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Tetris Creator Claims FOSS Destroys the Market

Posted by kdawson on from the sterile-absentia dept.

alx5000 writes "In an interview conducted last week with Consumer Eroski (link in Spanish; Google translation), the father of Tetris Alexey Pajitnov claimed that 'Free Software should have never existed,' since it 'destroys the market' by bringing down companies that create wealth and prosperity. When asked about Red Hat or Oracle's support-oriented model, he called them 'a minority,' and also criticized Stallman's ideas as 'belonging to the past' where there were no software 'business possibilities.'"

4 of 686 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Before everyone jumps on him by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    No, I think the irony is that while there are a million and one free clones of tetris, the reason he got screwed out of a ton of money was due to the acts of proprietary software companies.

    True, the Soviet government screwed him over, too, but only after Andromeda had sold the rights (which they didn't own) to Spectrum HoloByte (who got rich selling it in America).

  2. Re:bringing down companies that create wealth by TemporalBeing · · Score: 5, Informative

    Tetris was originally designed as a training tool for late Soviet-era transport interests. The idea was to reduce shipping costs by training load masters to improve the density of packing freight cars, container ships, and trucks.

    This is all covered in my book, Shit I Made Up About The Russian Software Industry. Obviously you didn't see the BBC documentary on Tetris (it's available on YouTube - can't provide a link right now). Alex created it as a variant of a popular board game with a couple extra twists according to the documentary. It then started selling, and only later did the USSR find out about it - after it had already swept through the USSR and other countries wanted to buy it. The USSR's software group ended up sole-sourcing the market to Nintendo through some interesting twists, which through Atari for a spin as they had already pumped a lot of money into their own version of Tetris since they thought they had licensed it for the PC. Quite a good documentary.
    --
    Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
  3. Re:News Flash: bitter ex communist hates communism by Peter+Mork · · Score: 3, Informative

    I don't see how FOSS is like communism at all actually. Does the government strictly control the creation and supply of software?

    "Communism is a socioeconomic structure that promotes the establishment of a classless, stateless society based on common ownership of the means of production." (from the (reasonable) Wikipedia defintion) Nothing in this definition mentions the government. FOSS really is quite communistic in that everyone owns the means of production and the product. Up the irons!

  4. He's just saying that because... by mungmaster2000 · · Score: 3, Informative

    He thinks FOSS screwed-over his buddy Vladimir causing his software company to go tits-up, causing him to kill his wife and son. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Pokhilko http://www.rotten.com/library/culture/tetris/ I read it on rotten, so it MUST be true!!