Curse

Fril Estelin · Mar 30, 2008, 10:34 PM // 22:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amy Awien

That ignores the history of (personal) computing. People, private as well as business, used pirated software on their XT's long before the GPL came in to being, and long before the x86 was even capable of running anything *nix like.
If anything OSS offers free and completely legal alternatives to pirating paid-for software.

No it doesn't, because at the time of the *nix boom, there wasn't 1) an application market; 2) FOSS. Piracy was not really an issue because there wasn't a business and not even a solid business model. People would pay for the pack workstation+OS, and sometimes get the "free" upgrade, that wasn't really free.

FOSS is not an alternative to piracy, as it does not have atm a long-term business model. Think about it. Free software? How is it paid? Linus is paid by a bunch of grateful companies. Other kernel major developpers are (well) paid by their main job. A few hundred thousands developers get more or less money for their soft (see Redhat and co). The lucky ones work for a company acquired by a major corp (Novell for Suse). So FOSS developers sell a free product, but the service is not free. But this is difficult to live from, because it's unstable atm.

This is not completely off-topc because behind the piracy problem, there's the question of alternatives, which also redirects to the issue of fairness. At one extreme things should be free, because of FOSS and to break the order created by the major media companies. At the other extreme, we should pay the price because it's illegal to do otherwise, even if some people in the chain of business are taking much more money that they shall. Where's the right position?

Dr Strangelove · Mar 30, 2008, 10:54 PM // 22:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

This is not completely off-topc because behind the piracy problem, there's the question of alternatives, which also redirects to the issue of fairness. At one extreme things should be free, because of FOSS and to break the order created by the major media companies. At the other extreme, we should pay the price because it's illegal to do otherwise, even if some people in the chain of business are taking much more money that they shall. Where's the right position?

Sadly, the open source alternative, while useful, simply isn't viable when everyone else is using the standard options. It's worth the money to most businesses and people to not have to deal with file conversions and compatibility issues. Once an economic norm is set, it's almost impossible to change it.

As for the right position, it lies somewhere in the middle, which is why we see so many shaky rationalizations for it. For instance, it seems perfectly moral to pirate tv shows when they're not available to you otherwise, since you're not depriving anyone of sales. Pirating readily available games, however, is probably a bad idea since the market will shift to stuff you don't want to play.

The best example here is Adobe Photoshop. It currently retails for $650 USD, more than any reasonable individual would ever pay. It's common knowlege that essentially every casual user pirates it, and by all accounts Adobe doesn't care that much. Their true source of income comes from getting amateur users comfortable with their software, then having them buy it for corporate interests. Is piracy really wrong here, considering that Adobe's business model essentially depends on it?

CyberNigma · Mar 30, 2008, 11:21 PM // 23:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by seut

for GuildWars? not anymore...

Quote:

After much petitioning Guild Wars China will be closed

* Registration stop on March 17th
* Server terminate on March 31st
* Official website close on March 31st

It is unknown whether or not the data will be saved.

http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forum...d.php?t=475551

cool, now give me a friggin Panda pet :-)

since this was an OT discussion that introduced the china/panda thing...

http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/03/10...-panda-debate/

-=[Kevin]=-

Chthon · Mar 30, 2008, 11:33 PM // 23:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by CyberNigma

cool, now give me a friggin Panda pet :-)

I have to agree.

-Loki- · Mar 31, 2008, 08:05 AM // 08:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Splitisoda

Did Oblivion have a demo?

Is oblivion 'most games'? No, in which case, your comment is pointless.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Splitisoda

Truth there, but then again, ALL of my games had some sort of demo.

They should, but not having them isn't justification for theft.

Amy Awien · Mar 31, 2008, 08:24 AM // 08:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

No it doesn't, because at the time of the *nix boom, there wasn't 1) an application market; 2) FOSS. Piracy was not really an issue because there wasn't a business and not even a solid business model. People would pay for the pack workstation+OS, and sometimes get the "free" upgrade, that wasn't really free.

And then they sat down and stared at the blinking cursor?

Off course there was an application market and users pirated these titles as hard as they do now. Software was more expensive then it is now, and currently there are relatively cheap alternatives

Quote:

FOSS is not an alternative to piracy, as it does not have atm a long-term business model.

