Saxon wrote:I don't see why anyone would want to license Hammer in its present state though. Anyway, income from licensing should primarily be derived from the game engine itself, I don't see how people will "make money" at the expense of Valve if Hammer were open source.
As a Source Engine licensee you probably get a lot of code in relation to the tools.
It is important because if Valve did not do so you would be constrained by their software.
Also, depending on the type of Open Source License, It could potentially allow people the freedom to resell it.
Here,
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/categoryFor instance here is the MIT License.
Notice it lets you basically do whatever you want so long as you include the text SOMEWHERE in the project.
This could include making a major competing Source Engine level editor.
Open Source Initiative OSI - The MIT License:Licensing
The MIT License
Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.
Lastly, We must all understand that the tools for Source are directly attached to it.
Code inside of Hammer is related to Source Engine Code, SDK Tools are run "in-Engine" (Particle/Commentary).
So giving this away would also require modifications to make sure the primary Engine code, The same code they don't want you to have for free, is hidden.
Edit:
Thought i would clarify on Hammer being related to Engine code.
Rather it is related to the Compile tools and I'm sure other hidden bits that they would like us to not have for free.
My words stand for the "in-engine" tools.