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Comment by TMM2K | Hacker News Reader

Open source is that protection. There's no way for an open source project to change their terms that drastically. The whole hasicorp disaster is a prime example of that. Terraform is forked and continues on like normal, users are not impacted.

For programming platforms (like game engines) this is even MORE of an advantage, as with something like terraform you could conceivably rewrite your stuff in a matter of weeks if you have reasonable testing. For a game that is not possible.

Nobody can take away your rights under the MIT license, there's no legal mechanism to do that. You are protected, fully, from shit like this.

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> Terraform is forked and continues on like normal, users are not impacted.

That's a massive overstatement of the current state of OpenTF right now. Plus they're still dependent on Hashicorp's hosting which also changed their license terms in response to the project.

You're right that because it's OSS you can do this kind of thing where it wouldn't be possible at all in a proprietary system but "just fork" requires a community to organize around it. Without a bunch of backing orgs this wouldn't have happened.

Nobody can take away your rights if the contract you sign with the engine developer doesn't allow it, as people have been pointing out is the case for other engines. IIRC Unreal's contract gives you access to a particular version of the engine in perpetuity, with source and the permission to make your own additions/changes to that source. It doesn't guarantee updates, but neither does the MIT license.

Apparently this is exactly what is happening with Unity[1], where the TOS previously said that you can continue using an old version, but now they are walking this back and trying to apply fees retroactively. Whether this is legal or not might be debatable, but unless users mount a legal challenge they are probably stuck paying or finding another engine.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37499731

Honestly, the first thing I thought when I heard the story was “sounds like a lawsuit.”

“There's no way for an open source project to change their terms that drastically.”

Like going from GPLv2 to GPLv3 or straight to AGPL, so now you are stuck with an old version forever? Yeah, that would never happen!

You're not stuck with an old version forever, that's very hyperbolic and you purposefully ignored OP's example of Hashicorp and Terraform and instead responded with sarcasm.

That's only a problem for you if you yourself have a business model that depends on curtailing the freedom of your users. Playing the victim when a license prevents you from victimizing your own customers and users in the way that has happened in this incident is pretty rich.

Contrast "you are stuck with an old version forever" with "you can't use the program at all anymore, not even old versions of it".

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