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Old 08-21-2012, 04:08 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dracco View Post
While I don't know too much about the subject, I'm pretty sure releasing copies of the game to individuals makes it open source.
Not by a long mile. Source and binaries are quite different, and it requires a fair bit of work to reconstruct the former from the latter. Though, of course, a certain amount of insight can be gleaned from raw binaries in many cases. (Specifically, Java bytecode has richer metadata than x86 instructions, and there are likely to be a lot of juicy strings in there.)

More importantly, possible to do and legal to do are entirely separate. Windows, for example, is not open source, despite copies being released to individuals. That's because the EULA forbids attempting to reconstruct the source code, copying it for someone else to use, and so on.

Quote:
There's probably measures that can be taken to prevent revealing the source code but in the end someone will find a way to look at it.
There are, of course, lots of measures to take. How do you think commercial game companies have managed to release copies of their games to individuals for so long? Naturally, none of those measures are perfect, but the small Wyvern community is rather unlikely to have enough hackers with the combined skill and lack of ethics to release anything from their work. (Witness Kama, who very likely does have the skill, but is highly unlikely to breach agreements in that way.) So I'd think a moderate level of protection would be more or less enough.

Unfortunately, that would still be a few dozen (hundred?) hours more than R or anyone else can presently spend on the project. It probably won't happen, but a guy can dream....
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Jezrald is a Level 27 Halfling Archer; my other alts are all below 20.