Neoaxis goes Open Source?

http://www.neoaxis.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=0&t=7766

Statement by the lead developer... would be a cool thing.

Honestly, I don't know if that is a good idea. At least the part where he talks about open source boosting contributions, which is definitely not the case! Yes, open source can help building a community of developers, but it isn't guaranteed to. Most people won't bother to contribute their changes back upstream, or make changes in the first case. Filing bug reports is, in most cases, easier, so that's what happens. You also shouldn't forget about the fact that you need to know the code base you are working on before you can do changes, and if it's a larger code base, people will most likely not dare to touch it (see also; GCC. Lot's of old die hard old school guys working on it since years, but essentially zero contributions from newer guys because the code base is a mess and there is more or less no documentation).

Maybe, but I don't have my crystal sphere yet, so I can't tell.
Still, better than an A8-like state, where nothing happens at all.

Agreed, I was just throwing in my two cents because the developer sounded like he was expecting something that, from my experience, rarely happens. I wouldn't depend on open source working is all I'm saying.

He is expecting feedback, so feel free to give

Solid open source are :
Ogre3d
Irrlicht
Axiom(based on Ogre 3d)

And lot of others that were open source from the beginning.

Torque 3D has failed, too much problems, and severe old bugs etc ... and open source don't have changed anything.
I would like to see it really rising , really ...
But it's not totally open source, and there is the same team behind expecting on selling models and stuff for business, so there is a MONEY GOAL.

Ogre 3D and Irrlicht are real open source projects, no money goal behind at all. And some fans like that a lot and stick with them.

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NeoAxis, is lacking documentation , is not bad at all.
I would alos like it to really rises ...
But i think it dont' have convinced people enought, the best thing for it should be to find some programmer fans , really making it evolve and bringing docs.

It's like mmo that fails, they just passing the free to play model; but it don't guarantee that the mmo will encounter some better success when it has failed on the month pay model.

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Perhaps the developper don't sell it enought and he is tired of development and feels he must do something else.
He has never done good docs, so he is not totally enought implicated on the users asks, he just made it , and say, it's good and easy, just pay and use it and for docs try to find by yourself.
For me it's not so quality to don't have enought beginners and newcomers good tutorials and docs.

It has big potential, with very complete level editor, pathfinding system ,solid physic and particles, shaders etc ...
Well ... juts good luck

imo it's a hard decision, probably they have serious selling problems, like Torque, or previously DXStudio, and they try to find a way... I tried it, not bad at all, but I gave it up fast because of the missing documentation. Users also complained about workflow, and limited access to sources, that prevents them from e.g. all depth shader programming (if I remember well). Its C# script package is also a bit messy and lacks features like Esenthel or UDK to look through it easily.

Documentation is the main problem of the engine imho. But let's stay on topic - or watch the thread what happens.

There has always been a full engine source license by the way...

@Sivan :
I saw on forums some Mono issues, and other technical ones also.
And there was serious performances issues , like real frame rate drop when a light was added in the scene for example etc ...

Well after reading the post it seems it's MONEY BUSINESS.
Not Free Open Source, wihtout business plans :


I have never wanted to work with investors, because this would mean that the project will be developed mainly for the profit. It was never a my goal. We sell the engine only in order to cover the development cost of NeoAxis and be able to pay for the usual lifestyle costs in the real world
HEuuuu ... welllll ... Who force them to work on this 3D Engine ??
Why should we cover the development of their engine ? Profit is not his goal ?
Why working on something if he don't want profit ? stop working on it , stop selling it, put it on SourceForge in free open source model ??


Still, there is no freeware universal game engine available. I think NeoAxis Game Engine have the potential to take this place.

Euuuu .. why ... ?
Ogre 3D is great with solid sold games (TorchLight 2).He think, there is a place , yes there is place for many open source engines , even Torque 3D.But that don't gaurantee success and popularity !


How much funds are needed to switch to an open source/freeware scheme.
This is about: 200,000 USD. Roughly, these funds will last for 5 years.
LOL
He want to put the engine open source, just put it on any server or cloud server , and people will just download it
And 200 000 $ ?? FEWWWW, IT'S JACKPOT FOR HIM LOL ! WHAT GUARANTEES IT WILL BE FINISHED , STABLE, FAST ???


I prefer to pay and have a complete prooven 3D engine to work with, and no more bad episodes : Torque 3D (99$ episode) , Beyond Virtual (Gamecore).


