Is GOG GALAXY 2.0 Open Source

Wishlist.
But community store integrations are.

Ok thanks

You can't open source a DRM

This would bring up an interesting question:

You state "Galaxy2 is DRM" and "DRM cannot be implemented open source , thus "Galaxy cannot be implemented open source", am I correct?

So I would be interested which part of Galaxy 2 would you consider to be impossible to implement open source?

I'm pretty sure we both would agree that the UI could be implemented open source without any problems, so the DRM part must be somewhere else. You have an idea which component cannot be implemented open source as you stated?

This is pretty essential, since if we cannot find a part of Galaxy that can't be implemented open source, then your reasoning would imply that if Galaxy could be implemented open source, it cannot be DRM, or DRM can be implemented open source. (non b implies non a), so at least one of your initial assumptions had to be false, then.

GOG Galaxy with DRM looks to me in contradiction to the motto of GOG: "DRM FREE. No activation or online connection required to play."

There exist versions of Galaxy for Linux, but not the same functionality as the official version from GOG: https://github.com/sharkwouter/minigalaxy

Okay, let me fix what I said: they won't open source if they are the kind of people who also implement DRMs. The mentality behind DRMs in games is incompatible with the open source mentality.
And just like they *could* not implement DLCs, they *could* open source everything, they just won't.

I agree, they most probably won't open the source of Galaxy and I suspect that it is a mentality issue (and development culture problem on their side). The sad thing is that G2 probably would have profited a lot from a development community, especially when looking at their current release-cycles and their more than obvious quality problems.

You might have noticed that I avoided the term DRM, that is because I strongly doubt that DRM, although being the source of many many problems, is really the cause for G2 being closed source.

I would even go further and say that there is probably not even a real worked out "master plan" on GOGs side (e.g. I have NEVER seen a roadmap for future development of G2, something that would be most interesting for probably a lot of users). Looking at how they handle the development and release of their client(s), Hanlon's razor comes to mind.

I mean have a look at this thread for example: They broke the tag-system and pissed of anybody who put work in it. The first post is from June 2019 - 2019 for god's sake. To make things even more ridiculous, there is a response from GOG about a month (sic!) later stating:

"Currently tags from GOG.com are not imported. It's further down the roadmap, but not planned for the closest ones. Apologies."

"further down the roadmap" - and that is all there is. The tags are still broken 2 years later, people are still pissed and the mysterious roadmap remains mysterious.

And this is only one of the shining examples of GOGs well structured development process.

So I very very very much doubt that these people are really able to develop a solid, strong DRM system. I guess it's probably a little bit "further down the roadmap to nowhere" ;)

I am not saying that the way they handle issues isn't about incompetence. The simple fact that they don't seem to care much about linux users (despite the fact that the concerns about DRMs and such are probably mostly from linux users (which can be seen in the community wishlists, for example)) is probably a matter of a mix of failure to understand who their clients are, and incompetence when it comes to actually make the development effort of creating linux compatible software.


The thing is that even though it might not be a big, evil plan, I still think that they do intend on making DRMs, and that they just didn't make a lot of mistakes that lead to "implicit" DRMs appearing.
Currently, games like Dying Light only have the windows version available on the store, because the game *is* under DRM and that they had no way to implement this DRM without GoG Galaxy; and since Galaxy is only on windows, they simply didn't give access to the linux version of the game.

Did they do it because they ideologically love the idea of DRM? Possibly not (while it is a possibility, considering the dubious mentality CDProjekt has shown in the past few years). It's probably just a matter of money and bringing as many games to the platform as possible. And if GoG follows only the path of money and incompetence at best, I don't see any reason why they should be supported.


PS: When I say "incompetence", this can be (most likely, surely) replaced by "lack of staff". Which is only a valid excuse for the devs themselves, but not for GoG as a part of CDProjekt. CDP is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) video game companies now, they have no excuse to not hire more people on GoG if the staff is indeed shorthanded. So when I say incompetence, I'm not targetting the devs, *in the case the problem is a matter of needing more staff*.

Your last sentence sums it all up quite fittingly. I am one of those linux users who gave up on Gog a few years ago. Gaming on linux and Gog - for me it is just no longer worth being angry about any more.

Still, their development successes and bigmouthed announcements are a constant source of amusement.