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The End of Copyright
Gamasutra has an article from the ever-interesting Ernest Adams on the future of copyright as regards creative works. From the article: "If we're going to go on making video games, the publishers have to find a way to make them pay for themselves. One approach is an advertising model, although I'm reluctant to say it because I hate the idea of ads in games. Another is to treat games as a service rather than a product. With broadband distribution, I think this is increasingly likely: you won't ever have a durable copy of a game, you'll download it every time you play it. Each instantiation will be unique, personalized for a particular machine and Internet address; encrypted to discourage hacking; and expires after a few hours. After that you'll have to download a new copy."
Very few people give a damn what crabby open-source nerds will or won't do in terms of software purchasing. This sort of business model doesn't target people like you as a customer, it targets the morons of the earth - the people generally not bright enough to understand the differences in distribution models other than "this one doesn't require me to get off of the couch", and not techincally adept enough to just pirate the damned game in the first place. Valve's success with their vile authentication schemes for Half-Life 2 have already proven that with enough good marketing, people will gladly pay for software that decides how they'll use it.