Open Source Tools
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to petition Valve Software to open up the source code for their Source engine tools, most importantly Valve Hammer Editor. The intention and reasoning behind this petition is this: through community effort, the Tools could be vastly improved. Just as the VDC has grown and matured, the Tools could have the combined effort of the community behind them, freeing Valve developers to put their valuable time towards more episodic content or other projects.
Degree of Openness
Two methods of source code availability are being proposed at the present:
- Open-Source - Any of the multitude of open-source licenses such as the GPL, BSD, MPL, could be available for review and possibly be used.
- Shared-Source - This would open the source code up in a more limited fashion, allowing the community to view the codebase but not redistribute it.
Coordination
Regardless of the type of license used, a team or committee of people will be needed to maintain, organize, and audit incoming submissions of code. For this team, it should be volunteer-based and comprised of experienced and dedicated community members.
Signatures
Please sign this petition on its talk page.
