MAKE | AVGA – AVR video games, Mario and Pac-Man clones…

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By Phillip Torrone
Posted 2008/11/16 @ 2:03 pm
Category Electronics, Fun & Games, Open Source Hardware

The AVGA project is an open source (It’s GPL, but it says “don’t make money with it”) AVR based color video game development platform for a single chip game console via HackedGadgets.

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3 Responses to AVGA – AVR video games, Mario and Pac-Man clones…

The Oracle on November 18th, 2008 at 5:25 am said:

“(It’s GPL, but it says “don’t make money with it”)”

Then it’s not GPL.

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Phillip Torrone on November 18th, 2008 at 5:31 am said:

@The Oracle – yah, this is happening a lot – many project creators are calling things “open source” or “GPL” but then saying “don’t make money with it” — the direction and trend of hardware being open is good, the problem is it’s all new and some folks want non-commercial use only. i’ve proposed that they consider “open hardware – with a non-commercial manufacturing license”… not sure if that will stick.

all we can do (mostly me it seems) is support the projects and also point out that someone is going to rightly assume GPL and open source hardware means you can make money with it.

i hope the makers of the various projects work towards clarifying the licenses / specifics of their projects so there is no confusion.

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The Oracle on November 18th, 2008 at 12:40 pm said:

Maybe it’s time someone created a license for people to use if they want it to be like open source but not for profit.

In my opinion, the “don’t make a profit” clause only adds confusion and makes it a lot harder for true open source to make any real headway. For starters, it makes it impossible for any for-profit business to legally use the product in any way.

Personally, I wouldn’t like such a license. It’s a restriction that, ironically, would interfere with the free use of the product. For example, what if I use a “free” open source program to develop a website, and then years later decide it’s getting too expensive to run, so I want to sell ads to offset my hosting costs?

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