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Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

ramatak.com

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Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#291

Post by dcow »

This essay lost the plot!

There’s nothing about the whole situation that open source fixes. Your champion open source project can change its license and pricing too.

The only way to protect yourself here is to enter into a non-ambiguous and non-shitty contract with your vendor.

If the software industry learns anything from this it should be that it’s not super smart to build your business on a technology with variable pricing that you don’t have control over (or something to that effect).

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#292

Post by amitmathew »

NotGMan wrote: post #4

>> While Unreal engine currently does not have terms like Unity’s, there’s nothing stopping them from doing something similar. In fact if Unity manages to get away with this it seems likely they will follow suit. Unreal has licenses which allow you to use one version of their engine FOREVER and they cannot revoke that license. So the author didn't fully research this. It is true that for NEWER version Epic can change…

I'm less concerned about Unreal pulling a Unity. The bigger issue is just a lack of attention. The last numbers I saw was that Unreal was pulling in $100m a year for Epic. That's a drop in the bucket compared to what Epic makes off of Fortnite. In my experience, products that matter a lot to the consumer but not the company tend to stagnate. Just look at Google outside of search.

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#293

Post by coldtea »

>A Wake-Up Call on the Importance of Open Source in Gaming

This is no "wake-up call" as there was never any doubt that all things being equal, FOSS would be a better option.

There are already where plenty of FOSS options to build games. The developers who didn't pick them up did it because Unity/Unreal give them features and convenience and such they don't get from them.

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#294

Post by SSLy »

jorvi wrote: post #194
pdpi wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Epic is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart Tim Sweeney founded Epic and wrote the Unreal engine himself. John Riccitiello’s whole career is in management. Even if they’re both entirely motivated by profit, they have different perspectives on how to get there. Also, Unity is a public company, while Epic is private. Even though Tencent owns a considerable share of the company, Sweeney still holds over…

The same Tim Cook that tries to make iPhones as unrepairable as possible? :) Don’t fall for feelgood greenwashing.

Still better CO2 footprint than anything else on the market

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#295

Post by RobotToaster »

codeulike wrote: post #137

Seems to me, the bit where all these game frameworks get a bit tricky is when you want to target iOS. Apple keeps moving the goalposts (you must use some version of Xcode, or you must target some version of iOS) and so the open-source frameworks have to constantly faff about to support the latest apple things. A few years ago I was building using LibGDX which used RoboVM to target iOS but then Xamarin bought RoboVM a…

At least half the problems in the mobile space can be traced to apple being apple.

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#296

Post by jzl »

icemelt8 wrote: post #265
NotGMan wrote: post #4

>> While Unreal engine currently does not have terms like Unity’s, there’s nothing stopping them from doing something similar. In fact if Unity manages to get away with this it seems likely they will follow suit. Unreal has licenses which allow you to use one version of their engine FOREVER and they cannot revoke that license. So the author didn't fully research this. It is true that for NEWER version Epic can change…

> Unreal has licenses which allow you to use one version of their engine FOREVER and they cannot revoke that license. Unity also had a similar clause in their ToC, they removed that now and retroactively applied the new pricing model on ALL previous versions of Unity. Unreal can do it too.

This still seems to be an unresolved legal question. Unity will almost certainly be getting sued for this by parties still using versions that shipped with that clause.

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#297

Post by baobabKoodaa »

RugnirViking wrote: post #139
j-bos wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>clicking "agreed" in the installer is very often a contract that you should run by your legal advisors. The law often makes use of the reasonableness standard. I'm hard pressed to believe that carefully reading the hundreds of TOS and EULA's hoisted upon us is reasonable. If you're reading my comment you must have read the TOS/EULA for ycombinator, firefox (or chrome), your wireless or ISP, the keyboard app on your…

to be more charitable to the above, we're not talking about consumer software. if you're starting a company selling something there is a fair bit more reasonableness in asking you to read a contract

What you are proposing is literally impossible. If I were to comb through every ToS and EULA and every other legal text related to tools I use as a developer, I would not have any hours left in the day for, you know, actual development. Even then, I wouldn't have time to read and comprehend all of the legal contracts. Hell, if I stopped sleeping entirely and spent 24 hours a day combing through legal contracts, I still wouldn't have enough time to go through all of them.

So, no, your request is not reasonable.

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#298

Post by RobotToaster »

esskay wrote: post #241
hcks wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies also have to pay for Microsoft Excel. Does it mean they don’t own their businesses?

not quite an apples to apples comparison when your document can be open and read by other spreadsheet applications. You cant take a unity game and run it on unreal.

Not if you're making use of VBA.

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#299

Post by patmorgan23 »

troupo wrote: post #57
objclxt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the fact that they are trying to break the Gplay/Apply monopoly shows that the Epic games leadership are not corporate piranhas like Unity's. Epic is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart, they're doing it because it is beneficial to them. Epic is a multi-billion dollar corporation part owned by a massive conglomerate. > BS: in reality it's usually one or two guys who actually do the actual work. Over t…

> Guess what, if a closed-source company decides to stop working on their product you're also stuck Isn't Unreal's source open?

Unreal is source available

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#300

Post by lolinder »

NotGMan wrote: post #4

>> While Unreal engine currently does not have terms like Unity’s, there’s nothing stopping them from doing something similar. In fact if Unity manages to get away with this it seems likely they will follow suit. Unreal has licenses which allow you to use one version of their engine FOREVER and they cannot revoke that license. So the author didn't fully research this. It is true that for NEWER version Epic can change…

The worst case scenario for Godot is the same as the worst case scenario for Unity: you can keep using the last release that worked for you. As far as I can tell Unreal has no concept of an LTS version, so if you don't like the new license you're not getting any updates at all.

This is where FOSS comes in: If support ends, you can keep using the latest version just like with proprietary software, but you can also fork it and fix pressing issues. It's not even a question of relying on the community continuing to create major new releases. If that fails, your org could fork it alone and patch any blocking bugs.

My company already does this for several pieces of legacy software that we haven't had the time to migrate away from. We don't make any major changes, but we can and do fix things that get in our way. We'd get no such benefit from proprietary software that changes its terms to be unfavorable.

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