Selling my version of Minetest

[Shredi]

Hi guys. May I sell my modified version of Minetest? I'm asking, because it's opensource. I don't know if I may or not. Thanks for your time :)

[runs]

Of course, I mean the engine, but it is mandatory to publishing the code if you change portions of the code, or a link to the original if it is the same.

https://opensource.guide/legal/

[twoelk]

you may sell any version of Minetest if you stick to the rules.

Please do study the license, that is the file that includes the rules and maybe links to further information

Yet expect to be frowned upon by many OpenSoftware zealots as doing what is within legal boundaries may still be considered unethical or unfair or not according to the moral of the high preasts of the great opensource movement in all it's colorfull varieties.

so

although legal expect some hate

of course if you do make profit please consider still helping the project for the benefit of all.
So if you happen to develope some cool code or nice assets please share whatever seems fit.

good luck with your project

[PolySaken]

because of the restrictive license minetest uses it's basically impossible, since you have to make all your code free to use.
this means you can't put it behind a paywall.
you can license your own subgame or mod however you like, but they wont let you put it anywhere that relates officially to minetest.

[Wuzzy]

If you are ever going to actually sell this thing, can you post a link? I'm just curious.

[AmyMoriyama]

Well, the previous replies covered it pretty good. My two cents is thus:
You could probably make your own "game" files with your own mods (be care of mod licences as well) and make that part paid and then use some installer to put the free parts and the paid parts together into a working game. Of course, there is nothing stopping a customer from just copying all your paid stuff and torrenting it. You might be better off offering the stuff for free but being pretty open about accepting donations to continue work on it.

[PolySaken]

if you really wanted to ship closed-source games, you could obfuscate your lua code. With this method you wouldn't be allowed to supply anything derived from any part of pretty much all minetest mod/games (as they are open source), and you wouldn't be able to post your mod on the forums or content DB.

This can be done in a few ways, none of which actually prevent reverse engineering, but they do make it harder.

One is to substitute all variable and function names that aren't from MT with random alphanumerics (making sure each one begins with a letter) once you're finished writing the code.
Another is to use loadstring("some_byte_sequence") after converting your entire code into bytecodes with something like this:

Code: Select all

code = code:gsub(".", 
	function(ch)
			 return "\\" .. ch:byte() 
	end) 
	or code .. "\""

This method might have scoping issues however.

There is no way to fully obfuscate your code, so as to make it impossible to reverse engineer.