Unreal Engine is not Open Source

Community Community & Industry Discussion
22

:cool: That makes sense, just found it strange to see mods washing their smalls in public.

(didn’t think about an increase of mods, once UE went free)

23

In my opinion, open source is code that is able to be distributed as source, no matter the restrictions. Unreal Engine is Open source, but not free as in freedom.

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24

Under that definition, Unreal Engine is not open source because you do not have permission to distribute the source

25

1 (A) e. Distribution to other licensees - You may Distribute Engine Code…

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Any public Distribution (i.e., intended for Engine Licensees generally) which includes Engine Tools (including as modified by you under the Engine License) must take place either through the Marketplace (e.g., for distributing a Product’s modding tool or editor to end users) or through a fork of Epic’s GitHub UnrealEngine Network (e.g., for distributing Source Code).

27

Any public Distribution (i.e., intended for Engine Licensees generally) which includes Engine Tools (including as modified by you under the Engine License) must take place either through the Marketplace (e.g., for distributing a Product’s modding tool or editor to end users) or through a fork of Epic’s GitHub UnrealEngine Network (e.g., for distributing Source Code).

That is still permission.

28

Right, but the ways that it can be distributed is very narrow, people can’t just post the engine code whereever