I don't think there was ever any hint of an attempt to bring in money. I'm not entirely sure why the author choose to keep it closed source, maybe worries about others seeing "bad" code or something, but this is simply a case of someone no longer having time for their labor of love, not someone failing to monetize

Most of the discussion was decades ago. I've been playing around with Orbiter since it was new (and back then the hardware reqs to run were very expensive, not so much today). (edited: to emphasize, I've seen a lot and read a lot and played a lot, but am not an authoritative member of the orbiter community, none of this is private nor it is official, and its greatly summarized)

The base game is workable but it really depends on 3rd party addons to do your planning and calculations and have somewhere to take off from and something to fly and somewhere to fly to.

The 3rd party addons were often FOSS licensed and despite much noise about the glories of FOSS, never got much public help, typically. A 100 dev sized project benefits greatly if a 10 dev company releases it under a FOSS license and 500 people step forward to help. A 2 dev sized project where nobody steps up to help the original dev for some decades doesn't benefit much from FOSS despite in theory "it could have happened".

There was a fear that the game being only playable with 3rd party mods, and FOSS being famous for forking, the overall project would die if the overworked single individual 3rd party devs were smacked with having to work against uncountable forked versions the 3rd party devs may have never seen or even have hardware to run (like a port to a phone maybe). The whole project can only move as fast as the slowest dev if its only usable in toto as a flotilla. Its not a game with DLC, its more like a API with a huge collection of compatible software that'll only remain compatible if nothing changes.

If you're familiar with minecraft or rimworld or similar heavily modded games, imagine if you took "everything" out of those games and put it all into addons such that they were essentially unplayable without the addons. Like imagine if vanilla MC didn't have mobs or tools or blocks, it just rendered steve in an empty 3d world.

So if FOSS didn't supercharge development, it would be useless to the overall project because pragmatically nothing happened despite the relicensing work, and if it did supercharge development, it would kill the project by wiping out the 3rd party devs whom are very handwavy the limiting factor.

Ironically as "complete" or "finished" software the core project doesn't or didn't need devs anyway. The "cool stuff" all happened in mods and addons. Want a new MFD? That's an addon. Want a new vehicle? That's an addon. Want a new system, like the complete model of an electrical system for some Mars thing I remember a decade ago? That's an addon. Want new planets and solar systems and stations and satellites? That's an addon. The base system is kind of a a window manager (yes I know its not "a window manager" per C++ code, but I mean conceptually it herds the cats of addons so they don't step on each other and generally cooperate and render to the screen). The base system needs significant development as the graphics APIs are two decades out of date, but for two decades there wasn't much to do that wasn't being done in mods anyway.

If everything is an addon its not clear what the base system could evolve into anyway. You could add multiplayer and commo, but that's best done in an addon. You could add mission video recording but that's best done by the video card and OS. I guess you could tidy up some addon API issues causing mass incompatibility issues so would it be worth it?

Much as the author originally feared, a dozen or two posts into the forum FOSS announcement and there's already talk about branches and forks and competing strategies for conversion to 64 bit that'll kill the 3rd party addons and mods that made the game usable, so the FOSS announcement is probably more an announcement of the death of the project than some kind of rebirth.

It’s MIT licensed, so there’s nothing stopping someone from getting it, making major changes, and releasing it as proprietary software for consoles and make a lot of money in the process.

This is why I’m always sad when I see a project opening as MIT instead of GPL.

Not to be picky, but the GPL would not stop someone "making major changes, and releasing it as proprietary software for consoles and make a lot of money in the process."

The only difference is that they would be obligated to release the source code. Given that the list of folk who can compile for consoles is very limited, this would not be an existential burden for them.

Indeed, even if they targeted a common development platform, like a PC or Mac, they would still be able to offer lots of value, and easily sell copies if there was a market for that. The vast majority of players would happily pay $49 for a compiled version of the game rather than go to the effort of compiling themselves.

