MousePaw Media believes that the best ideas are worth
sharing. This is why we've decided to make all of our core
technologies open source! This way, individuals, educators,
students, and many software projects can use our code and
technology! Everyone is free to read, modify, use, and share
our open source work.
We welcome you to take part in our development process
through experimenting, testing, reporting bugs, and
contributing ideas and code. We've opened our development
network to you, so come on in!
View our Contribution Guide
to get started.
FAQs: Open Source
(Click a question to view the answer.)
What is open source?
Open source is a software distribution model that
promotes the free and unrestricted use, sharing, and
modification of computer code. More information can
be found at
the Open Source Initiative website.
What license(s) do you use?
Our projects are generally licensed under the
BSD-3 License
and the
GPL 3.0.
Code presently licensed under the latter will also be
offered later under another non-permissive license.
An additional non-free license will be offered for
GPL'd code for anyone who wishes to use that code
in a closed-source project, and a portion of those
profits will be donated to the Open Source Initiative.
Why aren't you closed-source like most game companies?
For the past 25+ years, the educational software
industry has been dominated by a profit-first,
closed-source model. In many cases, this has produced
expensive software with design flaws and bugs,
destined to be discontinued rather than improved.
We envision a game engine that allows our games, and
anything else anyone builds using it, to survive the
waves of changing technology. Maybe our games can even
outlive the company itself!
If your code is all freely available, how can you
even make money?
Open source is an amazing idea! There are a few ways
to stay open-source and run a viable software company.
Our method is best described as "free the code, sell
the content." We aren't selling the code that runs
Operation SpyRat; we are selling the story,
animations, and educational content within it. It's
a little like selling a movie you made, but giving
away the awesome film-making equipment you used to
make it.
Why aren't you completely open source?
Making high-quality educational software requires
a lot of work, and we believe we can best accomplish
it as a company. In order to pay our wonderful team,
run our servers, and keep the lights on, we need to
make money somehow. We believe that selling many of
the games themselves is the best way to do that.
In short, our code is open-source, while
our content and graphics are
closed-source. We ultimately sell the final
combination thereof.
Why "Open Source" instead of "Free Software"?
We were inspired to join the movement often collectively
called "FOSS" (Free and Open Source Software) or "FLOSS"
(Free/Libre and Open Source Software) by Eric S.
Raymond's
Cathedral and the Bazaar.
As far we can tell, the open source vision has the best
track record of the two movements for leveling walls
and encouraging collaboration among people, FOSS groups,
and software companies. That's why we have thrown our
support behind the
Open Source Initiative.
While we recognize that the "Free Software" movement
has spawned many great pieces of software, it also has
a long history of building walls of distrust among
well-meaning software companies, and even between
FOSS groups themselves. We want to make peace and
software, not join another war.
Why do you use the GPL, then?
The GPL, or "General Public License," is the core of the
Free Software movement. While we don't agree with the
doctrine behind the license, we recognize that it
can be used judiciously to further the place
of free and open source software in the market.
We only use the GPL for certain major pieces of our
game engine, to ensure that they are only used for
free to create more free and open source [FOSS]
projects. If anyone wants to use our game engine
for a closed-source commercial product, they can
purchase a license. Part of those proceeds will be
donated to the Open Source Initiative. Either way,
FOSS wins!
Why this licensing setup?
We are strong proponents of the Open Source movement
(contrasted with the Free Software movement). However,
we believe that our development staff deserves to
get paid a living wage down the road (once we start
selling our games). Thus, if someone else wants to
profit from the fruits of their labors without also
sharing in kind, our developers deserve a piece of that
pie.
It is worth noting that a part of those profits are
also earmarked for supporting open-source software
projects that we use.
What open source projects do you participate in?
We actively promote a variety of open source projects,
and contribute bug reports and code to some of them.
Find a list of the projects we use and support on our
Technology page.