How these funds will be used:
- Work for merge, commit sources, preparing compiled solid SDK.
- Website support
- Writing documentation
- Making engine example demos
I think a good idea is to use Kickstarter or similar platform in order to get the funding.

He want us to pay him to build a solid engine ? Now we must pay to see tutorials ?
What is website support ? the site runs perfectly from years ... ?
Now we have to pay him to do normal work :
Work for merge, commit sources, preparing compiled solid SDK. : This sis simple standard operations if you have already worked with a CSV system !!
WHAT MEANS PREPARING A SOLID SDK ? Let me laught ... When you have last version you just compile and make the build.


Another idea is to make NeoAxis Foundation
- Share info about getting money from donations
- Share info about how money is used

Ok i understand he needs money, perhaps he have / don't have a job, we will never know.

Neo Axis is not perfect, and have some good stuff, but i don't like some parts of it, and optimisation is not so present right now.
Im' not interested as i have already two or three good engines (including A8) !

Good luck to him.


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The more interesting post is this one on the same thread :



Pros
- Faster development with many more contributors.
- Code robustness due to many eyes on the code.
- Exposure. It's to be expected a huge surge in NeoAxis usage.
- A good possibility of getting corporate backers.

Cons
- No income from licensing.

Things to consider
- The vast majority of FOSS projects have less than 3 regular contributors.
- Nearly all of the popular FOSS projects have corporate backing, meaning employees of companies get paid for supporting and developing projects. In find this article explaining it well why big companies support FOSS: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ ... tterV.html
- Almost everyone working on FOSS projects have other paid jobs.
- Donations are usually very small and only the most popular projects can expect to get a living out of this alone.
- Expect a gazillion forks. This always happens.
- A successful FOSS project need strong leadership and dedicated main contributor(s).

How to make a living from FOSS?
- Doing specific implementations backed by sponsors.
- General sponsors (Companies, Kickstarter, etc.).
- Paid support.
- Donations.
- Important to market oneself, since you're in theory competing with everyone else having access to the source.
- Sell custom modules (will most likely compete with alternative FOSS variants).
- After gaining a lot of popularity, switch to closed source for vastly increased user base (cheesy?). Many will jump ship to a fork.

I think the harder part will be to find dedicaced programmers that will stay long enought.
A Good way to promote the engine, would be indeed a real commercial quality demo.
He should instead keep the selling license system or go on fundation (donation) and instead ask for people or 3D artists to join , work in team and produce some AAA demo.

Seriously ratchet, your last post is even worse than most other posts I´ve seen from you o.O
It is perfectly fine to ask for money to be able to go open source, because as far as I understand his post, he is developing neoaxis for a living, with no other job. Now he has the choice to either get a new job and go open source without supporting his engine any further, which would mean an instant death to neoaxis, or he can collect enough money to keep developing the engine on an open source basis as a (nearly) fulltime job for a couple of years and until then, there might also be some kind of active developing community to keep on working after that period.

Ogre and Irrlicht are btw just graphics engines, without physics, audio, pathfinding, editors, ... And to be honest, they aren´t even good.

Why does he puts on his own post, he don't want to make profit ??


It is perfectly fine to ask for money to be able to go open source, because as far as I understand his post, he is developing neoaxis for a living, with no other job

If it is the case, he should be clear and not put , he don't want profits. It was not clear.
Well he could put clearly it is the main revenue for him, but it's not in that post.
But ok ,yes i can only hope he will success

It has great features (even a GUI editor), that's sad , but it's a good engine really, but would need more stability, optimisation and desrious documentation and examples covering all game aspects.

Everything is in his post.

- he wants to be able to live from it
- he does not want to make profit with it (as a company usually would do) for e.g. further investments

Don't know what you've read.

well it was not clear, but perhaps we've not read same post ?
thread

I will stop now, I have the feeling I start wasting my time on something not relevant...

It worked already in the past.

Remember the Blender Software. They wanted 100 000 USD for the code and released it as free software.

See the State of Blender today. And money is earned by Tutorial DVDs or support.

When Neoaxis take this step and have big development/ documentation success, so it could be a real competitor to Unity. .....and hard for A8.

ratchet, profit != income

To conclude this topic: According to the Neoaxis forum going open source is now off the table...

Seems like, yes. However the discussion going on over there certainly was interesting and contained several good and (for me) new aspects.