[BadVista Advocate] "Free" software

[Guy Johnston]

Jacob Maynard wrote:
 > With the free-software title, the developers of games would be required to
> release the source code for their games with the purchase of the game. Not
> okay it for free distribution after that.
> 
> See, each person would have to buy a copy of this piece of software. If
> another company stole the code for the game, (and what are they going to
> steal? An "if then" statement? Tutorials for this are on the internet.
> Direct3D code? Also on the internet and even available from the giant
> themselves. OpenGL? Stress the word "OPEN." tutorials are all over the
> internet. It just matters how hard a person wants to work at programming.)
> they would be liable and would be infringing the
> copyright/copyleft/license agreement. They could be sued. Anyone releasing
> the code for no-cost would also be infringing the license agreement.
> Therefore, programmers can still feed their kids.

You seem to have misunderstood what we mean by free (as in freedom) software here. Out of the four
essential freedoms, freedom 2 is the freedom to redistribute copies, and freedom 3 is the freedom to
distribute modified versions. Just because the source code for the games you're talking about would
be released, they wouldn't be free software, because they wouldn't respect those two freedoms for
the users.

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