
Ask HN: About to publish my very first open-source project; what should I know? - Razengan
I&#x27;ve been working on some games over the past few years, and although they&#x27;re still far from release, I&#x27;ve ended up with a game engine that I think might be useful to other independent devs. It&#x27;s a library; just code, with no editor app or art&#x2F;sound assets.<p>I&#x27;m especially looking for advice on the non-coding side of things, like:<p>• What kind of license should it have? Should it have one at all?<p>• Do I need to do anything to ensure that I won&#x27;t ever get &quot;locked out&quot; of my own work? i.e. by someone repackaging the code under their own brand and charging money for it, or worse, preventing me from using the name&#x2F;code in my own games?<p>I&#x27;m just keeping in mind some of the horror stories I&#x27;ve read from other devs. Or am I worrying too much at this point?<p>I have no legal representation in the US (or anywhere). I&#x27;m just a &quot;bedroom coder&quot; trying to make the kind of games I&#x27;ve always wanted to play and contribute to something along the way, while hopefully generating some interest for my future projects.
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sevensor
I think you'll be lucky to have the kind of problems you're worried about. A
lot of open source projects have one developer and no users. (Which is fine,
we all have itches to scratch.) Definitely pick a license. Permissive if
adoption (particularly commercial) is more important to you than reciprocity,
copyleft otherwise.

The other thing to remember, if your work is any good, is that you have a big
head start on doing whatever it is you're doing that makes your engine better
than others, and you probably have even better ideas in the pipe. Open-
sourcing this project is an expression of confidence in your own ability to
come up with something better in the unlikely event that worse comes to worst
and the project somehow gets hijacked.

One word of warning -- there are probably more open source game engines out
there than anything else, including actual open-source games. Your project has
a lot of competition and may not gather a lot of attention unless you work
hard to sell it.

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austincheney
I personally prefer CC0-1.0 for software licenses.

> Do I need to do anything to ensure that I won't ever get "locked out" of my
> own work?

Yes, you must maintain positive control over your application and all its
trademarks. Sometimes people can feel emotional or involved with an
application, particularly if they believe they cannot live without it. As the
owner you dictate the direction of the application. This will mean telling
people _no_. When people get sad because they cannot have something they want
from _your_ application they have four choices:

* fork your application and maintain it on their own

* abandon the software

* shut up and take it

* do the requested work on the desired feature and write a pull request

Never, ever, let other people dictate the direction or terms of _your_
software or your time.

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zammmo
Really don't worry about it, it's very rare for an open source project to get
any traction.

Definitely pick a license though -
[https://choosealicense.com/](https://choosealicense.com/)

