There are a number of very well made open source games. TripleA, TTDOpen, Battle of Wesnoth, etc., etc. I have trouble understanding why GOG.com does not host these games for their customers. Yes they are free, but GOG hosts a number of free games that are frankly terrible. I don't see why the well made open source games seem to be overlooked.

Uh.

http://www.gog.com/gamecard/warsow

Technically, there are quite a few games on GOG which had their source codes released; Jagged Alliance 2, Arx Fatalis, Duke Nukem 3D & Shadow Warrior (same engine)...

theres also no need to host them for exactly that reason - this aint indieDB. I agree that there are some great open sourced games out there (free orion and ufo aftermath being two of my own favourites), but the majority of users here are well versed in such things (i would think) and a free game you can effectively get free anywhere is hardly likely to attract more users from GOG's point of view.

Anyways, hope my post didnt come across as short or sharp - bit late here. Thanks for reminding me about UFO aftermath (on a tangent) - havent played that in ages now!

I don't think GOG need to host them. Hosting them means they need to provide support for those games aren't they ? As most of open source games already supported by community of their own (on their own website), I think it is not necessarily needed for GOG to host them here.

If GOG decided to host one of them, then so be it. But no need to force GOG to host all of open source games. I think they also have their own consideration.

Can you provide a list of open source games that you think it can be hosted here ?

GoG is a businness after all, it can be not profitable to host such games, all things considered.

I actually handle most of my open-source games through Desura, which already has most of the best open-source games, handles patching automatically and can run under both Windows and Linux. You can go to the website, click on the install button and then "Add to account" from the Desura client.

For GOG, hosting open-source games makes little business sense and their regular updates make maintaining them on GOG a bit of a pain. Putting it at its most cynical, there's no money to be made from them, and to be honest, I don't begrudge GOG this, especially when there's already a great alternative available.

this ^

You can find many opensource games, there are huge lists, also on wikipedia, about opensource games, engines and much more

I am of the mind that GOG should use the best version of a game whenever possible, including source ports, reimplementations, and fan-patches. While this may require diligence and support on GOG's part, it also means that the games sold by GOG can reach a wider audience because those games become better suited to modern systems and sensibilities. For example, System Shock 2 on GOG uses an unofficial patch that adds support for newer hardware and resolutions.


Right now, there is a couple of games on GOG's catalog that can be potentially paired with these fan-efforts:


Freespace 2 - SCP

Theme Hospital - CorsixTH

Arx Fatalis - Arx Libertatis

Call to Power II - Apolyton Source Code Project

Thief Gold & Thief II (The NewDark patch for System Shock 2 also works for these games.)

That would be a whole can of legal worms. The best we can, and should, expect from GoG is to sell the games as they were meant to be played back in the day. After all, GoG is a distributor, not a porting company.

Yeah...still, I wish for a world where the law and business practices are equal to the technology.

Legal reasons aside, there is also the problem of technology. If you buy a game with a source port, who is to offer support? The developer of the game who had nothing to do with the port? GoG who just assembled the pieces? The port developers who did it in their free time and never got paid for it? What about all those open source projects that get stuck in eternal beta? Would you ever actively sell anything containing unfinished code? What about code from dubious or downright illegal sources, like those unofficial patches for Thief and System Shock?

It's much easier for GoG to just sell the game in its original form and then point you over to the unofficial patches, ports and mods. They have aready done quite a few mod spotlights already and usually applying those is straight-forward enough. It's already great enough of GoG to get the games running on modern OSes, especially those the games were never meant to run on. All I really care about is that I'm not getting an inferior version of the game than some other release (unless of course there is good reason for it).

"GoG is a businness after all, it can be not profitable to host such games, all things considered."
What would make hosting these games any less profitable than the free games GOG already hosts? There is nothing stopping GOG from charging either. Given if they are available for free most would not be interested in paying much, but if there was some form of support and a small amount was charged some might pay it.

"It's already great enough of GoG to get the games running on modern OSes"
I'm not talking about mods as much as stand alone games.

"Legal reasons aside"
I am not a lawyer, but I have read the open source license used by sourceforge and I can't see any legal hurdles. Now, if you are talking about projects that are illegal b/c they use intellectual property that is protected, then you are right. there are a number of games that do not.

"their regular updates make maintaining them on GOG a bit of a pain"
I can see your point here. It would hold true for some new releases though.

"But no need to force GOG to host all of open source games"
Never said such a thing. Some open source games are absolute junk.

"the majority of users here are well versed in such things (I would think)"
The forum users or those who purchase games from GOG. I have several friends who purchase games from GOG and know little to nothing of it. They would likely enjoy exposure to the games enough that they would be happier with their GOG experience.

What this really all started with was me loading up one of the "FREE" games on GOG and finding it to be absolute trash. I was immediately thinking there are a number of open source games they could have hosted as one of their free "teasers" that would have been much better.

Because no-one would pay for a game that can be downloaded for free legally elsewhere, and charging for open-source titles would damage GOG's reputation. As someone else mentioned, GOG users are generally savvy enough to know that wholly open-source games are usually free (wholly in the sense that the assets too are under a copyleft licence, which would obviously exclude stuff like Doom and Quake).

The GPL does indeed allow commercial exploitation of software licenced under it, but the question is more whether such exploitation would be commercially viable. Productivity software and server software are something that are worth paying for on-call support for in a commercial environment. Games are not. 999 times out of 1000, a gamer will opt to just put up with problems instead of paying for the support, or they'll just go to the original project team for help.

Not to mention that assets are not always licensed under the GPL, or at least are not supposed to be. Assets should be distributed under an equivalent Creative Commons licence, which does not always permit commercial exploitation.