Well that’s easy. Won’t be spending any money on that then.
I thought the whole point was to develop for one ecosystem? 
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Could we please STOP expecting the Marketplace to control the quality of its offerings?
What does that even mean, beyond that it works?
It’s just a silly thought to even think this would be possible.
I could imagine that perhaps proven bugs that keep a product from working for everybody (not just a few people) could be one justification to pull a product down (Like the Carenado Mooney. It’s ridiculous it doesn’t work yet).
But, to that end, who puts in the effort to determine if a product works?
What I would like to see from the Marketplace…
- A receipt for what I purchased. REALLY, they can’t do THIS???
- A discussion about why it takes so long to post products that developers submit and have been accepted as saleable on the Marketplace. Absolutely ridiculous how long the process takes.
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It was (and remains) community developed freeware so you would not have had to spend any money on it anyway. Their statement is provided as a screenshot and also as a link at the opening of the thread and their position seems well thought out and principled. (I’ll include the link here again - FlyByWire, MSFS Marketplace and Xbox - FlyByWire Simulations)
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It’s going to be at least a year before Asobo has a product that they feel meets the quality and functionality initially planned from the outset, more likely 2 years. And that’s just on these platforms. Who knows what hardware is coming in the future?
Do you really want them to lock down the product before they’ve implemented DX12, for example?
Not happening.
Developers have problems when they use FSX style programming practices (and when Asobo changes templates and names of templates without telling anyone). For that, as well, it’s going to be at least a year before developers have a stable platform to work with. This would be true with or without the “fluff” people complain about being released.
You can’t just throw more people at a programming problem and think it’ll be developed faster. In fact, typically, the more people involved in a development project, the more messed up it gets.
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For PC only. It may be well thought out and principled but it’s no solution.
Tbh I don’t understand how you could even re-release a plane that was created under a Microsoft license and bundle it with a different license at all. Normally every license contains a clause that saysh “you cannot re-release versions under a different license than this one”. It is new to me that you could put a mod under the GPL. Unless it is a complete rewrite, in which case, what is it at all?
But yeah if the GPL is so important to them this is their call. I have neither a XBOX nor the FBW mod so I’m not affected.
The current model used is licensed under “Game Content Usage Rules” (which will be scrapped soon and replaced by FBW’s custom 3D model)
Original Source Code from FBW is under GPL v3
3D assets from FBW are under CC BY-NC 4.0
Hope that clears it up 
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So the A320 will become a 100% stand alone model? Because right now I was under the belief it is built from the Microsoft product and I cannot see how Microsofts copyright and GPL can go together. This is what I don’t understand even from your last answer. Either you created a plane completely from scratch and release it under your license or you accept Microsofts license.
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Aint that the truth !
Different parts of the aircraft are licensed differently.
MS asssets and code are under GCUR.
Our original code is under GPLv3.
And yes, we will make an entirely custom model, as well as remove all MS code eventually - making it an entirely from-scratch aircraft. But for now, MS have allowed us to have their code under GCUR.
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holland786 It’s clear to me how you solved the conflicts for the meantime. But you could have envisioned long ago that it is not going to work and that Microsoft will never allow their products to be intermingled with GPL or other Linux-like complications.
And for people not familiar in this matter: the MIT License is actually much less restrictive than the GPL and more comparable to public domain. i.e. you can do whatever you want with the product as long as you dont sue the author over damages. If Microsoft agreed to mods under the MIT license it would mean anyone can take code from it and use it in their own product. In particular Microsoft could do it themselves if the wanted.
Whereas with the GPL comes finality. If something is ever released under the GPL it can never be released under a different license. Thats why whenever GPL enters the room a war will erupt with half the developers immediately quitting.
I personally think this is a very strange decision that belongs more into the Linux world, but it is a decision you can make. Good luck.
In general, access to community created mods has always been more limited on consoles than on PC. But that’s part of the trade off is it not?
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Then it must not be a coincidence that those discussions have been happening with our friends at MS since October of last year.
The GPL allows all of those same freedoms as long as you do not publish proprietary versions of our code. I think it’s fair in exchange for our hard (and free) work that you do not make our plane into a proprietary one.
This is false. We have already relicensed code in our own organization to and from GPL.
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As a player on Xbox I understand, even though I’m bummed out about it. I’m just glad that the FBW team was upfront and direct about it, rather than leaving us second guessing on whether it was coming out on Xbox or not.
All we can hope for now is that MS/Asobo or another 3rd party work on fixing and enhancing the default 320Neo into a better state.
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All - Asobo/MS has released updates for both X-box and PC gamers. Some feel the XB release dummied down the pc stuff and it performs worse or visuals not as clear or a whole bunch of complaints. Personally, I do not see any degradation but then I spend little time at AP’s, and most of the time climbing FL20 or above so all my scenery is distant, until landing. And doing that so busy fighting the lousy ATC and trying not to crash, aint got time to see scenery, to busy flying. FWIW-yeah nice to see my house, but it is not anything like what we live in, so not really impressed. I feel however, in the long run, a major decision is going to have to be made, either the game developes dual pathways, i.e., XB version and PC version, or the pc community will leave, because it does not garner the visuals/speed/eye candy, many have spent (lots of dollars on upgrades/new pc’s-like me). I am not going out and getting an XB, my gut tells me, the game will have to split into two versions, and development on both witll continue, but the PC version is going to be better, as we have access to lots more processing power both CPU and GPU. If it goes other way, many will leave platform. Not sure how DX-??? is going to impact and improve this anyway, but sure someone will say.
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holland786 To relicense code that has been released under the GPL could mean that existing users have to release rights they have already been given by the GPL. Afaik this violates the principle of the GPL that does not allow adding restrictions at a later time. The only exception would be licenses that remove restrictions from the GPL, but this is only going in the same direction as MIT. So yes, you could switch to a MIT license but I you were just going to great lengths to get rid of it so this is more than hypothetical.
This is also completely false. Proprietary versions are the explicit speciality of the GPL, they only have to be released including source code and can only be released under the same license as they came with (GPL). But if you release your code under the GPL of course anyone can make a proprietary version, everything else would be the exact oposite of the GPL. They just cannot put it under another license and have to release the source code.
But tbh this is complicated stuff so I don’t want to argue with you. If this is so important to you that you are fine with halving your user base and developer pool, then I’m fine with it as I have no stakes in FBW.
FBW is an amazing team, which bring us amazing experience. A great part of my experience at this sim is due your work. I hope the team keeps working outside the MS platform, updating via the updater and, for sure, I hope we all keep supporting the team. You deserve this, much more than some companies that we see at the marketplace. Thanks guys.
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I have no clue what you’re saying now, this is literally the opposite of what proprietary means. I don’t even know if you’re looked up anything about the GPL. I’m done arguing about this.
You think we’re going to lose 50% of our users because of a license change that has happened for 3 months already and does not affect them ?
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Thank you for the kind words!
You lose your potential marketplace users, including all the potential Xbox users, you probably won’t lose many current users. What impact will the loss of potential users have on your revenue stream? None, obviously, since it is freeware, so that loss of users does not seem to be a problem…
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