Desura Linux Game Client Goes Open Source

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Desura Linux Game Client Goes Open Source

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday January 21, 2012 @05:44PM from the penguin-entertainment dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Desura game distribution client for Windows and Linux and developed by ModDB is now open source software. The open source version of the client is called Desurium and is hosted on GitHub."

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Ium by Cyphase · 2012-01-21 17:49 · Score: 3, Insightful

Is -ium the new suffix to describe the open source project of commercial products?

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by Cyphase ( 907627 )
1. Re:Ium by Tr3vin · 2012-01-21 18:37 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Yeah, it sure is crazy how a site that hosts a large database of game mods uses "DB" in their name.
Re:Cool, but what is this? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-21 18:10 · Score: 0, Insightful

On the plus side, we just ate the mod points of someone very angry.
I'm guessing.... by tecker · 2012-01-21 18:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

Im guessing that they do want to support Linux as a platform but the maintenance of the thing is killing them. Linux gamers exist but for the small numbers they provide I but the upkeep of the client is killing them time wise. Open sourcing the client makes sense if this is the case, otherwise why bother?

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Procrastinating life a way at a rapid rate of speed.
1. Re:I'm guessing.... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-21 22:22 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Because this will get them more customers in the Linux segment?
  Distro maintainers and experienced users do often think of closed source not only as a security risk, but also as a maintenance nightmare. If Desura is open sourced and reasonably easy to compile, it WILL make it into many distro repositories.
  That and the potential to attract some useful contributions from game modders etc. sounds like the most likely motivation to me, really.
2. Re:I'm guessing.... by ornia · 2012-01-21 23:10 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Im guessing that they do want to support Linux as a platform but the maintenance of the thing is killing them. Linux gamers exist but for the small numbers they provide I but the upkeep of the client is killing them time wise. Open sourcing the client makes sense if this is the case, otherwise why bother?
  ...except that they released their Windows client under GPLv3 as well?
  
  With only a single developer being employed at the company for the native GNU+Linux port, of course the arguement can be made that they did a cost-benefit analysis and determined that crowd-sourcing development talent and time from the Internet would yield a superior product that improves faster. This is not a testament to small numbers of GNU+Linux users, but rather the efficiency of modern Free Software development methodologies. The fact that they GPLv3-ed their Windows client is further proof of this fact.
Re:Wat by Telvin_3d · 2012-01-21 18:24 · Score: 3, Insightful

Some people obviously don't actually play modern 'games'. I'd love to see some definition of what made classic games more 'game' than things like Battlefield, Portal or Minecraft.