>
> Chris Lemens skrev:
> > All:
> >
> > Here's my question to those promoting the idea that David should make KoDP open source:
> >
> > How does David make any money at that?
> >
> > Chris Lemens
> >
> Speaking as an open-source developer (and hobby games programmer), my
> answer is: he probably won't.
>
> Sure, the initial buzz might drive a few people to purchase the game,
> but it takes serious out of the box thinking to make money on an
> open-source game. There is no doubt some genius business model somewhere
> for making money on open-sourcing a game, but I've never heard of any
> projects doing so successfully.
>
> If, on the other hand, A-Sharp feel that they have made the money they
> need to off the game and/or they reach the point where they no longer
> feel the revenue generated is worth the effort of supporting the game (I
> suspect that point has not yet been reached), then open-sourcing is a
> much better alternative than to quietly letting the game slip into
> oblivion. As I noted in an earlier post, it would be a nice gift to the
> fan community. They could release the source code without (most of) the
> art assets, since those are presumably seperate revenue objects
> (merchandising, etc). If needed, make it a dual license scheme (split
> free and commercial use) so that anyone who feels like making a
> commercial port of the game could do so and pay licensing fees to A-Sharp.
>
> In the best case, of course, someone ports the game engine to Java or
> similar language, allowing A-Sharp to utilize the new game engine to
> release a KODP2, etc., etc. But whether or not anyone actually does
> anything with the code is irrelevant to the discussion about whether
> open-sourcing or not is a good idea, though.
>
> Regards,
>
> Michael A.
This pretty much sums it up.
Open source != free. A-Sharp would still sell the game, and certainly whilst it was not compilable, the number of sales would be >= the sales they currently get. If just the code was released and you needed a copy of the original game for the graphic and sound assets, then it could still generate sales into the future.
But really this is not so much about the money, more about extending the life of a game which was obviously a labour of love.
James