[BadVista Advocate] A few thoughts on games

[Matthew Flaschen]

Sunnz wrote:
> Another tricky thing to develop games on Linux is GPL.
> 
> Ok, I don't know that much about the underlying workings of GNU, so I
> am on the assumption that a lot of programming API and libraries on
> Linux are licensed under GPL, and if you make use of the API and libs,
> your game would be a derivative software and have to license under
> GPL.

That's pretty much wrong.  There's plenty of proprietary software on
GNU/Linux, because core libraries tend to be licensed under the LGPL
(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html), not the GPL.

> The implication of GPL is that you are free to distribute the
> software, binary and/or source code... companies who have invest large
> sum of money wouldn't want to do this, perhaps it is ok to open source
> the code, but they certainly want people to pay for each copy.

Open Source (or free/libre licenses) do not require per-copy royalties.
  Open source (and free/libre software) means far more than source code
availability.  See opensource.org/docs/definition.php and
gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html . It's also a misconception that it's
impossible to make money off libre/open source software.  Consider the
many successful companies that rely almost solely on FOSS (Red Hat,
Alfresco, etc.)

Best,

Matt Flaschen