Suggestion for Far Future: Switch Away from Lua to Parrot

[Luiji]

Kikito:

I agree with your opinion. The open source aspect of LOVE games does make it attractive to a large, specific demographic of free software fanatics.

I researched GameMaker and decided that it sucked because it does not have cross-platforming (it only works on Windows from what I understand, and my main target is Linux).

Overall, I think that LOVE might do quite well as a unclosable source game engine. As free software gets more and more popular, so will probably LOVE. However, if the source is unclosable, then it might be good to relicense the engine under the GPL. This would target free software fanatics even more so. Here is a document at GNU that specifies reasons to go GPL instead of LGPL: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html.

[nevon]

Overall, I think that LOVE might do quite well as a unclosable source game engine. As free software gets more and more popular, so will probably LOVE. However, if the source is unclosable, then it might be good to relicense the engine under the GPL.

Seriously...

Closed source != hidden source

It is perfectly possible to make closed source games using Löve. All you have to do is put an "all rights reserved" clause in your license file. It's not possible (or at least not practical) to hide the source, but that has nothing to do with whether or not it's closed source.

[bartbes]

Why GPL? I mean zlib is as liberal as they get, really.

[Robin]

I think Luiji here just swept from “we should make closed (actually hidden) source games possible” to “death to closed source! only GPL allowed!” or something.

The problem with using GPL for LÖVE is that games are often packaged with LÖVE binaries, which means every game written for LÖVE should preferably be licensed GPL, lest it introduces distribution difficulties (not to mention legal problems). And we shouldn't force that. The LÖVE-devs have no right to decide about matters of licensing for lovers.

It's just like Nevon says: if you put up a notice for your game, declaring it to be closed-source (or even just not mentioning a license at all, which invokes standard copyright law), you can sue people for forking your game just as hard as Microsoft could sue people reverse-engineering Windows source code. Once again: closed ~= hidden (in case you understand Lua's comparison operators better than C's )

IANAL

One final word: I dislike how you talk about “free software fanatics”. In my opinion, fanaticism is always a bad thing, and fanatics are unfriendly and hurtful to a community. That's why I'm so glad I've rarely seen a fanatic (free software or otherwise) here. IMO, LÖVE (both as a project and as a community) should not strive to attract fanatics.

[Benamas]

the ability to pack a .love file directly onto the end of the love executable and distribute that (see: http://cod.mudmagic.com/gravmage.zip) effectively hides the source from anyone who isn't aware that it was developed with LOVE; once you know how it's done, it's easy enough to undo it but not completely trivial

[Luiji]

I didn't just switch from closed source to death to closed source, I have just been thinking of what is best for the LOVE community (as in getting more people to use it without disrupting people already here).

I suggested the GPL because it brings in another section of community, and since I had believed at the time of posting that making the source available as easy as unzipping the file made it no more then obscured source, I thought you might as well distribute it under the GPL.

However, I have been thinking of a few things:

• When embedding the resource into an executable it makes it generally like closed source, as it becomes almost as easy to decompile as a C++ game.
• Um...this next thing I just realized was illogical. I was going to say setting a password for the zip file would make it essentially closed source, then I remembered that LOVE would not be able to read it. I am glad I got that before posting!

[kikito]

LÖVE comes with its own license, if I remember correctly - how was it called, Lovely License? I forgot. I'm not a lawyer, but it seemed quite permissive. In any case, it wasn't enforced, right? Just "presented as a possible alternative" - so anyone can release their code on any way they want.

This kind of makes sense. I'm not sure the LÖVE authors would be legally allowed to enforce a determined license over all the games developed with LÖVE. After all, the binary file is separated from the lua files. It could be seen as, say, web browsing companies dictating the licenses of the webpages they render - I'm playing devil's advocate here, not saying that this is my view. As I said, I'm not a lawyer.

I'm all for opensource, but GPL ... well, sometimes it seems a bit drastic to me. Again, this is just my opinion. I tend to release my opensource code under MIT or BSD licenses. I like them because they are short and protect the liberties I personally care about.

To sum everything up, I'm pretty comfortable with the current state of things, scripting and licensing wise (Well, Robin knows that I don't like every single aspect of Lua, but I still like it).

Regards!

[bartbes]

The lovely public community license does not apply to love, it was a community project, love is licensed under zlib.
I do agree with you though, the zlib is pretty unrestrictive, allowing people to pretty much do what they want, isn't that the goal of love?

[Luiji]

I wouldn't know.

Well, I was just throwing the idea out there. I was mostly trying to think of a way to durastically increase the LOVE popularity so that my dream of a LOVE game working on everything would be fullfilled.

It appears the popular vote is against both Parrot and closed source. Time to let the idea rest in peace.

[Robin]

I was mostly trying to think of a way to durastically increase the LOVE popularity

Just pointing out here that enforcing GPL would not drastically increase popularity, because only a few people would say “Ah, LÖVE is nice, and it is open-source too! Wait a minute... it isn't GPL! I don't want to use a game engine closed source projects can profit from without opening up!” and those people would be fanatics. And as I pointed out before, those are not the kind of people you want in your community (unless it's a community of fanatics, but that's not what the LÖVE CLUB is).

Anyway, yeah, let's put this to rest.