The value of a commercial chess game lies in the graphics and the “packaging”, the creation of exercises, progression, possibly story mode, and the compilation (maybe even buying) of past chess games played by top chess players. You could easily open the chess engine (or, better, use an open source one from the start instead of reinventing the wheel) without removing any value to your product. You might even open source the interface as well, including one set of graphics and a few recorded games as a kind of “demo”.

From 3D avatars, to bitmaps, skins, textures, music, sound effects, and all sorts of other graphics/audio that’s involved. Open-source software is built on code-distribution, i.e. mailing lists, irc, git, bazaar, cvs, etc. There are just no equivalents nor any community to allow media types collaborate in this way.

The infrastructure that allows collaboration is inherently technical, and therefore will be used to develop inherently technical software.

Dont get me wrong, Im playing a bit of devils advocate here, because on the whole I agree it would be great, but, some games wouldnt fit the model.

But what i really think is more important than to be open is to be cross-platform , so anyone can get the chance to play it. For that we need to have some basic standards and multi-platform engines.

Also i think that a open source game don’t need the art of the game be open also… Just the code for security and debugging.

Games are Art more than Knowledge ( ok the art is a very important knowledge , but not critical to develop yourselves in this world , you could share the tricks and the tools you use it to make that piece of art , but not the core of the art it selves.)

I think the most important value of the open source is that everyone have the oportunities to learn and make it’s way…

I’m immensely grateful for free software, and I will continue to use it “for better or for worse”. That said, games is one of the things I’m perfectly happy to pay for, because they’re just entertainment; they’re in no way necessary to make my computer run. So I’m grateful for LGP too.

Actually RMS did “manage” to answer to my first proposal :

” 1. The game client and server will be FREE (GPLed) but the artwork of the
game (graphics and sounds) will be proprietary.

I can partly agree with that model. I don’t believe that all art works
must be free. But I do think that people must have the (more limited) freedom
to noncommercially share exact copies of all published works including art.”

So basically he “agrees” to CC-BY-NC-SA license (Creative Commons, BY, Non-Commercial-Share Alike). ;)
I actually already released many of my poetry works under this exact license.

One of the games I’ve mentioned in this blog “PlaneShift” also uses somewhat similar license, the source code is FREE under the GPL BUT the “art” part cannot be used in ANY other project then Planeshift : http://www.planeshift.it/license.html

Unfortunately some people don’t appear to be able get their heads around such situations. To them, something is either F/free or it isn’t. Different parts under different licenses just confuse them.
But then some people have problems comprehending doorknobs.

First let me replay to some of your topics in your post before I go to the major issue…

You wrote : “you can only become a dominant product by being best”
I strongly disagree, and I believe you will too after reading this…

“Best software” has little to do with “dominant” software, marketing and pricing is.
UNIX was much better then MS-DOS, but MS-DOS had a much better price tag and good marketing.
Microsoft became dominant not by making superior products but by superior marketing and vendor lock in, it’s only recently in most countries you can buy laptops without Windows.

Next issue is the money making on software other then games…
In our company we use MyEclipse which is NOT free, which Eclipse is free.
MyEclipse has lot’s of “closed” add-ons that make buying worth it while the product itself is free source in form of Eclipse.
There are games that offer the source code for free while the Windows .exe is closed and guess what ? it’s selling.
A good example for this is Astromenace : http://www.viewizard.com/astromenace/index_linux.php , they are working on part-2 btw.
They also offer the Linux version for free, and it’s a great game.

You wrote : “I doubt that a single modern computer in the world has a completely open specification with no hidden bits.”
I’m not sure about OLPC but you should look at OpenMoko : http://www.openmoko.com , while it’s not a PC but it’s open hardware mobile phone.

While we don’t have a lot we DO have some high quality free software games like Nexuiz, AstroMenace , PlaneShift , Second Life , Tremulous , TA Spring , Wesnoth, Warzone 2100 and many more…
It’s true that some of those games where developed by a professional game developing companies but none the less they are still FREE.
On the community aspect I agree that free software in general and games specifically takes “ages to develop” but that’s the thing with open/free source – while the source is free the product is NEVER finished, you can always add more things, expend the game and improve it.
Many of you will probably agree that Nexuiz looks like a finished product but they still release new and improved versions every few months.

Now to the main deal … how to develop an open/free GAMES and still make money out of it.
A few weeks ago I send rms an email about this very issue giving his suggestions on how to make a living out of free games and asking for his commentary on the issue, while he commented only on one of my proposals dismissing all others because I wrote “open” and not “free” while it still suited the issue, here is the email :

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Hello Richard !

My name is Maxim and I live in Israel, we have “spoken” before via email.

I am a GNU/Linux user and also a gamer.
It our GNU/Linux community we don’t have much QUALITY FREE games, we got a few but not nearly as many as on other platforms.
My cease here is that while a developer can make a good living out of free programs (like Kernel developers who get payed for their work and many other developers of red hat, oracle, sun and other companies who get their living and the source is still released as free), in the gaming universe things are very different.

For quite some time I was thinking about a good economical model for making FREE (as in freedom) games and still manage to sell them.
In MMORPG games such as “Second Life” that’s not such a big problem as people are still using the official servers and pay for virtual property, thus the developing company (Linden Labs) still makes money despite the fact that the client it free and there is no monthly charge.
Such model is not valid however for single player games.

I was thinking about 2 economical models for single player games that hopefully will also comply to GPLv3, I want to hear your input on this..

1. The game client and server will be FREE (GPLed) but the artwork of the game (graphics and sounds) will be proprietary.
This model is similar to what Id Software does with their older engines, the engine is GPLed but all the other parts of the game stays closed, “my” proposal above is more open as I propose to open all the game source code and close only the “art” .

2. Other model that proved itself once with Blender but failed on others is to develop a good closed source game and then “collect” money for GPLing the game, thus paying for my developing time, if you are familier with Blender history the company (Not a Number) got bankrupt and one of the developers (Ton) founded the Blender foundation to buy the source code for blender, he gathered the $100,670 in just a few months and the program was released under the GPLv2.

The second model is very riscky as the developer must create a very good program that people will actually want to gather the large sum of money to “release” it under the GPL.

What do you think about those 2 models ?

Thanks ahead
Maxim.

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Your comments will be more then welcomed !