I'm not going to sign up because their marketing pitch for making the engine "free[sic]" doesn't specify if they mean it is actually free software or just gratis + some proprietary source code you get a copy of.
Do you know which is the case? My hunch is it's probably the latter because they ask for royalties.
Let me rephrase - why would they lose part of their money - much money? I can't see what would be their profit on releasing UE under open source license. Moreover, what would be profit of others except the right of copying their code?
> I can't see what would be their profit on releasing UE under open source license.
They have already forgone a lot of potential revenue by allowing anyone to get the source code for the engine (under a proprietary license) without paying anything. The only thing left is to design a non-royalty revenue model that can work with a free software license. This has already been solved.
> Moreover, what would be profit of others except the right of copying their code?
Being able to release free software games using UE. Creating a community around UE that allows for innovation by that community. Porting to new platforms by that community. A show of good will to the free software community. There are many good reasons, but they all come about from giving people software freedom.
> They have already forgone a lot of potential revenue by allowing anyone to get the source code for the engine (under a proprietary license) without paying anything.
They're making to pay only those who has profits from using their engine. Those who has no profits (i.e. less than $3000) wouldn't buy it anyway.
> Being able to release free software games using UE.
You can do that now.
> Creating a community around UE that allows for innovation by that community.
There is a community.
> Porting to new platforms by that community.
You can do that now.
> There are many good reasons, but they all come about from giving people software freedom.
I am for free software, but I don't like ideology in name of ideology.
