1. They aren't legally obligated to share their own source code/etc just because they take what others are offering for free.

2. The second point has some merit.....devs should at least be nice and give some donation for thier use of such stuff(though they don't have to if they don't feel like it.)

SO WHAT? Again, I defend your legal right to be an arsehole and total idiot but it doesn't mean I encourage it or that being nice and doing the right thing shouldn't be encouraged. Or that people or companies shouldn't be criticized for being uncooperative asshole leeches. I'm trying to be nice to my neighbor and clean up the environment I live in, and I'm *glad* the law doesn't demand this of me.

Legally this, legally that, I don't really give a fuck. Laws are just the bare minimum we apparently need to get along without chaos (and they even fail at that all too often). There's much more to being a socially applaudable entity than just following the letter of the law (and honestly I think there are enough stupid laws that following them isn't even necessary).

Legally, GOG didn't have to be a DRM free store. You know, they could've joined the others in the game to "protect" their and their parters' secrets/brand/magic sauce/whateverthefuck... with DRM. I'm glad GOG realized this is not necessary!

Legally, I could go to the church's "bread queue" (where they hand off food for the poor), even though I'm not poor. You know. I'm pretty sure most people would (rightfully) criticize me for that, if they knew.

I don't want a world where we need to *force* people and companies to be nice by using laws, I want a world where being nice is the default (and expected) thing to do. Laws are best left for resolving conflict when things get heated.

And I want to live in a society where we can make progress by collaborating & building upon others' work instead of this nonsense where a ridiculous amount of time and energy is spent reinventing the wheel (badly, and then suffering the consequences) because companies are obsessed with "protection" and cannot collaborate. People are left with products that break and cannot be fixed without unreasonable amount of effort because of all the secret sauce. etc. etc. It's a massive waste of our planet's already limited resources.

As for games, getting them DRM-free is just the tip of the iceberg. Ideally we can build upon them like people have built upon the source code of Doom and many other titles that were released with source code. That way we can port them and run them on any platform we like, fix bugs that the developer doesn't have time/money to fix, improve graphics, improve performance, improve compatibility, add features, etc. etc. etc. Most of this isn't

A lot of the tools I use today to make gaming enjoyable for me are open source. Why not Galaxy? Because secret sauce and brand and blah blah protect this protect that because legally yada yada. What a farce.

If someone's going to tell me that I should put my money where my mouth is and support open source by donations, the logical conclusion should be to also stop purchasing games from GOG because that supports the development of a proprietary gaming client. (And then I'd have more money to donate...) Actually, that's probably wise?

Well, you could maybe pay GOG to make Galaxy open source. Give them an incentive to do what you want.

Where do you see that option on GOG's site? Right, it's not there. Get real..

Maybe try contacting gog with an email on their business account(if one had the money and pull, that is)? :\

I admit I an not knowledgalbe about this. but seems to me that using open source software for a storefront would make someone hacking into customers accounts much easier.

And one problem Ihave with the Open Source fanatics: they seem to think it's morally wrong for anybody to make money off a computer program they wrote. As a free market kind of guy, I could not disagree more.

I'm somewhat knowledgeable about this (having been coding for 20 years, doing it for a living). There are places where obscurity and obfuscation (including keeping the source a secret) could slow down an attacker, but this is not the case with the web where anyone can observe the traffic in and out of their browser. The API endpoints are essentially public. If it's not secure, then withholding the source code for the client isn't going to help. You seem to misunderstand them.

Related wishlist entries you might want to vote for:
- Open source the Galaxy client
- Publish Galaxy protocol specification

I'm quite sure if GOG would have developed Galaxy from scratch as open source we already would have a Linux version from the community, maybe not supporting all features, but working.

Indeed, when you intend to make the client mandatory at some point or use it to spy on your users it might not be the best idea to make it open source. ;)

That's interesting, but makes it even more disappointing that they still haven't created a Linux version.

You DO know some will get that these are subtle hits at gog, right? o.0

Also unfounded/etc.

Sure I can get real. The chances are very slim. Likely you won't be able to collect enough money to pay them to open source their client. And if you don't pay them it's even less likely they will listen to you. You would need a compelling argument, why it's to their advantage to do it, but the arguments for it aren't very strong. You probably can't convince them. Therefore, it most probably won't happen. The whole question is so hypothetical - the proposed step is rather unusual in the commercial world and I would have expected to hear arguments why the situation with GOG is different first. Speaking from a customers perspective, I'm not even convinced it would be better for the customers if Galaxy was open source.

Real enough?

You don't pay for GOG Galaxy though?

But I already voted for those. And over 7000 people have voted for the former. So what exactly would be holding back GOG from opening the source? Is it because of protectionism? It doesn't exactly seem that way, considering how sloppy and slapdash many things are.

Is it because it would cause mass redundancies in the staff and that could deeply effect the status of GOG's business status? That seems possible.

Is it because laws of the state would be unable to handle such a project in the mix of commerce. Possible.

It will be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvnOXIiJrMw

If you're referring to what he said at 2:45.. no, that's too vague. What does he mean by "the whole system"? It does not need to refer to Galaxy. It can refer to whatever platform integration layer he's talking about. For all we know it could be a library that talks to Galaxy.

What about the services that Galaxy enables, like cloud saves and achievements and network play? Aren't they part of the client? Couln't it be that GOG licensed that code and cannot include it in the code release, and thus would have to isolate those parts?