"The current situation is that major companies are all developing in silos, and the cost of developing and learning a new engine is rising exponentially. Small and medium-sized development teams and individual creators simply cannot afford the expensive commercial engine licensing fees, let alone master those complex and obscure underlying architectures."
Jensen Huang nodded in agreement from the side.
"From the perspective of hardware design, this situation of everyone fighting their own battles is also a disaster," he said. "NVIDIA is developing graphics acceleration chips. There are dozens of different closed-source engines on the market, each with a different rendering logic. We spend a tremendous amount of engineering resources just to make our drivers compatible with these engines. Even so, the performance of the software and hardware combination still cannot reach its theoretical maximum. Without a standardized, open underlying framework in the industry, hardware performance will always be held back by inefficient code."
"Simply open-sourcing old engines from a few years ago cannot solve the pain point of popularizing cutting-edge technology."
Takuya Nakayama concluded, "Old code can only be used to learn history; it cannot be used to build the future."
The meeting room quieted down.
Carmack was well aware of what Takuya was driving at.
To solve this problem, they would need to share the most advanced technology currently available.
But he couldn't do that.
id Software was more than just his life's work; the id Tech engine was the commercial core the company relied on to survive.
He couldn't just cast aside the company's interests and give away their cutting-edge engine currently under development to everyone for free.
That was an irreconcilable contradiction.
"Do you have a concrete solution?" Carmack asked, looking at Takuya Nakayama. "Since Mark brought everyone here, you must have already conceived a complete framework."
Mark Cerny chuckled from the side. "From what I know of Takuya, what he has in his head often breaks conventions. Everyone here is a top figure in the technical field, but when it comes to thinking outside the technology itself to coordinate the big picture, you have to look to him. Many of the inspirations regarding the technical ecosystem within Sega were first proposed by him."
Carmack adjusted his sitting posture, ready to hear what this executive from the Japanese game company had to offer.
Takuya Nakayama did not mention a specific code structure; instead, he spoke a name.
Linux.
"We can refer to the management model of Linux," Takuya Nakayama's voice was calm and methodical. "Establish an independent non-profit foundation to manage an open-source game engine project. Under this framework, we can bring together programmers from around the world to jointly develop an engine that is friendly to small and medium-sized teams, with completely open interfaces."
"It would be an online community-style collaborative platform where contributors can not only participate in its development but also gain actual benefits from it."
A glint flashed in Carmack's eyes.
This approach avoided the conflicts of interest inherent in a single commercial company.
Takuya Nakayama took the marker from Yuji Naka's hand and wrote a few key points on the other side of the whiteboard.
Part one: The Foundation.
This is the project's legal shield and resource platform.
As an independent legal entity, the foundation acts as a neutral guardian.
Its core responsibility is to isolate commercial risks, manage shared assets, and ensure the project's sustainable development.
The foundation acts as an independent legal entity, serving as a neutral guardian. Its core responsibility is to isolate commercial risks, manage shared assets, and ensure the project's sustainable development.
Regarding legal affairs and intellectual property management, the foundation will hold the project's trademarks, domain names, and core code repositories.
This fundamentally prevents the engine from being maliciously acquired or controlled by any big company.
As for the choice of open-source license, we need to adopt terms that are business-friendly while also being highly open.
For example, the MIT License allows anyone to freely use, modify, and distribute the code, even for closed-source commercial games.
This is the key bait to attract developers.
In terms of contributor management, we adopt the DCO (Developer Certificate of Origin) instead of the cumbersome CLA (Contributor License Agreement).
The DCO only requires developers to sign to confirm the originality of their work with each code submission, making the process extremely lightweight.
This not only lowers the barrier to entry for individuals and small teams, but also serves as a basic form of trust in contributors.
CLAs often involve the transfer of copyright, which can easily make individual developers wary.
Financial and resource management is another important responsibility of the foundation.
The foundation is responsible for accepting sponsorships from major tech companies as well as donations from individuals.
All financial operations must be completely transparent, with financial reports made public on a regular basis.
What are these funds used for?
To pay the salaries of core maintainers, sponsor community developer conferences, and maintain servers and infrastructure.
All financial operations must be completely transparent, and financial reports must be released to the public regularly.
What is this funding used for?
It is used to pay the salaries of core maintainers, sponsor community developer conferences, and maintain servers and infrastructure.
This ensures that the engine's development progress does not stall due to a lack of funds, and that its technical direction is not altered by pressure from any single major benefactor.
The foundation must also provide an absolutely neutral collaboration platform.
Just like the Linux Foundation, it allows engineers from companies like Sega, id, NVIDIA, and even other competitors to write code together in an environment free from corporate politics.
Community governance and conflict arbitration.
The foundation's charter will clearly define the project's mission, values, and basic governance principles.
When irreconcilable disagreements arise within the technical team, or when major community disputes occur, the foundation will intervene to mediate and make a final ruling based on the charter, preventing the project from splitting.
Takuya Nakayama drew a dividing line on the whiteboard and began to explain the second part.
The second part, the Technical Committee.
This is the project's technical brain.
Committee members are judged not by their company background, but solely by their actual contributions.
They are elected by the community or composed of recognized core contributors.
They are responsible for all technology-related decisions.
It is a loosely coupled structure.
There are no fixed terms, nor are there rigid hierarchical levels.
It practices meritocratic governance, meaning those who do the most work have the most say.
The development of the Linux kernel relies on Linus Torvalds and a team of trusted maintainers to lead, a model that has proven to be highly efficient.
The Technical Committee's responsibilities are clearly defined.
They set the technical roadmap, determine the development priority for various engine features, and decide the direction of the underlying architecture's evolution.
They hold the merge rights for the core codebase and are responsible for strictly controlling code quality.
As the project scales, the committee can establish special interest groups.
For example, a separate rendering pipeline group, a physics engine group, and a network synchronization group.
Each performs its own duties, developing in parallel.
The most important point is that technical decisions must be pure.
All code merges and architectural adjustments can only be based on technical merits and the actual needs of the community.
Never is it permitted to sacrifice code elegance and generality for the commercial interests of any sponsor.
Committee members must publicly disclose their employer information to ensure the transparency of decisions.
Takuya Nakayama put down the marker and looked at the three people in the meeting room.
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