Ask HN: Will my game benefit from being open source?

3 points by Banekin 14 years ago | 2 comments

I've been coding for about two years. At this point I can more or less hack together the game I want, but the code won't be very efficient. It occurred to me that I could open source the game, forcing me to confront my own limitations.

Here's the part I have trouble with. Ideally I'd like to get compensation for my work, and if the game is in paid app form (Android), is open source a good idea at all? Is there a way for me to protect my app while still making the code available?

I could contribute to an already existing project, but I feel that at my current level I would just mess up their codebase.

manuscreationis 14 years ago |

I would recommend, at the very least, trying to contribute to an open source project first, so you can get a sense of how to collaborate with other developers (You don't really mention if you have professional or just personal experience, so i'm assuming the latter). It's actually a very difficult thing, to give up control of your project and place it part ways in the hands of others, and so you might want to experience being on the "Community" side of that fence first.

Just my 2 cents on the issue.

As for how to protect your IP in an open source project, I'm not entirely sure, but I would imagine the right licensing scheme would go a long way, but I'll leave speculation on that to the folks who are more familiar with the ins and outs of the various flavors of open source licensing that exist.

Otherwise, good luck on your game!

jonafato 14 years ago |

To me, it sounds like you'd want to take on a mentor / partner for some sort of profit share. If you describe the game a bit, you might find a few people around here that are willing to help you out.