Jokes aside. It's an interesting distinction to make. Even though the source code is freely available, it doesn't mean developers have free reign to do anything they want like they could with open source software. Apart from special circumstances, everything made with the source code will still be mods.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 5 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

You can't do whatever you want with open source either. One big stipulation of copyleft licenses is the share-alike clause, which means you can't make modifications and then decide your program is now closed-source, so it protects the code from being enclosed again.

I mean yes you can make whatever modifications you want, generally, but it's not totally unrestricted.

[–] CarbonBasedNPU@lemm.ee 2 points 5 hours ago

Im honestly a really big fan of copyleft. I think that it seems more "fair" in a system that requires sacrifice to make progress.

[–] BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 3 points 10 hours ago

It does harken back to the original HL mod scene though - some high quality stuff came out of that (and valve picked up the Devs too)