Orbiter Space Flight Simulator is now open source

Post by coptun » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 12:40 AM UTC

bruce511 wrote: post #27

rbanffy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s MIT licensed, so there’s nothing stopping someone from getting it, making major changes, and releasing it as proprietary software for consoles and make a lot of money in the process. This is why I’m always sad when I see a project opening as MIT instead of GPL.

Not to be picky, but the GPL would not stop someone "making major changes, and releasing it as proprietary software for consoles and make a lot of money in the process." The only difference is that they would be obligated to release the source code. Given that the list of folk who can compile for consoles is very limited, this would not be an existential burden for them. Indeed, even if they targeted a common develop…

Post by Cogito » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 4:13 AM UTC

tito wrote: post #46

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Post by hulitu » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 7:04 AM UTC

roytries wrote: post #7

criddell wrote: post #5

Anybody know what's involved in moving from DX7 to DX11?

It would be a huge undertaking, especially if the DirectX types leaked into the rest of the application. DirectX 7 is from 1999, games like Half-Life 1 used it. This is when GPUs were mostly fixed-function. While nowadays a GPU is almost as versatile as a CPU. The hardest/largest step would probably be to get it into this century, with the latest version of DirectX 9 (2005, Windows XP / Xbox 360 era). The step from 9…

Post by starseeker » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

larodi wrote: post #34

another open source project is born only after it is basically dead or is about to die in its closed-source form. out of curiosity - which other open source projects do you know, that have not started as open source?