[sliverstorm]

I don't know how you can publicly release the source and expect a license header to prevent people from compiling it at home, and jilting you of a sale. You can't have an activation function either- your customers have the source!

Of course, he could just give up on the revenue, but I am sure like any real human being, he has probably grown fond of his new cash cow, and I don't blame him. Especially as this is his first real hit.

[cookiecaper]

As I said in my post, you can't stop people from compiling it at home. But, you also can't stop people from downloading the object code. Minecraft is frequently pirated and traded. There is no effective difference. In fact, people who are interested in obtaining Minecraft outside of legal channels are just going to pirate the object code anyway -- it's not very likely they'll want to download and compile the source and go through that pain when they could just download the pre-built versions.

There is no additional risk to revenue. Individuals who want to circumvent the licensing requirements do it with or without source. Companies who may misappropriate the code know better than to do so because they know they will be sued and immediately lose, so they will buy licenses from Mojang anyway. Seeing the "cool stuff" that can be done by Minecraft's engine, etc., that hobbyists put together with the code, may in fact convince people with money to license it more than just keeping it closed altogether.

[GeneralMaximus]

Colloquy for iOS does exactly this. Then again, you can't install a binary on your iOS device without a developer license, so I guess this model can't be replicated outside of iOS.

[leon_]

I do this too with some of my iOS apps. I put them GPL licensed onto github and anyone with the knowledge (and dev license from Apple) can get the apps practically for free.

But I'm not really vocal about that. If someone finds the source: great for them. If not great for my wallet ;)