Hacker News Reader

Comment by ginko | Hacker News Reader

Quite cool, although the license is quite strict:

https://github.com/TerryCavanagh/VVVVVV/blob/master/LICENSE....

Not much more strict than CC-BY-NC, unless I’m missing something? The “you may not represent your fork as my product” is a good abuse prevention that I’m not sure the equivalent CC contains, good call including that.

“You may not alter or redistribute this software in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation.”

This kind of stuff is generally regarded as non-Open Source.

"Don't make VVVVV 2 with my code" seems to be what they're going for. I don't know if I agree with the sentiment, but it's nice to have this source available, so if this is the price we have to pay...

Why? The source is open to the public?

it's a "look but don't touch" situation. open-source means giving freedom to the users.

there's nothing wrong with source-available, but source-available and open-source are not equivalent.

The term “Open Source” has a precise definition, determined by the Open Source Initiative, who invented the term and started promoting it. Nobody used this term in software contexts before they did. They get to define it.

Not sure why this is downvoted. One of the criteria when the term "open source" was decided on by the people who went to form the OSI was that it must not have (much) documented earlier use in order to become eligible for trademark protection.

It was always meant to be a trademark, even if they ended up losing that particular battle. It was deemed to descriptive and generic to be trademarkable, IIRC. The OSI published their criteria anyway, enforced it as much as they could, and really publicized the term over the years. Of course they get to define it.

The source is being shown to the public.

It's not open for them to use.

To argue otherwise is to confuse a window with a door.

The analogy doesn’t really hold. Is a bathroom door at a grocery store called a “window” rather than a “door” if they prohibit you from bringing unpaid groceries through it?

I have no idea what you're going for here. I feel like Programmer Analogies always rely on the reader agreeing with the author... :|

Not all windows are doors. Don’t worry about it, I’m terrible at analogies that make sense to anyone (including programmers, sadly). And if I clarified I’d just be attacked further for not endorsing the OSI party line when it comes to these things. It’s not you, it’s me, etc.

Terry is no longer calling this open source after someone pointed this out. The title of the original article now reads "VVVVVV’s Source Code Is Now Public".

Terry is open to propositions https://twitter.com/terrycavanagh/status/1215679119666688001

No kidding. I sincerely doubt this actually qualifies as Open Source. It certainly can’t be distributed by, e.g., Debian.

This probably could go in the Debian nonfree repo

…which is defined as being not distributed by Debian; it is, IIRC, the reason it exists.

It looks similar to e.g. Quake 3's license, source is open but assets aren't.

Not at all, Quake 3's source code is GPL[1]. You can totally sell a game made with Quake 3's source, you just have to redistribute the source as mandated by the GPL. v{6}'s license is more restrictive.

The assets are a different problem. You can use the code without the assets and vice-versa.

[1] https://github.com/id-Software/Quake-III-Arena/blob/master/C...

Oops, I missed that extra clause, thanks.

Prohibiting commercial use would make it non-open. But it's not that surprising given that VVVVVV is still sold today. I'd rather have the source with limits over not having the source at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com