Open Rails development priorities

[longiron]

Judith,

You raise excellent points. Your right that Open Rails is not purely 100% open source. I am going to make that a point in addressing questions in further correspondence with the train sim community.

Is "shared source" an accepted defination with programmers by the way?

Thanks for the clarification.

From its outset Open Rails was and is not a traditional open source project, as our website states. "It's a hybrid." The team decided not to go the traditional open source direction, after much debate, to avoid splinter projects, ensure commercial entities could not make a direct profit from the work of volunteers, and retain copyright on the source code.

All the Open Rails team members subscribe to this approach. Remember, no one is getting paid to do this, nor is anyone forced to contribute. The desire to contribute is founded in a common belief. The train sim community needs a platform they can rely on - well into the future. We've all been burnt over the years. Not having commercial contraints allows the team to focus on developing what they collectively believe is the best software possible, not which "bell or whistle" might sell better.

chrisvw
Project Lead
openrails.org