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

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

#721

Post by esskay »

_chu1 wrote: post #426
esskay wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only get it out but actively promote it as an opensource project instead of proprietary and make revenue through an asset store. Theres so few games that use source that theres no way its commercially viable on its own.

Valve doesn't do it that way. Instead of some crummy asset store with generic and terrible looking assets they literally just let you use the assets from their games. See Garry's Mod, Sven Co-op and Insurgency for an example of this.

Yeah I meant in addition to their own assets, hence the revenue stream. A standard setup like Unity has for their asset store.

Using unity as the example there are some crummy assets, but there's also some incredibly popular and well made assets, many used by AAA games.

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

#722

Post by HeavyStorm »

miragecraft wrote: post #340

The logic that Epic and Unreal Engine will do something similar as Unity doesn't track for me. The argument hinges on the premise that Epic, who operates their own game store and is courting developers aggressively with generous revenue split, is willing to burn their bridge with developers for questionable increase in profit; in addition it presumes that the plain old revenue share model that Unreal Engine utiltizes…

Also Epic only needs to look to their closest competitor to see this is a terrible idea.

That said, the author forgets to mention one more important advantage of open source alternatives like Godot: they avoid market manipulation simply by existing, as they block monopoly. Unity wouldn't risk _future_ customers if they were not as confident in their position (Unity is king on mobile, don't forget).

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

#723

Post by flangola7 »

TylerE wrote: post #687
flangola7 wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protect them from what?

Reputational damage. Big part of the appeal of consoles is “it just works”. That falls apart of you start letting random shovelware devs ship whatever.

That has nothing to do with SDK secrecy.

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

#724

Post by RugnirViking »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #714
RugnirViking wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what use are contracts if buisnesses refuse to read them. Sure you as an employee might not but if you're running a company you really ought to read it on your key software. We're not talking about an email provider, its the key engine you're using. It's like if you didn't read the contract with the manfuacturer you hired to make your product...

Well, in Finland where I live, ToS and EULA are generally not considered to be "contracts", and for good reason. I'm confused what you mean by saying that the employees of a business don't need to read these legal texts but that the "business" should read them. The "business" is not a physical life form that has the ability to read, only the employees of a business have that ability, since they are humans (unlike the…

in lots of countries, ToS and EULA are generally not considered to be enforcable "contracts"... for users of free consumer software under certain circumstances

If you as a buisness sign up to amazon web services to host your entire backbone on, you better read the contract. If you don't, you are irresponsible.

Someone, somewhere at the buisness should take the time to read a simple little document before using it as the backbone of everything they do at a company, yes. It does not have to be a lawyer...

I'm extremely sympathetic to the idea that there are too many eulas for free products, things like games or whatever where it really doesn't matter for 99.9% of users. But for the 0.1% that make their livelihood from the program, they should take the 25 minutes to read through it at least once.

I'm not saying this because im a big bad lawyer that hates you (I am not a lawyer at all), im saying it because it's a tiny thing you can do to save a whole lot of heartbreak.

You just gotta decide when its important to read contracts and when you don't care. I don't care about the contract when I get new lenses for my glasses, or when I pay for netflix. But if im moving into a new house? I read the bloody contract.

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

#725

Post by [deleted] »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #341
jasonlotito wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Unity TOS doesn't take a full day to read. And if you have trouble with it, you can hire a lawyer.

Are you implying that one needs a crystal ball to predict which companies will screw you over with ToS changes in the future, and using that crystal ball in the present time, we can then skip reading ToS for all those other companies, which will not screw you over, and only read the ToS for the one company that will screw you over?

[deleted]

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

#726

Post by manquer »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #649
manquer wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> MongoDB, Elasticsearch > Redis You suggest that mongo and elastic search are not open source and redis is ? While all three have a company backing them and sell or have some restrictions (usually targeted towards cloud providers not self hosting ) i would have said all of them are open enough in their current versions not to have a vendor lock in risk

Redis is open core (that is, redis itself is Open Source, only extensions aren't), the others are outright not Open Source. That's a meaningful difference, depending on whether you're using the non-FOSS extensions.

What are you on about ?

https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch

https://github.com/mongodb/mongo

How are ES and mongoDB not open source ?

Mongo switched from GPL v3 to SSPL in 2018 the only difference is whether you can offer mongoDB as a service , all other GPL clauses are the same , there is no difference for app developers I.e no vendor lock-in

Elastic moved from Apache 2 to ESL v2 for the same reasons with same restrictions against managed offerings again no restrictions for a app developer to host modify or do they want .

