Ported Freeware As Shareware - A Question For Devs

[christo930]

While I haven't really seen this in the gpxx community, I've seen it a lot for pc's, especially Macintosh. A developer will take an project whose source code is public, port it to the mac (or whatever platform, say the Pandora) and then charge for it. What do the developers around here think of that? In my own opinion, it seems like the person doing the porting is making money off of the first guys work. I know porting can be a lot of work, but it seems like, in most cases, the original project is far more word and requires far more expertise than the porting of the software to another platform. How would you feel as a developer, if you released an emulator that you made from the ground up, for free, and then somebody ported it to another platform and charged for it. Would you feel like someone else is getting money for your work, or is this ok with most devs. The post about bounties made me think of this.

 

[PokeParadox]

To be honest, it depends on what license (if any) you use when you release your source.
I always would like someone to ask me before thinking of making commercial gain from code I'm releasing for free.

 

[fawny]

If they have done work to port it why should they not receive some kind of payback ? As long as they give credit where due and abide by any licence, I see no problem. It is up to the user to donate if they wish to. Time is a precious commodity. They could have spent that time earning a guaranteed sum.

It is not as if they are just churning out dollar pieces of plastic and charging thirteen bucks a time. (Not that anybody would be stupid enough to pay that). They have invested their time and expertise to produce something of value - its called work in any other situation.

 

[icurafu]

The difference is in asking for a donation - fair enough. However, charging for something someone else created to be freeware - Kinda dodgy and not something that has been repeated in this community.

 

[don]

Well, A_SN tried to sell his gp2x port of my cave copter game... Needless to say that I wasn't happy with it. Since I'm german, I just drove over to him (he's french), and he surrendered. That's why you can play cave copter on the 2x for free.

 

[Parkydr]

It comes down to the license. If it's something like GPL, you'd have to release the source code, if you'd changed it.

 

[kevcal]

Guess it's down to licencing; but doesn't sound 'right' to charge for porting someone else's stuff..

 

[hal9000]

Generally, open-source software have a restrictive licence. Most of the time, it is GPL.

GPL does not theoretically prevent you from charging people for a game that you have ported, but, as you must provide the modified code and licence it under GPL, anyone who will buy it will be allowed to distribute it for free.

So, practically, you can ask to be paid 1000 euros to port a game, but once you will have distributed once, you will loose control on its distribution.

 

[___]

Well, A_SN tried to sell his gp2x port of my cave copter game... Needless to say that I wasn't happy with it. Since I'm german, I just drove over to him (he's french), and he surrendered. That's why you can play cave copter on the 2x for free.

LOL... invading other countries... awesome.

 

[Tobriand]

So, practically, you can ask to be paid 1000 euros to port a game, but once you will have distributed once, you will loose control on its distribution.

Well, to be fair, that does depend on the license of the content as much as the code. There's certainly a fair few examples of GPLed commercial software that still works because things like levels, graphics, music, and the rest not being under the same license as the code...

 

[A_SN]

Well, A_SN tried to sell his gp2x port of my cave copter game... Needless to say that I wasn't happy with it. Since I'm german, I just drove over to him (he's french), and he surrendered. That's why you can play cave copter on the 2x for free.

Worst part is, I knew he would try to do that, so I blocked one of the two paths to my house with a line of bags of sand, but he just drove through the other path . A chance I had only been wearing my white underpants for a week, you never know when you're going to have to wave an (improvised) white flag.

 

[senquack]

Well, A_SN tried to sell his gp2x port of my cave copter game... Needless to say that I wasn't happy with it. Since I'm german, I just drove over to him (he's french), and he surrendered. That's why you can play cave copter on the 2x for free.

Worst part is, I knew he would try to do that, so I blocked one of the two paths to my house with a line of bags of sand, but he just drove through the other path . A chance I had only been wearing my white underpants for a week, you never know when you're going to have to wave an (improvised) white flag.


There are some historians who now suggest minister Maginot had Turret's Syndrome

 

[skeezix]

To summarize..

1) Its usually shitty

2) It is sometimes common, and usually legit. (ie: GPL doesn't say they can't sell your code)

3) They usually get away with it -- sure, only takes one buyer to request the source, but he also has to know how to get it recompiled for free again

4) Sometimes its okay; if the porter does a pile of modifications, why not?

5) If you post your code as GPL, you know the risk.. see point (1) though

So yeah, usually its scumbags who do it.. but such is life. People sell bibles, too

jeff