I have recently been working on my open source project a role playing game (RPG) called, “KQ the Betrayer”. I have also started a tentative new open source project with my sister. It is a merfolk campaign for the game, Battle for Wesnoth.
So what is up with this Open Source or Free Software Movement anyways? It is simply a way of releasing intellectual property (such as ideas, stories, programs, pictures, etc) with “some rights reserved” instead of all. Commercial or propriety software has its disadvantages. Such as the recent move by Microsoft to create a new docx format that is incompatible with the old version of Word. In their way forcing people to upgrade to the latest version. One of the most irritating problems of copyright can be avoided. If a company goes under and does not sell the rights to their program, book or movie or whatever the work dies with company. You then have to wait the 70 or something years till the copyright expires. You might get lucky and find it at a yard sale but other then that it is impossible to obtain it legally. This can be avoided if the works are released under a free license when a company goes under. (That is how Blender became open source) The most common licenses for free culture are the Creative Commons licenses and the GPL license for software. The GPL requires that the source code for a open project must be made available and subsequent changes to that source code must keep that same license.

Many Open Source programs have become quite popular due to their high quality and availability. Here is a list of some common open source programs that you may have already used. All of which are free to download:
Firefox – web browser
Open Office – Document Editing Suite
Gnucash – personal and small business accounting program
Tellico – Book/Collection Manager
Linux – Operating system
The Gimp – Image manipulation tool
Inkscape – Vector graphics program
Blender – 3D Modeling software
Dosbox – run all those old dos programs you have in the basement
WordPress – Blogging software
Battle for Wesnoth – Turn Based Strategy Game

Some people wonder why developers spend hours volunteering to create hardware or software or even Operating Systems in their spare time and then just give it all away. One of the reasons is called egoboo. Here is the definition from Wikipedia (another free culture project) “egoboo is a colloquial expression for the pleasure received from public recognition of voluntary work.” For some people that recognition and the feeling of being needed and wanted is motivation enough. The free software movement also fights piracy by providing free and legal alternatives to expensive Microsoft and Apple programs. Recently a volunteer group held a Blender training session in Nigera. Commercial 3D Modeling and animation tools cost hundreds to thousands of dollars that only run on high end machines. Instead they can use Blender which is free and runs fine on desktop computers. Open Source programs provide them and others around the world with access to these new and developing job fields that otherwise would be too expensive to try. I like to do a lot of different things with the computer. Open source programs allow people like me to try a little bit of everything without blowing my life savings on hundreds of different programs. (Try to make a movie and you will realize how many different programs you need.)

Personally, I couldn’t care less about egoboo. Here are some of my reasons why I work on open source programs. I use all of the above listed open source programs. With that, it makes me want to do something to contribute back to the free software movement. I like to play computer games and come up with weird fantasy stories. So I decided to develop a 2D “old school” RPG. There are almost no complete open source RPG’s in this category. Unfortunately I don’t have the skills or time to make a new game from scratch. Instead my project “The Betrayer” is based off an existing open source game called KQLives. Because it is an open source program released under the GPL I am allowed to “fork” or create a new project from the old project. My game has a different story and new features that are not in the original. I have also made pixel art for my game some of which has been accepted back into the original KQLives Project. Editing an existing project has really helped me to learn how to program for real world projects. In most of the programming classes I’ve taken, you have to “reinvent the wheel” every time you write a program. In the real world you have to work a lot with other people’s code(decipher what its doing) which I have found to be an interesting challenge. And sometimes I find it nice to have something productive to do that is not school or work related.

So if you haven’t tried out an open source program, now is the time to try one out. (No purchase necessary)