GOG are not selling you something you own, just like the rest of the gaming platforms. They just give you the right to download and keep DRM-free installers (for the most part) for games you license / purchase.

I like GOG, don’t get me wrong, but you don’t own anything you buy from them, you just possess. Ownership means you have control over that possession too which is only really true of a minuscule fraction of FOSS games that are licensed with MIT-0, 0BSD, Unlicense, CC0 or some other public domain license (which doesn’t include GPL, MIT, Apache licenses).

[–] UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Ownership in terms distribution of digital software is a bit funky I guess, but from a consumers point of view, there's really nothing GOG/game companies can do once you got the installer. You're effectively owning the bits on your hard drive and there's nothing they can do to control what you do with those bits. I guess from a lawyers perspective it may be different, but in practice there isn't much.

I'm not sure what you're getting at with the licenses though? A game licensed under MIT would be free to share, attribution shouldn't be much of problem.

[–] fartsparkles@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

MIT still has copyright attribution which means you don’t own it, just have lots and lots of rights. You own the code, but you don’t own the name etc.

MIT-0 is public domain, there is no copyright by the creators, that right is assigned to all of us. You own that content and idea. It’s why anyone can use Sherlock Holmes and do anything they want with the character as he’s public domain. You don’t have to call him Schmerlock Hoves.

But yeah, for all intents and purposes to the thread, you’re right. MIT etc you can sell the code/binaries so gives you practical ownership.