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by drivingmenuts 4124 days ago
> "Ideological purity" is irrelevant. The point here is that people are abusing terminology to create ambiguity. As we are talking about software, the term "free" has specific connotations that differ from everyday language. UE4 is a source-available, gratis game engine. This is fine. It is not open source, nor is it free or libre.

OK, maybe it's better to call it "we're-not-gonna-be-a-dick-about-it" license.

1 comments

English is context-sensitive language. When reading "Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free" it was pretty clear to me (and I assume most people here) from the phrasing and context that they weren't releasing it in a copy-left license or even as open-source (Actually source code access is given).

Now if they had said "Unreal Engine is now available as free software" that would have been more confusing and misleading.