I open-sourced Even the Ocean | Hacker News Reader

I open-sourced Even the Ocean

melodicambient.substack.com

92 pointsgenerichuman41 comments

Thanks for sharing this! This is the programmer/co-developer Melos (posting from my ancient college-era HN account...)

As other comments point out, yeah this is technically NOT Open Source, but other terms don't communicate the intent as quickly at a glance (I would argue the general understanding of the term would include Even the Ocean/Anodyne's repositories)... and as someone mentions, it's basically a "come on, we're two people, don't screw us" License that's otherwise pretty generous, and the license does distinguish the repos from Open Source (tm).

Seeing as the license is derived from VVVVV's I was interested in comparing comments so far to a similar one there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22011655

I very much enjoy Melos and Marina's games. "Anodyne 2" is a must play to anyone who loved the Zelda series as it's a mishmash of 3D N64 gameplay with over the head 2D dungeoning. It has such uniqueness and strangeness that I still remember it years later.

"Even the Ocean" was also memorable to me. It is not the masterpiece A2 was IMO but the issues held weight. And having an unconventional protagonist in terms of body type, ethnicity, and sexual orientation was so novel at the time to me.

Thanks for opening the source code! I know HN members will be super critical as to "Oh this isn't Open Source" but you have the licenses available for review and that's where it really matters. The fact that the code is out there for review is a huge step and I hope more devs do it as it's a form of historical preservation in my eyes.

>"I know HN members will be super critical as to "Oh this isn't Open Source" but you have the licenses available for review and that's where it really matters. The fact that the code is out there for review is a huge step and I hope more devs do it as it's a form of historical preservation in my eyes."

Exactly, and every time something like this happens, the inevitable "this is not really open" comes up, often in a quite hostile way. That's an absolutely destructive approach (because if it was fully open source, and some large studio just stole the game and re-released it, the same crowd would say they knew the consequences of open sourcing)

The "open code but not under an OSI licence" approach is I think the most beneficial for everyone (if we are talking about commercial software): users can inspect their copies, developers can learn from it and modify it, and the developers can live safely knowing that no one will steal their work or threaten to fork it.

Nobody is demanding that you should open source it. Just don't call it open source if you are not going to make it open source.

Well the source is open for everyone to see..... it's just not capital Open Source as defined by the OSI. My personal opinion is that OSI shouldn't have a faux-trademark over that word, and people should be able to use that expression freely even if it doesn't conform to that definition, if the code is available.

That will lead to even more confusion in the minds of the hundreds of policy makers and courts worldwide, who already have plenty of opportunities to be confused. More: https://blog.opensource.org/court-affirms-its-false-advertis... Use other terms, there are plenty of other options

I agree with what you say, but the blog post you linked is hugely misleading. (remember, it's the OSI blog, of course they are going to twist it for their goals) The court did not affirm that "calling your non-OSI-approved licence open source is false advertising".

As in the judgement: "It is undisputed that Defendants made the statements at issue to convince customers to adopt ONgDB over Neo4j EE. Because Defendants misrepresented ONgDB as a free version of Neo4j EE licensed under the APGL, there is no doubt that this price differential (free versus paid) was likely to influence customers purchasing decisions. See Hinojos v. Kohl’s Corp., 718 F.3d 1098, 1106–1107 (9th Cir. 2013), as amended on denial of reh’g and reh’g en banc (July 8, 2013) (recognizing under the UCL that price is material to purchasing decisions). Thus, the Court finds that Defendants’ statements suggesting that customers could obtain a “free and open source drop in replacement” for Neo4j EE were material."

What the court did affirm is that the upstream licence was a modified AGPL with additional restrictions. The defendant has stripped those restrictions (claiming the AGPL "you may remove" clause allowed them to) and distributed the product as "free and open source". This was false advertising as they were not capable of stripping the Commons Clause and the copyright identification.

Notably, this does not mean that it's false advertising to claim your software is "open source" when it is not OSI-approved, it means that if you offer a modified version of a piece of software, you can't advertise it as "free and open source" when the forked version is still bound by the Commons Clause prohibiting selling it in any way.

> means that if you offer a modified version of a piece of software, you can't advertise it as "free and open source" when the forked version is still bound by the Commons Clause prohibiting selling it in any way.

This argument makes no sense. If the original modified AGPL license was "open source", then it wouldn't have been false advertising to make that claim since that was the license that actually applies.

From the original (non-appealate) decision:

>As discussed above, Defendants’ claim that ONgDB is free and open source Neo4j is false because it relies on an interpretation of the Neo4j Sweden Software License that this Court has rejected.

The actual argument here would be that the usage of "open source" only constitutes false advertising because it was being used in the context of claiming to be different from the original license, thus implying a meaning in-line with the one used by OSI. It is quite possible that in other context (i.e. not part of a direct comparison to a less open license) that courts will decide that does not constitute false advertising.

My personal opinion is that by misusing the term open source, you're causing confusion. Open source is the term that I understood to be OSI definition since childhood.

It would be like someone changing the term 'anime' to also include western cartoons. There would be no shortage of confusion. It doesn't matter how the Japanese use the term anime. For western audience, it has a different connotation.

Language is not prescriptive but descriptive. No one can say (except for trademarks) that X is the only correct usage of a word and it shall remain that way for a millenia. Words regularly modify, change or adapt meanings - with your example, it's not unconceivable that 20 years later, anime would be used in the west as well to describe all sorts of cartoons due to japanese cultural influence.

As Alice in Wonderland says: “When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”

Of course you are free to use whatever words you want to use to means what you want to mean, but we're talking about social norms and communication clarity. Open source has a specific meaning to specific communities and I see no reason to change.

