The license that governs the code is really the only part that actually matters.

    • Epicurus0319@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      26·
      1 year ago

      Long-term I think corporate tech as we know it is screwed. Their explosive growth from the pandemic making everyone terminally online is drying up as more and more people go back to touching grass, so now the bill’s coming due and it’s only a matter of time now before Unreal also does something stupid we can’t even imagine for a quick buck

      • elscallr@lemmy.worldEnglish
        14·
        1 year ago

        People were terminally online well before 2019. It exacerbated the problem but we’re not going back. I don’t really think that’s a problem, technologically it pushed us further ahead which is always a good thing.

        You’re right in that we are starting to rediscover what it means to be physically social again. I think that’s a good thing, too. People that got away with shit before aren’t getting away with it any more.

      • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.worldEnglish
        12·
        1 year ago

        The problem is that interest rates have gone up after being extremely low ever since the 2008 crash, so investors lost their endless supply of debt-fuelled free money. They can’t pump money into companies operating at a loss anymore, so suddenly those companies have to find a way to turn a profit.

        • Captain AggravatedEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          And some of them realistically can’t. Every other commercial game engine is developed for the studio first; Cry, Source, Unreal etc. These engines were made for, well, Far Cry, Half-Life 2, Unreal Tournament. The studio saw returns for engine development in the sales of games, then they said “We could probably further monetize the work we’ve already done if we license the engine and SDK out to third parties.”

          Unity on the other hand is trying to have the Autodesk/Adobe business model of “We have a free student or hobbyist tier, and then a commercial license that’s $100,000 per minute per seat.” The thing is, Autodesk and Adobe really don’t have realistic competitors in their market sectors. Unity very much does. Unity competes directly with GameMaker Studio, Godot, Unreal, Source 2 among others, the development of which are either directly supported by the sales of first party titles (or are outright FOSS projects in the case of Godot). So Unity has to set their prices to compete in that market, without the support of first party game sales.

          You can see how that’s working out for them.

    • RockHornet@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      The biggest thing about Epic is that it is NOT a publicly traded company.

      It doesn’t mean that it’s not subject to the “Infinite Growth Disease” but look at their biggest investor: Sony and Tencent.

      Both Game companies that SHOULD be more interested in having access to a good game engine than to make every dollar’s possible.