And that's just what is needed, if the game works as it does while supported.
delcaran
joined 1 year ago
You are right, licensing could be an issue. But as others said this is not a retroactive law, so new software must be developed accounting for a "free" redistribution. Hardcoded paths are just bad practice.
Never said it's easy, but it's not that hard. At my job we are required to deploy the whole server infrastructure on-premise, so we only use software with MIT license or something that allows us to distribute to our clients without disclosing the source code. We've been doing this for the last 20-ish years, our software accepts easily hundred of thousands of connections and with Docker and similar tech the whole thing can run on standalone PC (with performance limitations of course).
It's not easy, but it's doable. And that it's all that is required by this proposal.
Dev here. It's not a challenge.
- you make one last patch to the game that enables the user to change the address of the servers required (for authentication or whatever).
- you release the server for free.
This way you are not losing money (you are not making any either, but that's why we are here) and the users can install the game and the required components to run it.
The most "challenging" thing you must do, on the server or in the game, is eventually authorized everyone, but I can't see this as a challenge...
For #1 you wanna try Magic wormhole. Maybe it's less user-friendly than you need it to be, but it works and there are lots of implementations for different owes (don't know about iOS though).
Maybe I made it sound too easy because I'm used to do it and I find more challenging to add security features for authentication or to use some licensed libraries π that's a bias on my part.
Still I am not a good developer, and I have done it. Even the industry has done it, just look at all the downloadable servers on Steam, some of them even free. I expected it will not be difficult for experienced developers to comply.