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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: January 10th, 2024

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  • Although I’d love to see that happen more frequently, this is simply not realistically doable for most commercial games.

    Almost all of them use licensed third-party libraries which are integrated deeply into the game’s code base, but which can’t legally be distributed as part of an open source project. So in order to be able to open source a modern commercial game, you’d have to put in quite a lot of work finding all of your code integrating with commercial libraries and either replacing or removing it. And if that’s not enough, you’d probably have to have your (expensive) legal team check the entire code base for any infringements just to be on the safe side.

    All that work for no monetary gain just isn’t a very good business case. So, unfortunately, I wouldn’t expect a lot of modern games to be open sourced any time soon.


  • While that‘s true right now, a big patch called „Economy 2.0“ is expected to drop this week (more on that here and here).

    I really hope this will be a successful first step of making the game actually better than its predecessor. Unfortunately the economy simulation is only one of many issues which make me want to play something else after a few minutes of gameplay. I think it‘ll be at least another year until they‘re able to fix all these minor annoyances, which sum up to one very big annoyance. Like not being able to place stuff sometimes without any obvious reason. Or those ugly, steep pathways on lots, when the connecting street isn‘t completely flat. Or missing animations for firemen, which currently only have to drive up to a burning building in order to stop a fire.

    Cities Skylines was a better Sim City (2013) and was justifiably loved for that. For now, Cities Skylines 2 is unfortunately just a worse Cities Skylines.








  • I think it’s important to remember that LiMux, the Linux project in Munich, didn’t really fail because the software didn’t work. The city had commissioned a study that blamed bad implementation, bad internal cooperation, and bad administration. It explicitly did not recommend that the project be shut down. Unfortunately, this recommendation was ignored by the mayor, who was previously responsible for convincing Microsoft to move its German headquarters to Munich and who calls himself a “Microsoft fan”.

    So it’s probably worth noting that the success of such large projects doesn’t only depend on the viability of the software. It’s also very much dependent on the lobbyists the project is up against, especially in the public sector.




  • Die Angst, durch ein Verbotsverfahren sogenannte „Sympathiewähler“ an die AfD zu verlieren, ist leider offenbar weiterhin zu groß.

    Es wäre nötig, klarzumachen (Demos, Briefe an Abgeordnete etc.), dass die Regierungsparteien für noch viel mehr Menschen unwählbar werden, wenn sie weiter nichts gegen Rechtsextreme unternehmen.

    Der Argumentation, dass ein solches Verbotsverfahren nicht unbedingt erfolgreich wäre, kann ich auf jeden Fall beim besten Willen nicht mal mehr im Ansatz folgen. Natürlich ist bei keinem Gerichtsverfahren vorher das Urteil klar, aber wie sehr müssen die Erfolgschancen denn noch wachsen, wenn inzwischen selbst der Verfassungsschutz die Partei als rechtsextrem einstuft.



  • I‘d be really surprised if Apple tried that.

    They have to know that it violates the DMA. And the penalty for violating it can be up to 10% of their yearly worldwide revenue (not earnings!) for the first violation and up to 20% for repeated violations. I don‘t think they‘d risk that, especially as the EU really isn’t known for its leniency when someone intentionally breaks their rules.