Re: [pygame] pygame for commercial use

[andrew baker <failrate@gmail.com>]

This is the pygame mailing list, right?  We're mainly developing games
and media applications.  Why are you taking this issue to such radical
lengths?

In a position as a game maker, you know people are going to be ripping
your games off if they're any good.  However, it is much less likely
that a company is going to rip off your code.  Even if your code is so
outstanding that it is worthy of theft by a company who would be
willing to risk losing all of their investment by violating copyright
laws, it is doubtful that they could make a "fun" game any more than
you could make a "fun" game.

This is not like making a functional application like a spreadsheet or a codec.

Game coding is art and craft combined.  This isn't to sound pedantic
or prissy.  All I'm trying to point out is that:

A) Regardless of which license you use, your own copyrights are much
stronger, because they are actually supported by the government, in
most countries.

B) Even if someone ripped off your game engine, enhanced it, and
released a game with this new engine, the fact is that with such a
clear and easy to use language as Python with libraries like Pygame,
that making an original engine is not particularly difficult in the
first place.  Whatever progress you've made, another could surely
achieve with enough work, and we all build from the same roots.  Sure,
it's galling that they short-cut to get to your level, but you're
better for having gone through your progress, and they suck.

So, yes, choosing the right license is probably very important, and we
are fortunate to have a large number to choose from, however, none of
them is ideal for every situation, and you don't have to use any of
them if you choose not to.



BTW, don't tell me operating a commerce server is trivial and uses no
resources.  Bandwidth ain't free, and neither is a good sysadmin.