FlyByWire, MSFS Marketplace and Xbox

Following the release of Sim Update 5, the A32NX was pulled fromthe marketplace due to compatibility issues in the stable version ofthe aircraft, requiring an additional fix. Although we have released anew stable version that addressed compatibility issues, we regret toinform the community that the A32NX will not be returning to themarketplace and will not be available on Xbox. The same will apply forthe A380X.

We would like to make clear that this decision is not a result ofSim Update 5, but rather other ongoing concerns that were beingdiscussed by the team in the weeks prior. Chiefly, on July 4th, wechanged the A32NX's license from MIT back to GPL-3.0, following theoverwhelming wishes of our development team and their commitment tofree, open source software. However, due to legal concerns regardingcopyleft licenses, Microsoft does not permit GPL-licensed projects tobe listed in the marketplace. As a result we created a separate forkof the A32NX (dubbed the "marketplace edition") with the MIT licensenecessary for marketplace compatibility.

It became clear with recent updates, however, that maintaining thisseparate version as well as working around the marketplace's releaseschedule would be a challenge. As new features were being introducedto the mainline version of the A32NX, many developers wished theircode only to remain in that version, under the GPL license. This hadthe effect of making any code that built upon it increasinglydifficult to port to the marketplace edition.

One of our other main concerns is the extra workload thatmarketplace and Xbox traffic would place on our support and qualityassurance teams. Everyone at FlyByWire is a volunteer, and works intheir free time out of passion for this project and thecommunity. Having very distinctly different versions of our airplaneon the marketplace and Xbox would overwhelm our support team onDiscord, and double the work for our QA to make sure every new featureworks on both PC and Xbox. Simply put, we just don't have the manpoweror resources.

Finally, although the SDK has improved since the release of the sima year ago, it still lacks some key functionality that limits what wecan do with the aircraft. In an effort to work around this, we areconsidering the possibility of running certain components of theaircraft outside the simulator - something that would also not becompatible with the marketplace.

We hope you can understand our reasons behind this decision. Weremain committed to producing the most detailed and accurate A320neosimulation possible for the flight simulation community, and we can'twait to see what the future holds.

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