Amazon Publishes A Free, Source-Access AAA Game Engine

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Amazon Publishes A Free, Open-Source AAA Game Engine

Well this comes as bit of a surprise... Our friends at Amazon have announced Lumberyard, a new AAA game engine they have been developing that's free and open-source...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Amazon-Lumberyard-Announce

[bug77]

That announcement scares me a little.
Here we have a brand new (supposedly AAA) game engine, yet there's almost no talk about its technical virtues. Nothing about lighting, texturing, tesselation, scene size. The technical aspect is: it's cloud-connected and works with AWS and Twitch. I don't know how many developers were craving for that (ok Twitch may be useful to some).
Oh and there's no mention of Linux in the official announcement. But it does say that it relies on Visual C++ and Visual Studio (together with DX11), which generally means it's not Linux-friendly.

[Michael]

That announcement scares me a little.
Here we have a brand new (supposedly AAA) game engine, yet there's almost no talk about its technical virtues. Nothing about lighting, texturing, tesselation, scene size. The technical aspect is: it's cloud-connected and works with AWS and Twitch. I don't know how many developers were craving for that (ok Twitch may be useful to some).
Oh and there's no mention of Linux in the official announcement. But it does say that it relies on Visual C++ and Visual Studio (together with DX11), which generally means it's not Linux-friendly.

Linux is mentioned in the FAQ.

[Kemosabe]

Q. What device platforms does Lumberyard support?
Lumberyard currently supports PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. Mobile support for iOS and Android devices is coming soon, along with additional support for Mac and Linux. Note that Sony and Microsoft only permit developers who have passed their screening process to develop games for their platforms.

[Kelsier]

Very important correction! You get access to source but it is not open source!!

[Adriannho]

Q. Is Lumberyard “open source”?

[COLOR=#333333][FONT=HelveticaNeueLight]No. We make the source code available to enable you to fully customize your game, but your rights are limited by the [/FONT][/COLOR][URL="https://aws.amazon.com/service-terms/"]Lumberyard Service Terms[/URL][COLOR=#333333][FONT=HelveticaNeueLight]. For example, you may not publicly release the Lumberyard engine source code, or use it to release your own game engine.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[etam]

Very important correction! You get access to source but it is not open source!!

It is open source, but it's not Free Software.

[M@yeulC]

It is open source, but it's not Free Software.

I am not even sure it qualifies as open source, since you are not allowed to redistribute the source, and you can only get it upon request (not that certain about it).

[bug77]

Linux is mentioned in the FAQ.

What FAQ? There's no FAQ in that article.

[r_a_trip]

It is open source, but it's not Free Software.

No, this is not Open Source, of which I only accept the OSI definition. This is Shared Source (originally conceived at Microsoft). Shared Source is access to the source code, but with licensing conditions that restrict you in what you can do with the code and it certainly isn't share and share alike.