

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

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.<p>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?<p>I could contribute to an already existing project, but I feel that at my current level I would just mess up their codebase.
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manuscreationis
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!

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jonafato
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.

