My personal favorite is the "companies are obligated to support it forever, or open source the server software hosted by a third party, hosting paid for up front for at least a year."

They get to keep my money forever don't they?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (3 children)

While I love the spirit of this idea, it gets complicated fast. Worlds adrift is a great example. The game’s server was created using some closed source libraries with a paid license. So when the owning company (Bossa Studios?) went under, they were unable to open source it.

A law like this would effectively kill all licensed software that isn’t a full product. I do agree though; we need a solution

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

A law like this would effectively kill all licensed software that isn’t a full product

What I'm hearing is: this law needs to be a constitutional amendment.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Hmm I may be confused. Do you believe that software companies shouldn’t be allowed to build and sell libraries? I.e. They should only be allowed to sell full products, ready for an end user?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yes.

I am aware that this would kill SaaS overnight, that's an intended feature.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Fair enough regarding sass, though I disagree with the opinion.

But I’m asking about builders of partial software. For example, consider a single developer that builds a really great library for handling tables. It displays a grid, displays text in cells, maybe performs some operations between cells, etc. On its own, this software is useless but is very useful for other people to build other products. Should it be illegal to sell this software?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm fine with that, wanna keep it out of public hands, nut up and sell your stuff

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Still difficult in that example. Bossa can’t force the other company to do anything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

IIRC Bossa tried to open source it but they used a license for Spatial OS, which provided the backbone of their game. They were unable to make a stable game without it and opted to not open source it. But they were also in an early access that would probably provide an exception for a game closing down.

Bossa did leave the island creator active and has spun up Lost Skies on the same engine, which wouldn't be possible if they open sourced WA.

Ultimately the issue should be GaaS and MMOs are offerings service while other games are goods which have an artificial expiry date. This is a good test of software judication.