Crazy software development business model

[Thomas Mondoshawan Tate]

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Hey guys, I just had an epiphany on a possible way to develop software, and
I'd like to see what you all think about it.

After looking around at various gaming sites and companies, I noticed a
slight trend of releasing engine source code after the game had become less
than profitable for the company that produced it.

This sparked an idea: why not release the raw game engine code as
open-source immediately after developing it in-house, on something like
BitKeeper or SourceForge under a slightly different license other than the
GPL (ex: you can hack on it for non-profit stuff, but as soon as you want a
commercial application for it, gotta buy a license)? This would allow the
game core to be cross-platform -- if you want it to run on your new Whizbang
ZXY 1024, just port the sourcecode.

When we get to market with the actual product, all we'd really be selling
would be the datafiles that the game core needs to play with, while
supplying prebuilt binaries for the major platforms out there on the
distribution medium. This also adds a bit of replayability to the game,
since now that it's open-sourced, it's possible to modify the game.

Well, whaddya think? Doable or doomed to failure?

--=20
Thomas "Mondoshawan" Tate
phoenix@psy.ed.asu.edu
http://tank.dyndns.org

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