But how does source-available benefit anybody? If you get inspiration from the code you can get accused of copyright infringement so you’re better off never looking at it, and since it’s not actually FOSS you don’t get any of the usual benefits.
source available can allow a lot of things including modification of the source code (and in particular adding quality of life improvements and updating the code to run on modern platforms). Some restrictions like not allowing selling or even not allowing competition (for example allowing the game engine to run only the original game , or disallowing the removal of monetization).
If you look at openage (age of empires 2 reimplementation) the game is not playable 25 years after release and that game is considered a classic, we could lose a lot of very good games or software.
You can have a license that doesn’t strictly meet the OSS definition (for example by not allowing commercial usage), but still gives a plenty of rights.
The OSS definition is a minimum of decent rights. Any license that takes away from those basic rights will make a person think twice about contributing.
These companies are asking for unpaid, volunteer work. Why would you offer such work if you don’t receive something decent in return?
But how does source-available benefit anybody? If you get inspiration from the code you can get accused of copyright infringement so you’re better off never looking at it, and since it’s not actually FOSS you don’t get any of the usual benefits.
source available can allow a lot of things including modification of the source code (and in particular adding quality of life improvements and updating the code to run on modern platforms). Some restrictions like not allowing selling or even not allowing competition (for example allowing the game engine to run only the original game , or disallowing the removal of monetization).
If you look at openage (age of empires 2 reimplementation) the game is not playable 25 years after release and that game is considered a classic, we could lose a lot of very good games or software.
You can have a license that doesn’t strictly meet the OSS definition (for example by not allowing commercial usage), but still gives a plenty of rights.
The OSS definition is a minimum of decent rights. Any license that takes away from those basic rights will make a person think twice about contributing.
These companies are asking for unpaid, volunteer work. Why would you offer such work if you don’t receive something decent in return?