Software: Free vs Open Source
The aim of this project is to reduce developers' costs in building their video games. Therefore, providing a free tool with an Open Source philosophy is an ideal solution.
The concept of free software was born in the mid-1980s when Richard M. Stallman, a researcher at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), observed that by the time he joined the institute in 1971, the idea of software ownership had become established. In 1984, he conceived the idea of the GNU Project and founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in 1985, drafting the foundational document of the community: the GNU Manifesto, which can be consulted, with updates and clarifications, on the official website [14].
GNU is a recursive acronym that stands for "G(NU) N(o) U(nix)" [15], and it was used to name the project's first practical goal: to create an operating system different from the then-relevant UNIX (proprietary software). This code granted users the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, modify, and improve it, creating a community around it. Since then, the FSF defines a program as free software if it grants users four essential freedoms:
- Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose [16].
- Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works and change it so it does what you want. Access to the source code is a necessary condition for this [16].
- Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies to help others [16].
- Freedom 3: The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. This allows the entire community to benefit from the modifications. Access to the source code is a necessary condition for this [16].
A program being considered free software does not mean it cannot be commercialized. If software were published with a license that restricted these freedoms, it would no longer be considered free by the Free Software Foundation. Any user, whether individual or corporate (such as a company), can obtain copies of free software, and regardless of how they do so (for free or for a fee), they must always have the freedom to copy, modify, and even sell copies of the software.
Despite this philosophy, the message of the free software movement, seen as radical by many software companies, led these companies to reject it because their main goal was not to provide a body of knowledge to the community but to make money. This led, in 1997, to a group of movement leaders, including computer scientists and writers Eric S. Raymond and Bruce Perens, coming together to reverse the negative perception that many people and institutions had of free software. They concluded that it was necessary to create a foundation distinct from the FSF that promoted free software with a more practical approach. Thus, in 1998, the Open Source Initiative (OSI) was born, advocating for 10 criteria that a license must meet to be considered open source.
Copyleft Software
The numerous advances observed in the last centuries in various fields of science and arts led society to create tools to protect creators and their works. Thus, the concept of copyright © emerged in the Anglo-Scottish Union in the 18th century, a term that today indicates who holds the rights to exploit a work, who has property rights over it, and therefore can benefit from its reproduction. Copyright (represented by the © symbol) is not always held by the author, as they may transfer exploitation rights to others.
In the 1980s, within the free software movement and associated with a General Public License created by Richard Stallman (the GNU GPL v1 of 1989), a term emerged: copyleft, a play on words around copyright (*) intended to defend the following principle: "anyone who redistributes the software, with or without changes, must pass on the freedom to make further copies and changes" [17]. From a legal standpoint, copyleft prevents individuals from taking advantage of open code usage and modification to create proprietary final software [18].
The opposite of "right" is "left." In contrast to advocates of proprietary software who want to use copyright to restrict users' freedom, free software advocates use copyleft to ensure it. To add copyleft to a license, copyright must first be included.
(*) Copyleft is the opposite of copyright, which in English means 'author's right'. In this case, it uses the terms 'left' and 'right,' but also the participle of "leave" (left), translated as 'left.'