Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

Post by xnx » Thu, Jan 01, 2026, 9:43 AM UTC

bevr1337 wrote: post #120

sneak wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gifts do not confer obligation. Copying deprives the original party of nothing. Absolutely nothing about free software requires or even implies any responsibility to “give back”. This idea that anyone making money with free software somehow owes the original authors anything (or “should” donate a portion of their profits) is ridiculous. If the authors wanted money for their software, they would have sold it instead o…

> Gifts do not confer obligation. Remind me, which Ferengi Rule of Acquisition is this? There's not much argument to be had. You've created a logical justification for a myopic, misanthropic world view. > My friend bought me lunch. I used that energy at my job. Do I owe them part of my paycheck? Many find reciprocation important in a relationship.

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 01, 2026, 10:59 AM UTC

orthoxerox wrote: post #66

barrenko wrote: post #49

A true Christmas story! Somewhat unrelated, could someone provide insight into the following - "MonoGame is a "bring your own tools" kind of framework, which means that it provides the building blocks to build your own engine and tools, but it isn't quite an engine itself. If you are expecting a scene editor (like Unity or Unreal), MonoGame is not that. If you love coding and understanding how things work under the h…

Yes, this is basically correct. When you start writing a game with MonoGame, all you get is basically a class with two methods, Update() and Draw() that MonoGame will be calling in a loop, plus a bunch of libraries for input, graphics, audio, content loading etc. you can use in your code. It's a step beyond something like bare raylib or SDL2, but it's a far cry from Unreal, which lets you think in terms of game entit…

Post by ekianjo » Thu, Jan 01, 2026, 11:52 AM UTC

MildlySerious wrote: post #151

sneak wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gifts do not confer obligation. Copying deprives the original party of nothing. Absolutely nothing about free software requires or even implies any responsibility to “give back”. This idea that anyone making money with free software somehow owes the original authors anything (or “should” donate a portion of their profits) is ridiculous. If the authors wanted money for their software, they would have sold it instead o…

There really is no prize for being technically correct on this one. Someone built this and is letting you have it. For free. There is no legal obligation or law of the universe here, sure, but if you're in the top 1% of benefactors of this pro bono work, you have the opportunity to do some good and make sure that others, like you, get the chance to benefit from this free work in the future. There is a pretty straight…

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 01, 2026, 12:53 PM UTC

rvnx wrote: post #19

MangoToupe wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This indy developer (is that label fair?) is putting AAA studios to shame. For the hundredth time. He's an extremely rare person focused on quality, value, and competency. And he clearly just loves his own game Edit: Sorry? Pay for what, and risk what why? AAA studios simply cannot deliver good value in comparison. The donation is unrelated—or perhaps, arguably, open source makes this productivity possible.

Beyond love, what you prefer ? Pay 100K USD, or put at risk your 500M USD project ? Edit: if the engine is not maintained, there can be compatibility issues, it can go abandoned and lack new features, etc. It's the technical pillar of the product, like Unity.

Post by caspar » Thu, Jan 01, 2026, 3:23 PM UTC

closingreunion wrote: post #74

mjg2 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call anything Epic Games does charity: it's all empire expansion for them.

How does the Godot donation expand their empire? Other than get more people into game development?