Redis splits between 3-BSD , SSPL and RSAL v2 and closed source for redis , Redis stack and Redis enterprise.

Just cause OSI does not consider restrictions on competing with the author Open source doesn’t make elastic or mongo less open source ( redis also uses these ) certainly not for anyone not a cloud vendor

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

#727

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

manquer wrote: post #726
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redis is open core (that is, redis itself is Open Source, only extensions aren't), the others are outright not Open Source. That's a meaningful difference, depending on whether you're using the non-FOSS extensions.

What are you on about ? https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch https://github.com/mongodb/mongo How are ES and mongoDB not open source ? Mongo switched from GPL v3 to SSPL in 2018 the only difference is whether you can offer mongoDB as a service , all other GPL clauses are the same , there is no difference for app developers I.e no vendor lock-in Elastic moved from Apache 2 to ESL v2 for the same reasons with same…

> Just cause OSI does not consider restrictions on competing with the author Open source doesn’t make elastic or mongo less open source ( redis also uses these ) certainly not for anyone not a cloud vendor

Okay, sure, if we allow people to redefine words whenever they feel like it they can be open source. Which is to say, no, that's not what those words mean. It can be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software but not FOSS.

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

#728

Post by manquer »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #727
manquer wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you on about ? https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch https://github.com/mongodb/mongo How are ES and mongoDB not open source ? Mongo switched from GPL v3 to SSPL in 2018 the only difference is whether you can offer mongoDB as a service , all other GPL clauses are the same , there is no difference for app developers I.e no vendor lock-in Elastic moved from Apache 2 to ESL v2 for the same reasons with same…

> Just cause OSI does not consider restrictions on competing with the author Open source doesn’t make elastic or mongo less open source ( redis also uses these ) certainly not for anyone not a cloud vendor Okay, sure, if we allow people to redefine words whenever they feel like it they can be open source. Which is to say, no, that's not what those words mean. It can be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_s…

Yes words have meaning. You should read original comment again .

The OP said closed source,he didn’t say not open source or FOSS or source available .

Of all the three, redis is only one with closed source components classifying redis as open and ES , mongoDB as closed is misleading and false . Either all three are in grey area if you are purist, or all three are shades of open if you are a realist .

none of the restrictions are relevant to the vendor lock-in point he was making

Also OSI doesn’t own the word [1] Open source or the open source movement.

Classifying ES and mongoDB in the same category as Oracle is just not helping vendors to be open .

[1] trademark or copyright perhaps , not the word or concept or the movement .

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

#729

Post by jcarrano »

makomk wrote: post #262
jcarrano wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they make a commitment in the first place? It is up to the developers using the engine to make due diligence and inspect the terms of the contracts and licenses of the software they use. I would feel very uneasy if my product was based on a framework, where the provider makes no commitment and reserves the right to change the licensing terms at any time.

Unity made a specific committment in their terms that if those terms changed in a way that disavantaged existing developers, those developers could carry on using the existing annual release under the old terms, and also that they would notify developers of changes to their terms. They then sneakily removed that committment and almost immediately imposed this licensing fee for use of the runtime, when one of the spec…

Thanks for the info. I'm not into game dev and did not know that. That was a pretty nasty move and they should't be trusted anymore.

The last part I do not agree: a license cannot be changed retroactively if there is no provision in the original license for doing so, and no open source license have that. Even if "revoking" licenses for all prior releases were allowed, it could only work if all copyright holders agreed, which is not practical for most projects.

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

#730

Post by baobabKoodaa »

RugnirViking wrote: post #724
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, in Finland where I live, ToS and EULA are generally not considered to be "contracts", and for good reason. I'm confused what you mean by saying that the employees of a business don't need to read these legal texts but that the "business" should read them. The "business" is not a physical life form that has the ability to read, only the employees of a business have that ability, since they are humans (unlike the…

in lots of countries, ToS and EULA are generally not considered to be enforcable "contracts"... for users of free consumer software under certain circumstances If you as a buisness sign up to amazon web services to host your entire backbone on, you better read the contract. If you don't, you are irresponsible. Someone, somewhere at the buisness should take the time to read a simple little document before using it as…

If you had read the Unity contracts before this mayhem, would you have been able to predict that Unity will screw developers over? I for sure wouldn't, because I'm not a lawyer.
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