Distribution Making FOSS Games With GMS2?

[Cofefe]

This may seem like a weird question, since GMS2 is proprietary software, but I was just curious: Is it possible to make a completely *free* game with GMS2? I'm thinking GPL free. The YYG License seems to indicate that the Publisher is the owner of any Publisher Property, and we can license it pretty much any way we want. But Publisher Property is created using YYG Property, so would that conflict with the GPL? I also admit that the GM compiler is something of a black box to me; I'm not sure what goes in and what comes out. Like I said, just curious. Look forward to your thoughts.

 

[Roldy]

I don't see anything stopping you from distributing your .yyz project file and associate files. This would be open sourcing your game and you can have any sort of copyleft license associated with that file/files. You can upload the whole project to github like normal and open source it. Done.

Anyone with GMS could compile, and modify the project and possibly distribute within the limitations of your copyleft license. Anyone without GMS could still do whatever they wanted with your project files; look at them, modify them, etc...

In general, distributing binaries alone (or at all) is really counter to FOSS.

In other words yes, you can GPL your content/property as is. It has nothing to do with GMS. You can't distribute or copyleft GMS or any YYG properties. There is plenty of open source software that has close source dependencies; those dependencies simply are not distributed or packaged as open source.

 

[Mercerenies]

To add to what Roldy already said (which I 100% agree with), there is plenty of precedent for this. The first example that comes to mind is Microsoft Excel. There are tons of useful Excel macros on GitHub that are open source. They're all but worthless if you don't have (proprietary) Excel, but the macro itself is FOSS.