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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

#91

Post by flohofwoe »

TMM2K wrote: post #59
troupo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can access the source code to unreal engine when you get a license, but the terms are not by any stretch of the imagination open source. You wouldn't be able to freely share your modifications for instance.

You don't have to get a "license" (at least in the sense of paying anything), IIRC you just connect your EGS account to your Github account, accept an EULA (which technically is a "license" I guess) and then have read access to the Unreal Engine GH repositories.

(currently there seem to be around half a million users with access)

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

#92

Post by prmoustache »

charcircuit wrote: post #64
MarcellusDrum wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not free to fork Unreal as it is not open source, only code available.

That doesn't matter. The fork will just not be an open source fork.

You cannot fork it and change its licence unless orig unreal license permits you to do it. Does it?

edit: it doesn't unless Epic Games grants you a specific license to do that. https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/eula/unreal

source:

> 4. How You Can Share the Licensed Technology When It Isn’t Part of a Product > You may only Distribute Licensed Technology (including as modified by you) outside of a Product as expressly permitted by this Section 4.

> a. Sharing of Engine Code

> i. Sharing Engine Code with Another Licensee You may Distribute Engine Code (including as modified by you) in Source Code or object code to a third party who is separately licensed by us to use the same version of the Engine Code that you are Distributing.

>Any public Distribution of Engine Tools (e.g., intended generally for third parties who are separately licensed by us to use the Engine Code) must take place through a marketplace operated by Epic such as the Unreal Engine Marketplace (e.g., for Distributing a Product’s modding tool or editor to end users) or through a fork of Epic’s GitHub UnrealEngine Network (e.g., for Distributing Source Code).

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

#93

Post by TMM2K »

flohofwoe wrote: post #91
TMM2K wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can access the source code to unreal engine when you get a license, but the terms are not by any stretch of the imagination open source. You wouldn't be able to freely share your modifications for instance.

You don't have to get a "license" (at least in the sense of paying anything), IIRC you just connect your EGS account to your Github account, accept an EULA (which technically is a "license" I guess) and then have read access to the Unreal Engine GH repositories. (currently there seem to be around half a million users with access)

What do you think clicking the EULA is?

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

#94

Post by JKCalhoun »

kypro wrote: post #12

I kinda feel bad for Unity. The company is in a bad place finacially. They're burning almost $1 billion a year and they have no good solutions to this. Either they try to increase pricing and piss off their customers, or they cut costs (which they've been doing with mass layoffs) and risk losing ground to other game engineers like Unreal. For years the only thing really holding the company a float was their valuation…

> and they have no good solutions to this

Bought by Apple or Microsoft maybe?

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

#95

Post by carstenhag »

kgwxd wrote: post #49
hahn-kev wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also use the old version, it's not like an old unsupported version of something is any different for open and closed source

They are different, open source is obviously better in that scenario.

Except Unreal is also open source in the sense of them providing you full source code access & documentation on how to build it.

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

#96

Post by cma »

0xDEF wrote: post #16
kypro wrote: post #12

I kinda feel bad for Unity. The company is in a bad place finacially. They're burning almost $1 billion a year and they have no good solutions to this. Either they try to increase pricing and piss off their customers, or they cut costs (which they've been doing with mass layoffs) and risk losing ground to other game engineers like Unreal. For years the only thing really holding the company a float was their valuation…

I don't understand their refusal to make games that will make them money and showcase Unity's capabilities. The only reason Unreal engine has so favorable license conditions is because Epic Games earn billions from Fortnite and Epic Games Store.

In some ways this is backwards, you could argue Fortnite was a flop and became a success because of their license conditions (pivot to cloning licensee PUBG).

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

#97

Post by isaiahg »

objclxt wrote: post #29
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 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…

> 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.

Holy straw man! And there’s certainly no self-interest involved with me using their engine without giving them a cut under 1 mill right?

You can make this argument about literally anything.

Godot must have no self-interest in releasing their engine for free and making $30k a month to develop their project.

Who cares what the motivation is if it gives real benefits to devs. If anything it tells me they’ve picked a business model that’s mutually beneficial unlike Unity

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

#98

Post by yMMe2WYE_D »

thenerdhead wrote: post #75
TMM2K wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not possible with something that is open source. If it has a "dual license" that means you can pick which license to apply. You just pick the one that doesn't make you pay.

There are a number of projects doing this today with dual-license models(Permissive/Commercial). I'm not a lawyer and have no idea if they hold up in court/can be enforced but it absolutely is a thing today. https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/5599/any-succ...

It might exist but open-core model ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-core_model ) is much more commmn. I went through QT project licensing FAQ and I still don't see any situation when I would be forced to pay for commercial license when creating commercial software. Some SO answers suggest that complying with LGPL is harder on mobile OSes. Anyway - if you release something on open license, you can't really limit its use, no matter how your second license is constructed. That is probably why paid add-ons are so popular.

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

#99

Post by tpush »

thenerdhead wrote: post #38

> By using an open source engine you can be sure that whatever that “next thing” is, the engine won’t keep you from taking advantage of it. Nor would the engine be able to dictate your monetization strategy for you. We really ought to separate the fact that "open" does not always mean "free" here. Especially given that it is fairly straight-forward to change licenses on a whim. Imagine you wake up one day and suddenl…

No, that doesn't work. You can't retroactively change a license like that. What could happen is that future versions get licensed differently (if either all contributors agree, the project used a CLA or is permissively licensed).

Either way however then you could either stop using it or fork the project.

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

#100

Post by isaiahg »

plagiarist wrote: post #48
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…

It's hilarious that their arguments for the commercial engine are somehow both "you can use one version forever" and "you might be forced to use one version of something else forever."

If you understood the problem then you’d know that their argument is about how Unity’s new pricing change is retroactive, affecting all Unity versions and charging fees to devs for games made years ago.

Unreal uses perpetual licenses for their versions meaning this kind of bullshit behavior is not possible

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