In other words, the GPL and MIT licenses are orthogonal to making money - making money selling compiled GPL programs is not hard - assuming the program has some value to someone.

> the GPL would not stop someone "making major changes, and releasing it as proprietary software for consoles and make a lot of money in the process.""

It absolutely would stop anyone from releasing it as proprietary software. You cannot have GPL'ed proprietary software. You can sell GPL code, you can use it in proprietary platforms, but by definition the software itself cannot be proprietary. If it's GPL'ed, other people can sell it, modify it, distribute it, and use it for their own purposes.

>> You cannot have GPL'ed proprietary software.

I get that, hence me saying "they would be obligated to release the source code." My point is that has little or no effect on the actual sales of the program (since the parent post was primarily about money.)

There are reasons to prefer GPL over MIT, and other reasons to prefer MIT over GPL, but money isn't one of them...

>(since the parent post was primarily about money)

I don't think so, it was about making money through selling it as proprietary software.

I understood the key word was "proprietary" in the comment you refer to, with the side effect of also "making lots of money". I might have misunderstood.

You absolutely cannot ship GPL code on a console. The NDA license you sign with MS, sony, nintendo for their APIs are fundamentally incompatible with the GPL and prohibit code release.

Plus, you can open source the code but leave the textures, models, maps, whatever else as proprietary. iD software already did this with the source code of Doom, you can read it but unless you want to reskin the whole game, it's entirely unplayable.

> The only difference is that they would be obligated to release the source code.

Upon request, and it just can't be less accessible than the binaries. You can charge for the source - just not more than what the binaries cost.

> the GPL would not stop someone "making major changes, and releasing it as proprietary software ...

> The only difference is that they would be obligated to release the source code.

If they release the source code it's not proprietary software anymore - by definition - and GPL achieved its goal.

> the GPL and MIT licenses are orthogonal to making money

The GPL allows selling modified (FOSS) versions with extended contents e.g. artwork, music.

But it also allows the original author to do so without succumbing to the competition from companies that leverage their dominant market position.

With MIT freeloaders win.

it doesn't matter that much in case of games, because the code is not very useful without assets. famously multiple quakes were released as GPL software and it didn't really cost id software anything in lost sales. art and levels were NOT released as GPL.

i'd say MIT license wouldn't impact the sales outcome at all.

Sure, but on the other hand it's MIT so I'm actually willing to look at the source code.

Why wouldn't you be willing to look at GPL source code? That'd be writing off all of Linux as just the tip of the iceberg.

Why wouldn't you be willing to look at GPL code?

Is it just GPL, or strong copyleft in general?

Do you intend to release modified versions without releasing corresponding source code?

Why should an author want to provide you with the source code, just so you can deny that privilege to others?

In my opinion (opinion, so I could be wrong), MIT and friends offer more freedom. I have a strong aversion to the concept of copyleft and usually try to avoid it for fear of "tainting" anything I touch after. In principle, where it makes sense, I rather like the idea of the sort of freedom claimed by GPL advocates but in practice I prefer to allow people to do whatever they want.

To answer your questions, no, I don't intend (or tend, for that matter) to takes modified versions without corresponding source code. It's not about what I do it's about what they say I can and can't do.

I don't know why an author should. I'm not spending any time agonizing over what they should be doing. I don't understand why you threw that second half of the sentence in there as if the two are necessarily linked.

>This is why I’m always sad when I see a project opening as MIT instead of GPL.

Counterpoint, many companies won't allow GPL software even if eventually it'd be open sourced again.

I personally wouldn't mind a for sale version of this game updated to run on my phone. Even if it's 15$ or so. Without a profit motive the number of people who would bother to continue development is much lower.

Your also free to fork it , make the ultimate version and GPL it

> software that doesn't brings any money

Orbiter never tried to bring in any money. It has always been a one-physicist pet project (first version published in 2000), closed-source albeit very open to all kind of mods and featuring a vibrant community.