> Language is not prescriptive but descriptive

No, language is a language game and it bothers most people if you deliberate muddy meaning.

Don't "prescriptive" and "descriptive" mean the same thing anyway? What a dumb saying.

Mainstream linguistics is descriptive and not prescriptive; language is language. By far its most important aim is to be understood. It may be that “open source” shifts in meaning in the future, but this comments section is evidence that misusing it causes confusion.

That is true for everyday use, but false in a legal context.

Try saying that a product contains x when it contains y. For example, extra olive oil that contains gutter oil. In certain contexts you will have to explain to a judge that language is not prescriptive and you committed fraud, and maybe harmed people in the process.

The source is open.

Open source means something specific in a legal context, same as 50m submersible for watches and truffle oil. Many others have already mentioned that source available or other similar terms could work perfectly, but not open source, which has a specific legal meaning.

Is there a problem with the term "source-available"?

It would have garnered fewer clicks and kudos rather than attempting to muddy the water.

It's not that the OSI has a faux trademark—it's that the OSI coined the term, its definition, and the OSS community grew around those. Before the coining of the term, source code being able to be looked at was never called "open source." It wasn't until the OSI initiative that this was the case, and we (observably in this article) see the effects of that effort today.

To adopt the term and use the decades of effort to give it the usefulness and meaning it has today while admitting you are absolutely not adhering to that meaning (OP admitted as such in the license) is an abuse of the term at the least. It's certainly not a practice that is beneficial for anyone except the abuser.

I want to say that I'm very glad that OP made the source code available to look at—it's very generous in the context of the game industry! I simply just ask can we not take advantage of the work of others by misusing the term "open source" and try saying something like "Even the Ocean is on GitHub!" or "Even the Ocean's git repo is public!"

So in other words it isn't open source. Ok.

It's certainly better than "you can't look at the source code."

I encourage the developer to not call it open source and use other terms such as "source available" or say the the source is public, etc. Open Source is an ecosystem that this project admits it does not support (meaning, open source projects is not what this aims to be "compatible" with) or is a part of. When projects misuse the term "open source," it can dilute the meaning and value of the open source model and ecosystem, making it harder for users and developers to understand and trust open source initiatives.

that's the altered part -- those more restrictive terms of the VVVVVV license only apply to the _assets_, and the license for the source code itself is far more liberal:

https://github.com/analgesicproductions/Even-The-Ocean-Open-...

I think the biggest culture shock to me that occurred while getting into game development for the first time was seeing how vastly opposite the embrace of open source is versus the web world. I mean I get it, games are often based on some "secret sauce" that developers don't want to give up or something, or maybe it's the licensing deals from publishers that cause this. But up until the ubiquity of Unreal/Unity in the last few years, game dev has been an almost strictly closed source affair it seemed. Every single third party tool or library seems to have some kind of licensing fee involved.

Now that's a great way to make sure that your game will keep working in the future. Some interested devs will be required to port it to future platforms, but, hey, those devs just keep appearing somehow, look at Wipeout rewrite.

From the repo's License [0]:

> This is NOT an Open Source license

I think it's fair to say this is not an open source project, but instead has the source available for viewing and restricts who can compile and distribute it or not.

[0]: https://github.com/analgesicproductions/Even-The-Ocean-Open-...

honestly, i wish the spirit behind that license were easier to formalise and publish - it roughly says "look, this is a game i made and am selling, and i don't want people taking this repo and just cloning the game for free. but we are a community of people making games, and i would love to provide the code and other assets as building blocks that will let other people make their own games more easily."

So... not open source, but pretending to be.

Open source, in the literal sense of the word.

Open source in only the literal sense of the word. It's like calling a wild boar from the midwestern coast of Africa a "Guinea pig". It's not actually lying (/pretending/cetera), since they clearly expect people to understand the distinction they're making, and so far it looks like most do, but it's still unforunately unclear (and rather needlessly so, since "source available" works just as well, if equally imprecisely).

They didn't say "Open Source", they said "open-source".

> and i don't want people taking this repo and just cloning the game for free.

they don't mind that actually... they just want you to not sell it or anything too close to the original game. if you want to figure out how to compile it and play it they are fine with it. it seems to be the don't screw me over license.

right, i should have made that distinction!

I honestly believe AGPLv3 for the software and CC BY-SA 4.0 for the non-software assets would absolutely be everything one would need for this project. Is there an example of a commercial AGPLv3 (or even any other copyleft license) game being cloned and sold without modification? I feel like this extra effort towards restrictions is rather unnecessary and putting the cart before the horse.

AGPL3 doesn't cut it if you want to allow "take literally every piece of this code and remix it into your own possibly closed-source game, just don't try to appropriate my game". it's sad that such a common-sense intent is so hard to work into a legally sound license.

Isn't that covered by trademark? Or what do you mean by appropriate?

they spell it out in the license - don't essentially republish "even the ocean" with a few tweaks and the serial numbers filed off. use their code (and maybe even assets? that wasn't entirely clear) for your own work, not their game-as-a-whole.

the source is open and fairly unrestricted. the assets and game itself are not though.

> Non-legal summary of license: Anyone can use or compile the code EVEN WITHOUT OWNING THE GAME. The code is open to everyone. If you're doing noncommercial or commercial things with a low budget ( < $50k/year), you can do anything, so long as you credit us. Don't sell anything unaltered (don't sell our sprites or music unaltered, or compile and try to sell the game unaltered.)

Indeed, the title needs to be edited. It clearly states:

> This is NOT an Open Source license

I'm curious as to whether the creator here is purposefully being disingenous, or simply deeply misunderstands what "open source" means?

The intention and explanation is all right there in TFA.

You're right. It more highlights the ambiguity of "Open source" than anything.

Sigh, Stallman, as usual, was right.

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