User:ScotXW/Free and open-source software

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I started to rewrite the entire free and open-source software article (see a version here). Obviously the two separate articles free software and open-source software are full with garbage, so people thought it ok to dump the biggest garbage into this article. However, a real-world example I stumbled across for my "game theory"-section would be this:


from Special:Permalink/579755480


Free and open-source game engines with free content[edit]

A little fun versus much fun[edit]

I have played neither, but I understand a game consists of game engine and game content. A lot of man-hours are needed to create all that content. Besides dedication, talent, tools, it simply takes a whole load of time.

For some reasons programmers seem to be more willing to publish their work under some free license, than artists, that create 3D-models, or graphics or sound. As a result, there are not that many free and open-source and free content video games overall, and only a very few impressive looking and impressive sounding ones. For example:

  • Doom 3 was impressive looking at the time it hit the markets. Later id Tech 4, its game engine, was GPLed, but not any of the data (3D-models, textures, sounds). There are not many projects, if any at all, that took the GPLed id Tech 4 to develop an open-source and free content game.

So the creation of 3D-models, textures and sounds seems require **a lot of man-hours**. Releasing this work under, e.g. one of the Creative Commons licenses, makes it "free content", with various degrees of freedom. "BY-NC-ND" basically is the equivalent of freeware, since people can re-distribute the work, but are neither allowed to create derivative works, nor to make money with it.

  • 0 A.D. is a well-known examples of a free and open-source engine and free content video game.
  • Most (not all) run natively on Linux and some are that cutting edge, that they show the end-user what is possible.
  • There is knowledge and experience about developing games on Linux for Linux.

For a couple of video games, that are based on some free and open-source game engine coupled with either free or less free or even proprietary content, i.e. geometry data for game levels, objects, textures, sound, user interface, etc, there are no Wikipedia articles yet. Not even are there screenshots, even though such would not have to be low-quality fair-use stuff! That is sad...

  1. ^ . 2014-02-23 title=The importance of a community-focused mindset http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/2014/02/23/ title=The importance of a community-focused mindset. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help); Missing or empty |title= (help); Missing pipe in: |url= (help)
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