Server code often includes proprietary third party software that cannot be legally open sourced, or depends on licences. Do you think game fans will pay Oracle prices?
The code owned by the company could be released without those proprietary libraries (or code, if embedded directly). The game fans would then need make/source a drop-in replacement or remove the need (if the 3rd party code is something like DRM then they'll do the latter). This is of course work, but less work than replacing the whole server-side perhaps making it at least practical.
Of course it might not even be as easy as that, depending on how the code itself was contracted out and how the rights were distributed around parts of a larger company that might have since split & merged a few times, it could be difficult to make sure such a release only contained what it legally can.
The law can open source any code. It means that in the future the companies using such code might decide to use code they own or the people selling them that code might charge more upfront. But the market will adjust.
If that third party code must go in products that must eventually become open source, they won't be able to sell that code and it will be replaced by open source one because of market pressure.
Comments
Server code often includes proprietary third party software that cannot be legally open sourced, or depends on licences. Do you think game fans will pay Oracle prices?
The code owned by the company could be released without those proprietary libraries (or code, if embedded directly). The game fans would then need make/source a drop-in replacement or remove the need (if the 3rd party code is something like DRM then they'll do the latter). This is of course work, but less work than replacing the whole server-side perhaps making it at least practical.
Of course it might not even be as easy as that, depending on how the code itself was contracted out and how the rights were distributed around parts of a larger company that might have since split & merged a few times, it could be difficult to make sure such a release only contained what it legally can.
The law can open source any code. It means that in the future the companies using such code might decide to use code they own or the people selling them that code might charge more upfront. But the market will adjust.
One way of adjusting is never legally releasing the game in a country with such laws.
Yes, and leave a huge market to your competitors!
If that third party code must go in products that must eventually become open source, they won't be able to sell that code and it will be replaced by open source one because of market pressure.