Comment by tikotus
7 hours ago
I used to work at Rovio (the creator of Angry Birds). Everyone was telling the story of a talk given by Peter Vesterbacka, the head of marketing. When it was time for questions, a man from the audience asked what physics engine the game uses. Vesterbacka gives the correct answer, Box2D, to which the person replied with another question. "Why isn't it mentioned in the credits? And by the way, I'm Erin Catto, the creator of Box2D." To this Vesterbacka replied "Come talk to me after the show". Maybe that's when Erin was given the hoodie? Also, his name was soon added to the credits.
But one thing amazed us all. It was impressive that the marketing guy knew which physics engine was used!
To the larger point, do you know if Rovio did support/pay Eric in any other way than that hoodie?
Angry Birds generated $500M [0], supposedly.
I would also not be surprised if the Rovio developers, designers, testers, etc. who worked on this game did not get a share of that $500M pie - I actually assume they didn't.
But still, you know. Dare I say it - what about "fairness"? :-)
[0] https://gameworldobserver.com/2023/02/28/angry-birds-2-reven...
I find it odd how we frame fairness in regards to open source software. He licensed his software as MIT. It says anyone can you use it without owing the author anything. So how is it unfair?
To be clear, I think that open source maintainers deserve much more, but I don't understand why we rarely inspect the licenses as the source of the problem.
Well there's this little pesky thing in the MIT license:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
That's what he was asking for, a mention in the credits.
6 replies →
If I made 500M$ using an Open Source library and didn’t send at least 1M$ to the author, I would be an objectively bad person.
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Because there’s a clear mismatch between the value generated from Box2d vs the value the creator receives, and that’s common for open-source in general.
It would be common decency to donate even a small portion of that $500 million, even if the license technically doesn’t require it.
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You seem to be confusing what is legally/contractually required with what is fair. Fairness, in general, isn't defined by law or contracts, although some laws try to codify it.
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Box2d is open source. For better or for worse, Rovio are entitled to use it.
I don't know enough to give an answer. But I also wonder if Unity, using Box2D to empower games generating billions, paid him anything.