What if Space Empires VI went Open Source?

[Gandalf Parker]

I was really hoping that Aaron would take the added player-base gained by taking SEV to a shelfware, marketing, advertising publisher.. and return to Shrapnel or some other online and publicity publisher for version VI. I would think by then he would be tired of the continual fights over numbers sold and long waits for profit checks which go hand in hand with that type of publisher. But I guess that letting Strat1st buy him out was another way of handling that.

[Urendi Maleldil]

A project can be open source and still be commercial. "Free and Open Source" means free as in "speech," but not necessarily free as in "beer."

[Phoenix-D]

Urendi Maleldil said:
A project can be open source and still be commercial. "Free and Open Source" means free as in "speech," but not necessarily free as in "beer."

Not unless the images or some other file are closed-source, or you aren't allowed access to the code until you buy the product.

[Gandalf Parker]

Thats not true. There are open source projects that sell their stuff on discs. Sure it can be dug up and downloaded for nothing by people who will look for it but the CDs still sell well. Not to mention the other merchandising such as tshirts, mugs, mousepads, posters (which I still want to see SEV do some of)

For example, the Debian Linux Operating System is that way. Open source and free to download but sells the discs.

[Atrocities]

"What if Space Empires VI went Open"

Never going to happen.

[capnq]

David E. Gervais said:Q1: "Will SFI go with a different Developer for SE6" (Would be a really stupid decision but they have made worse)

Q2: "Did Aaron sell the Space Empires Franchise because he feels he has done it to death and wants to move on? (Remember he has been doing this for over 10 years now)

I believe both of these answers are "no". Aaron has stated in at least one interview something to the effect that selling the rights to SE V to Strategy First will make doing SE VI possible. (I will look for the source of this later, unless someone else posts a link to it first.)

Edit: Here's the quote, from http://www.firingsquad.com/news/news...searchid=11601 :

FiringSquad: First, why did you wish to sell Malfador to Strategy First?

Aaron Hall: Well, I didn't actually sell the company, just the rights to the games. Strategy First was going to sell them all for us anyway, and with this we get a much better deal and funding for future game development. This deal means that there will most likely be a Space Empires VI.

Regarding SE going open source: the number of open source projects that actually produce something compared to the number of projects that are started is a depressingly small percentage. Open source projects need a rare combination of factors to succeed, even when they're not trying to turn a profit.

When was the last time anyone has heard anything from the volunteer group that was trying to design the successor to PBW? I don't even want to do a search on that, because I think the answer will depress me.

[Fyron]

The PBW2 project stopped mostly because they had no idea what they would have to do to support SE5. It's hard to design a support system around a game you know nothing about. I dunno when (if?) it will start back up now that SE5 is coming out, though.

[Captain Kwok]

It turns out we started the project 3 years too early...

[Urendi Maleldil]

One big example is Red Hat Linux. They charge for service, support, and proprietary software. But the core app is Open Source.

[boran_blok]

I would charge for the app, but keep it open source. with some fancy DRM stuff (activation-key-esque) this would be possible.

This offers the best of borth worlds, You have to buy it, and it's open source. the key-thinggie will probably be the hard thing to design and implement.