"This is my vision. A technical ecosystem not controlled by any single capital entity, but nurtured by global developers. Sega is willing to be one of the initiators, providing initial funding and some technologies; both Mark and Yuji will be involved. NVIDIA can provide hardware-level API optimization support. And id Software, or rather, you yourself, John, can serve as the soul of the Technical Committee and lead the architectural design of this engine."
Carmack looked at the dense text on the whiteboard.
This vision was grand and rigorous, perfectly aligning with his ultimate expectations for open-source technology.
There was no need to abandon id Software's existing commercial engine; instead, they could start fresh, pooling the power of the entire industry to build a piece of public infrastructure that truly belonged to the developers.
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Jensen Huang was crunching the numbers.
If such a standardized open-source engine really existed, the development cost of NVIDIA's graphics card drivers would be significantly reduced. Furthermore, they could integrate the latest graphics technologies into the engine immediately and push them directly to thousands of developers.
This was an extremely worthwhile deal.
Yuji Naka and Mark Cerny exchanged glances.
They had already seen Takuya Nakayama's proposal, but today, in this simple meeting room, hearing it spoken in front of Carmack and Jensen Huang, they could still feel the subversive power it contained.
"This isn't just about making a software tool," Nakayama said, sitting back in his chair and taking a sip of water from a paper cup. "Once this model is up and running, it will become the water, electricity, and gas of the gaming industry. Small and medium-sized developers won't need to waste their energy reinventing the wheel; they can pour all their creativity into polishing game mechanics."
Carmack stood up and walked to the whiteboard, his finger tracing the logic lines drawn by Takuya.
"The DCO mechanism is a good idea."
Carmack spoke up, "Many talented programmers are unwilling to participate in company-led open-source projects because they are afraid that their hard work will be uncompensated and swallowed up by big companies. The MIT License combined with DCO can best alleviate their concerns."
"In terms of technical architecture, we must adopt a highly modular design." Carmack picked up a pen and added several nodes below 'Technical Committee'. "The core layer will only retain the most basic math libraries, memory management, and multi-threaded scheduling. The renderer, physics system, and audio module will all be made into pluggable components. That way, it'll be convenient for community members to customize them according to their own needs."
Mark Cerny added, "Cross-platform compilation capabilities must be planned for from the very beginning. We need to support not just Windows and DOS, but also consider future console platform architectures."
Jensen Huang chimed in, "NVIDIA can send engineers to join the rendering interest group. We can write the latest texture compression algorithms and hardware lighting models directly into the rendering module."
The few of them grew more and more excited as they discussed; the content on the whiteboard was written and erased, erased and written.
Outside, the exhibition hall was bustling with noise. Yet, just a wall away, they were discussing how to dismantle the industry's entire moat.
Carmack stared at the words "Contributor Earnings" in the bottom right corner of the whiteboard.
He crushed the empty paper cup in his hand and tossed it into the trash can in the corner.
"I don't approve of dragging money into the sharing of underlying code," Carmack said, speaking rapidly with the stubbornness characteristic of a programmer.
He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back.
"Open source means returning technology to technology itself. When Linus released Linux, he didn't expect to collect royalties on it. The core spirit of the GNU General Public License is freedom. If we set up complex revenue-sharing mechanisms in the foundation, it becomes a commercial carve-up. The code will be tainted by profit. This goes against hacker ethics."
Jensen Huang didn't interrupt; he leaned back in his chair, twirling a pen in his hand.
NVIDIA sold graphics accelerator cards; they needed standardized APIs to relieve the pressure on their driver department. As for how to split the money in the engine's business model, as long as it didn't come out of NVIDIA's profits, he couldn't care less.
Mark Cerny shifted his posture slightly, preparing to smooth things over.
Takuya Nakayama raised a hand to stop Mark Cerny.
He picked up a marker and drew two circles side-by-side on the whiteboard.
"John, you're conflating game engines with operating systems." Takuya Nakayama's tone was steady; he didn't rush to refute, but instead began to dismantle the argument by following his opponent's logic.
Carmack stared at the words "Contributor Earnings" in the bottom right corner of the whiteboard.
He crushed the empty paper cup in his hand and tossed it into the trash can in the corner.
"Linux is infrastructure; its users are server administrators, research institutions, and geeks.
They use Linux to keep servers running.
"John, you're conflating game engines with operating systems."
Takuya Nakayama's tone was steady; he didn't rush to refute, but instead began to dismantle the argument by following the other person's logic.
"Linux is infrastructure; its users are system administrators, research institutions, and geeks. They use Linux to keep servers running. But a game engine is a production tool; its users are game developers.
Developers use the engine to create games, with the ultimate goal of putting discs into plastic cases, placing them on the shelves of Best Buy and Walmart, and selling them to players. The usage scenario itself carries a strong commercial attribute. You can't expect a group of people who make a living selling games to maintain production tools with a purely utopian spirit."
Carmack didn't buy this argument. "So what? We provide free tools, and they use them to make money. That doesn't affect the purity of the tool itself. As long as the code is open source, anyone can review and modify it; that's enough."
"That's far from enough." Takuya Nakayama wrote "Code" in one circle and "Content" in another. "The contributors to a complete next-gen game engine ecosystem are not just programmers writing low-level rendering pipelines, but also a vast number of artists, level designers, and sound engineers. What they contribute are high-definition textures, polygon models, lighting presets, and motion capture data."
Takuya Nakayama put down his pen and looked straight at Carmack.
"Programmers are willing to contribute for free for the sake of elegant code; this is the embodiment of geek spirit."
Takuya Nakayama put down his pen and looked Carmack straight in the eye.
"Programmers are willing to contribute elegant code for free; that's the embodiment of the geek spirit. But you can't expect an artist who has spent three months on original drawings to just dump hundreds of high-precision textures into a public asset library for everyone to use for free. Content creation requires significant capital and time investment. If we want this content-based tool to have lasting vitality, we must provide creators with tangible financial rewards. This doesn't conflict with the democratization of technology; on the contrary, it protects it."
Yuji Naka nodded from the side.
As the creator of Sonic, he knew all too well the weight of art assets in game development.
"Takuya is right," Mark Cerny continued. "When game companies use open-source engines, they will inevitably develop custom modules for their own projects. For instance, an advanced fluid dynamics simulation plugin, or a highly stylized particle editor. If everything were completely free, they would keep these gems hidden on their own company servers, treating them as trade secrets. But if the foundation provides an official asset store that allows them to list these custom modules for sale, they will have sufficient motivation to share their technology."
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