Oh, that must be why it's completely dead, and there's no development of OSS anymore. You can think about it as you like, but it's not exactly at a dead end.

How do you manage to believe that people pirate software because of the availability of free alternatives, people use pirated software because they want to use the same software their friends do without paying for it. People still use pirated software despite the availability of OSS alternatives, not because off it's existence.

Fril Estelin · Mar 31, 2008, 08:54 AM // 08:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amy Awien

And then they sat down and stared at the blinking cursor?

Off course there was an application market and users pirated these titles as hard as they do now. Software was more expensive then it is now, and currently there are relatively cheap alternatives

And software was used for business use, so it did not make sense to make business by pirating software. Of course people were pirating it. Reverse engineering always existed, warez is as old as POSIX! But it wasn't widespread (thank you P2P) contrarily to what you think.

Quote:

Oh, that must be why it's completely dead, and there's no development of OSS anymore. You can think about it as you like, but it's not exactly at a dead end.

How do you manage to believe that people pirate software because of the availability of free alternatives, people use pirated software because they want to use the same software their friends do without paying for it. People still use pirated software despite the availability of OSS alternatives, not because off it's existence.

You completely failed to understand my point, pointing at the word "because" shows how you misread my statement. I'm not drawing a direct line between the two, simply pointing at the various links explaining it. IMHO (and I've heard it from computer users) the idea that "software is free" made (some) people believe that everything should be free, consciously or not. As I said before, this was reinforced by the fact that unfair business models were imposed on users.

And believe me regarding F/OSS, I'm working with Open/SuSE and a few edvs told me how hard it is to sustain this mode of operation. If Novell wasn't here (similarly IBM for a bunch of other F/OSS projects), they wouldn't exist anymore. They have yet to find a valid and robust business model (and you also failed to understand that I'm a proponent of F/OSS and knows that they'll find one, it may be SaaS/SOC, who knows). They can exist as a serious alternative by depending on people's generosity or parasitic support, it's not sustainable.

Tijger · Mar 31, 2008, 10:24 AM // 10:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amy Awien

Oh, that must be why it's completely dead, and there's no development of OSS anymore. You can think about it as you like, but it's not exactly at a dead end.

OSS gaming has, however, proven a dead end so far, the only that you could construe as OSS gaming is things like the mods for NWN, ie user generated content which technically isnt really OSS anyway. The above still required a company that built the engine and original game for profit.

So, no, OSS game development is not really a big deal and wont be one either, just the same as OSS music isnt a big deal and wont be one for the immediate future.

zwei2stein · Mar 31, 2008, 10:58 AM // 10:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tijger

OSS gaming has, however, proven a dead end so far, the only that you could construe as OSS gaming is things like the mods for NWN, ie user generated content which technically isnt really OSS anyway. The above still required a company that built the engine and original game for profit.

So, no, OSS game development is not really a big deal and wont be one either, just the same as OSS music isnt a big deal and wont be one for the immediate future.

OSS Games are alive, they just suck at this time. Mostly because there is little creativity and they all end up as "me-too" clones of whatever developer enjoys most.

But there ARE projects that stand out and which deliver great experience, lots of puzzle and strategy games. Nothing to make it to covers of gaming mags thou.

Btw: there IS opensource MMO. It is pretty terrible thou.

Tijger · Mar 31, 2008, 01:03 PM // 13:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

OSS Games are alive, they just suck at this time. Mostly because there is little creativity and they all end up as "me-too" clones of whatever developer enjoys most.

Yes, well, 99% of OSS projects out there are clones of commercial or other OSS programs anyway, OSS tends to excel in duplication of effort and me-too stuff.

Quote:

But there ARE projects that stand out and which deliver great experience, lots of puzzle and strategy games. Nothing to make it to covers of gaming mags thou.

Btw: there IS opensource MMO. It is pretty terrible thou.

If its good people will play it, everyone loves 'free' and with the Internet outlets there really isnt that much need for marketing so, basically, while there may be small and even good projects out there, on the whole there simply is no OSS gaming market.

Nobody is being paid by hardware manufacturers to build and maintain games like the OSS devs on the major applications are, the business model that does work, to an extent, for office applications is a non-starter for the games market.