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Source Code Included?

A topic by Division By Zero created Mar 08, 2021 Views: 1,079 Replies: 10
Viewing posts 1 to 8
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I was just thinking, how often is source code included in projects at itch.io? Wouldn't it be kind of nice if source code was included (no matter if the game is sold or free)? Or is this the wrong platform for this? What do you think about it? I have seen projects here including source code but most don't (perhaps I'm mistaken). Pro's and con's?

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Pro - Provides new ways to learn

Con - Copy Copy Copy

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I agree! But about the copy part: people would still have to replace lots of things about the assets. Would they really do it? I don't know. I mean, it would take a while... and who would want to copy things like that? Perhaps I am a bit naive, haha! :)

Deleted 3 years ago
Moderator

Wouldn’t it be kind of nice if source code was included (no matter if the game is sold or free)?

Well, that would mean anyone can play the project for free, so it wouldn’t really work for sold games.

As for completely free games, it would be nice if everything was open-source, but at the end of the day, it’s not as simple as uploading all the source code somewhere.

True!

There are cases where it's difficult or impractical to open source a game, e.g. if it includes assets or code that are licensed (so sometimes you will see the engine for a game open sourced but not any of the content), or maybe the code is really messy and I don't want the world to see it, or I'm still grasping onto the faint hope of making a living or gas money from this stuff. Anyway, I'm all for open source and I use a lot of it (if I make another 3D game for myself, it'll be with Godot), but rather then tell others they should open source their work, I think it's better to lead by example and open source your work to encourage others. There's nothing to stop you from uploading code or projects to itch.io, but for source code I'd suggest deploying something like github so that people can browse, fork, and submit improvements.

This topic does bring to mind it might be nice to have a github link option in Profile, similar to the existing field for twitter links. Not a huge priority, but I would like people to visit my github (there's some old Unity stuff there that still might be useful).

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I like this idea!

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OP did not specify whether the source is also free. In the case of free software, freedom 2 and 3 would allow people to redistribute the game to others for free, which makes it impractical to sell games and any software in general.

But if you sell the source with the game and restrict the licensee, this becomes completely practical. It won’t be considered free software or open-source anymore, but “source-available”.

You can view the source code of any unity game with dnspy.

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All PICO8 games have the code publicly visible IIRC.

Just pen the cart at the lexaloffle site and at the bottom of the game you can view the code.