Canabalt open source available after charity drive success
Creator Adam Saltsman offers code as thank you to Child's Play supporters
iPhone and flash title Canabalt's open source code has been made available under the MIT licence by creator Adam Saltsman as a thank you to those who helped raise funds for a children's charity during a recent indie iPhone sale.
The Indie iPhone Holiday sale raised over $25,000 (£16,150) for the Child's Play organisation by selling Canabalt and many other indie iPhone titles at a discount over the Christmas period.
In a post on Semi Secret Software's official blog, Saltsman revealed that the successful title's source code would be available to downloaders in order to continue the spirit of the charity drive.
"Canabalt has been a crazy ride for us," he wrote. "It's helped keep the lights on and pay for our health insurance, and allowed us to take the kind of risks that indie devs love to take. But, in the spirit of the Humble Indie Bundle, the holidays, and a (likely) bout of temporary insanity, it's time to open our trenchcoat and show everybody what we've got going on under there!"
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz last year, Saltsman said he was keen to avoid "ugly business models" and preserve the spirit of indie development.
Under the terms of the open source licence, all code other than game specific art and code assets are available for use in both private and commercial realms. Clarifying the agreement, Saltsman made clear that:
"You can copy-paste our engine code (any of the Flixel stuff, which is most of the good stuff anyways), and even sell it on the App Store, but you can't distribute or redistribute our game code, art or sounds."