I think the idea is that the cost of producing standardized hardware is lower than the cost of producing a custom version without that codec just for the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The Raspberry Pi Foundation was not interested in that codec, so they didn’t buy a license. Separately, as a special agreement, they then allowed the few interested users to get a personal license directly from the IP owner. Sounds like a great solution to me.

Not sure if the same reasoning applies to BMW, though.

I just shared my opinion. I didn’t need those keys because I was not interested in using their proprietary codecs.

For what it matters, if Broadcom decided to license the IP for some hardware accelerator I don’t have anything against it. As long as they don’t make me pay for it when I don’t need it.

Dedicating a small portion of the silicon to optional features is cheaper than designing two separate silicons one with and one without such features.

This was actually probably an efuse, so not really just firmware, but hardware. In any case we are not talking about a software/firmware feature to decode videos, we are talking a section in the silicon that stays dormant unless you activate it with a valid license key.

Imho it makes sense from an economical perspective: they develop, test and fabricate a single silicon that does everything, then they allow you to specialize it on demand for a fee.

In any case, we can agree to disagree.

I have to partially disagree on this point. Take the first generation of Raspberry Pi as an example.

The first Raspberry Pis came with hardware to decode certain video codecs, but this feature was protected by royalties (not by the Raspberry Pi foundation, but a third-party I don’t remember the name of). They decided to sell you the base hardware for cheap, and if you wanted to enable hardware decoding you could later purchase a license key for your specific device, which could then be used to flip a switch in the firmware.

In my opinion it makes sense: I would rather pay 35€ + optionally 5€ for that feature, rather than 40€ mandatory.

Sorry for being pedantic. I might be dumb, but I don’t see any assets (sprites/models/sounds) in this repository. I think the license you linked might just be referring to the code.

The lack of recent releases isn’t a discriminator for this list. And active development is certainly a plus.

If it’s the official one, yes, that’s what I would recommend anyone to go for.

But keep in mind that integrity checks will still fail even if you go that way.

I use microG on my main phone. I had to set them up myself, and I was told that I could just install them as any regular app through FDroid, but that was not entirely correct.

You can install them through FDroid, open the app, follow instructions, and both location services and notifications will work once all checkboxes in the “Self Test” page will be ticked.

Except that the “microG Services Framework installed” checkbox will never tick no matter what you do. Everything will still work no problem, except that microG will not be able to run privileged actions, in particular it won’t be able to immediately awake sleeping apps when they receive a push notification. This will cause delays with instant messaging apps and other time-sensitive notifications.

I solved all of this by installing through this unofficial installer. The downside is that this will also install some (FOSS) bloatware which you can’t uninstall. But you can disable all the stuff you don’t need, and you will also need to disable it from auto-updating from FDroid otherwise it will re-enable automatically.

You might also be able to find a ROM with microG already installed. If it exists perhaps I would recommend doing that instead.

You might still have some issues with integrity checks unless you install other mods. This might cause issues with some banking apps. You won’t find any official guides to bypass these checks though, as this is a gray area.

Hi, thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately 0 A.D. is still in beta, so it wouldn’t qualify for this list yet. It’s definitely popular enough to deserve to be in the honorable mentions though, so I will add it.

As for D-Day:Normandy I assume you mean this? I can’t seem to find a license (nor source code actually, but maybe there is no source code as all scripts might have been written manually). I could add it if it’s actually FOSS, but I’d need help about the license and where to find sources.

Ah, that’s a shame, I never really thought about it, but it does make very much sense. I’ll demote but keep the CC BY-NC games in a separate section in this list for now, but I will probably remove them in the future once the list grows enough. Thanks for the pointer!

Hi! Although OpenRA’s source code is free, it depends on proprietary assets, so unfortunately it doesn’t qualify for this list. Still, thanks for the suggestion, CnC and RA were both amazing games!

Added, thanks for the suggestion! They tricked me with the 0.x.x version identifier, but it seems to be a mature/completed project.

SS14 is still in early-access, but fair enough, it’s so popular that it deserves at least to be in the honorable mentions. Thanks for your suggestion!

Hi! Thanks for the suggestion. I can’t quite understand if this project is mature and if it depends on non-free assets. My first question emerges from the fact that they use a 0.x.x version identifier, and the second one from what is says on this page.

Content repository for OA3 is not yet available.

They seem to be a bit more lenient than me. Their list also includes games which depend on non-free assets, as long as the source code is free. Still, I will add this list to the list of lists in the post. Thanks!

Thank you a lot, this also seems to be a great list. And it comes with list of lists as well! I will have a deep look and see which games match my criteria.

Hi! Although the engine is free, the game assets seem to be proprietary. Still thanks for sharing the suggestion.

Thank you for this recommendation, but although the code is GPL-2.0, some of the assets for BAR are proprietary.

Thanks a lot. This seems to be a very complete list, I will have a look and see which ones match my criteria. If you have any one you like in particular, feel free to share.

Thank you very much, I will have a thorough browse and filter the games that match my requisites. If you have any one you like in particular, feel free to share.

Fair enough, in that case let’s add it. But if you don’t mind me sharing my opinion: you say everywhere that it’s a pre-release software, and the 0.x.x version supports this hypothesis. If you think it’s ready to be considered a completed project (but not necessarily also finished) you might want to be more explicit about it.