User:ScotXW/Free and open-source software

I started to rewrite the entire free and open-source software article (see a version here). Obviously the two separate articles free software and open-source software are full with garbage, so people thought it ok to dump the biggest garbage into this article. However, a real-world example I stumbled across for my "game theory"-section would be this:

The most obvious example is the change to Linux kernel packaging that happened during the RHEL 6 development cycle. Previous releases had included each individual modification that Red Hat made to the kernel as a separate patch. From RHEL 6 onward, all these patches are merged into one giant patch. This was intended to make it harder for vendors like Oracle to compete with RHEL by taking patches from upcoming RHEL point releases, backporting them to older ones and then selling that to Red Hat customers. It obviously also had the effect of hurting other distributions such as Debian who were shipping 2.6.32-based kernels - bugs that were fixed in RHEL had to be separately fixed in Debian, despite Red Hat continuing to benefit from the work Debian put into the stable 2.6.32 point releases.

It's almost three years since that argument erupted, and by and large the community seems to have accepted that the harm Oracle were doing to Red Hat (while giving almost nothing back in return) justified the change. The parallel argument in the Piston case might be that there's no reason for Red Hat to give advertising space to a company that's doing a better job of selling Red Hat's code than Red Hat are. But the two cases aren't really equal - Oracle are a massively larger vendor who take significantly more from the Linux community than they contribute back.


 * See also the article Business models for open-source software.
 * Missing are extensive examples of dual-licensed software such as Snort. Again the Wikipedia is swarming with much shit and even more "deciders", but, e.g. category for "dual-licensed software" is missing. Maybe it could be added. Maybe it could be added to wikidata instead. After the deletion of Category:Linux Foundation platinum members I am not overly motivated to do this.


 * from Special:Permalink/579755480

A little fun versus much fun
I have played neither, but I understand a game consists of game engine and game content. A lot of man-hours are needed to create all that content. Besides dedication, talent, tools, it simply takes a whole load of time.
 * User:ScotXW/plee-the-bear is an open-source platformer. It seem to be a fun game, see e.g. YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCWHOCl-QhE
 * Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is a commercial platformer, and it seam to bring more fun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DueE8vJXpo8

For some reasons programmers seem to be more willing to publish their work under some free license, than artists, that create 3D-models, or graphics or sound. As a result, there are not that many free and open-source and free content video games overall, and only a very few impressive looking and impressive sounding ones. For example:
 * Doom 3 was impressive looking at the time it hit the markets. Later id Tech 4, its game engine, was GPLed, but not any of the data (3D-models, textures, sounds). There are not many projects, if any at all, that took the GPLed id Tech 4 to develop an open-source and free content game.

So the creation of 3D-models, textures and sounds seems require **a lot of man-hours**. Releasing this work under, e.g. one of the Creative Commons licenses, makes it "free content", with various degrees of freedom. "BY-NC-ND" basically is the equivalent of freeware, since people can re-distribute the work, but are neither allowed to create derivative works, nor to make money with it.


 * 0 A.D. is a well-known examples of a free and open-source engine and free content video game.


 * Most (not all) run natively on Linux and some are that cutting edge, that they show the end-user what is possible.
 * There is knowledge and experience about developing games on Linux for Linux.

For a couple of video games, that are based on some free and open-source game engine coupled with either free or less free or even proprietary content, i.e. geometry data for game levels, objects, textures, sound, user interface, etc, there are no Wikipedia articles yet. Not even are there screenshots, even though such would not have to be low-quality fair-use stuff! That is sad...


 * Racing game: TORCS, Speed Dreams, VDrift
 * http://code.google.com/p/vdrift-ogre/
 * http://sourceforge.net/projects/stuntrally/
 * http://sourceforge.net/projects/trigger-rally/
 * http://corebreach.corecode.at/CoreBreach/CoreBreach.html
 * http://sourceforge.net/projects/dakar2011/
 * Party games: Freevial (Trivial Pursuit-clone)
 * West Point Bridge Designer http://sourceforge.net/projects/wpbdc/
 * Unvanquished, http://www.unvanquished.net/about Tremulous-fork
 * Commander Keen-clones: http://www.shikadi.net/keenwiki/Commander_Genius
 * Billiard: Foobillard, http://www.billardgl.de/index-en.html
 * Chess: http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Schach
 * http://www.freerct.org/ RollerCoaster Tycoon-clone
 * http://freecnc.org/ Command & Conquer-clone
 * http://fightwinprevail.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
 * http://dark-oberon.sourceforge.net/?page=screenshots
 * http://tomatoes.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
 * http://funguloids.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
 * http://www.openparsec.com/screenshots.php, fast-paced multiplayer cross-platform internet 3D space combat not Thousand Parsec
 * http://opensnc.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page retro-style 2D sidescroller
 * http://sourceforge.net/projects/mars-game/ M.A.R.S. - a ridiculous Shooter