Launched my iOS game as Open Source

Yes, and a license that codifies that intent isn't "open source". Open Source Software (as defined by the Open Source Initiative, the ones who came up with the term), was actually a re-branding of the term "Free Software". Open source software, as with free software, protects your freedoms as the owner of that software to modify, distribute, and study the code, with no conditions on any of those freedoms. What the author is doing is certainly commendable, and it would benefit us all if they took the next step and made their software fully open source.

Just out of curiosity -- can you preserve that intention?

Nothing really stops me from making my own clone of your game, changing only the assets to be my own, other than it's prohibitively time-consuming (i.e. expensive) for me to do so.

If you release the code -- with any license on it at all -- and someone takes it, uses it, creates a similar game, and then changes the code in a sufficiently significant way to be able to claim that it's not "yours" anymore ... what recourse would you have?

"Open source" has a very well-defined, widely accepted meaning. Part of this is that an open source license cannot restrict the purpose for which the code is used. This isn't making a value judgement on such licenses: it's just defining "open source".

If you actually want your code to be open source, you should use one of the common licenses like the GPL or BSD license; this makes life easier both for you and people who would use your code. Since these licenses are common, people know exactly how they work and are willing to trust them. A custom license like yours seems much riskier to use: for example, how is "competes with" defined?

You can license the code and the artistic assets separately. This is what Id does with its old Quake engines. This way the code is still open source in the strictest sense of the word, but somebody couldn't just resell your game as-is.

You can license the assets under one of the Creative Commons licenses. These have well-defined and well-understood terms that you can mix and match to find something that suits your needs.

Affero GPL might be ideal for you. It means that both network and local users of an app get the source code. So, maybe someone out-markets you, but the users still must get the source. But you won't necessarily get attribution if that's what you're after (CC is good for that).

Why not keep the code open and keep the assets on a normal copyright basis? That's what iD/Bungie do (did).

You can use GPL code commercially (and plenty of companies do), what you can't do is relicense it under a proprietary license.

You'd have to explain that to Richard Stallman, who wrote the GPL and also sold Emacs and other free[1] software commercially during the 80s and 90s.

[1]: free software and open source software are accepted by the Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative as being pretty much the same thing (ie 99% of OSI-approved open source licenses are also FSF-approved, and vice versa).

A quarter century after this thing was published and we still read stuff like this on the internet?

GPL may make certain commercial models harder, but there's no "can't use" prohibition in the license.

The condition on all potential uses (commercial and non-commercial) is the same: your derivative source code must remain available under the same terms.

Microsoft sometimes licenses things like this and it's commonly referred to as "shared source."

Hmm. I haven't heard anything about that. How would they even know?

I don't know about open source in general, but GPL'd software is in conflict with the Apple license. If you yourself are the copyright holder, then I (not being a lawyer) would imagine you would be free to license your software under both the GPL and Apple's iOS license, but you couldn't take someone else's GPL'd software and publish it on iOS, without their permission.

Which is one of the points of the GPL, so no big surprise.

You must have not been looking too hard as that was never true.

Apple has no problem with Open Source. It is just that a few Open Source Licenses have a problem with Apple. A small but important difference. Apple couldn't care less what open source license you use. But some licenses like the GPL forbid you from distributing your work in a place like the appstore.

The one feature I would like is the ability to stat over when drawing a spell. I would probably play for an extended single player

In the future, you should avoid committing your Parse application id and client key publicly... You don't want other dev's piggybacking on your account quota, though it's not really a security risk by itself. Considering it's already there, make sure you've implemented Class-level security to protect your data. https://www.parse.com/docs/data#security-classes

This game resembles 'Runic Rumble',[1] which uses the same concept but requires the user to draw different shapes rather than connect elements in a fixed shape.

The first thing I did after seeing this thread and looking at the repository was to download the game from the iOS App Store (using an iPhone 5). I would have paid $1 to $4 for the app at that point in time.

I 'mastered' the levels up to but not including 'Belgarath the Bold' in the space of about 30-40 minutes, and seem to have unlocked all the spells except for superman, hot dog and teddy bear. That was entertaining - and repetitive. Challenges remain ahead of me in the form of Belgarath and Fionnghal, but unless some exciting new aspect to the gameplay emerges during those challenges, I don't think I would pay for an extension to the single player game. If I'd watched someone else play the game instead of playing it myself, I don't think I would now spend the $1 to $4 I would have otherwise been willing to spend.

My disinterest in paying for an extension to the single player game means I don't have any reason to consider paying for unlockable wizards, custom spells, or forums and betas.

OK - I wrote the above before trying the multiplayer game. Having now tried the multiplayer game, I found that to be much more fun, and much less predictable. Would I consider paying something now? Maybe. I'd be willing to consider one or two small in-app purchases that add to the gameplay in some non-trivial way without unbalancing the game between those who've purchased and those who haven't. I don't think I'd ever have any interest in forums and betas.

The main gripe I have with the game is not something you can easily solve: my finger gets sore after lots of frantic swiping on the glass. (It was even worse with Runic Rumble.)

Good luck!

[1]: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/runic-rumble/id581952563

Edit: Just discovered 'superman'. Hilarious!