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StarCraft Is Now Free, Nearly 20 Years After Its Release (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Nearly two decades after its 1998 release, StarCraft is now free. Legally! Blizzard has just released the original game -- plus the Brood War expansion -- for free for both PC and Mac. You can find it here. Up until a few weeks ago, getting the game with its expansion would've cost $10-15 bucks. The company says they've also used this opportunity to improve the game's anti-cheat system, add "improved compatibility" with Windows 7, 8.1, and 10, and fix a few long lasting bugs. So why now? The company is about to release a remastered version of the game in just a few months, its graphics/audio overhauled for modern systems. Once that version hits, the original will probably look a bit ancient by comparison -- so they might as well use it to win over a few new fans, right?
Seems like yesterday the wife was bitching and moaning about how much time I spent playing that game. I'm getting old, fast.
Why? They are still planning on using portions of the code for the updated version, plus they are under no obligation to do so. They've already given away the game for free. Asking for the source now, just after they've released it for free, is pushing an agenda too far. Calm your crusade for a few hours, at least. Sheesh.
You must be loads of fun at parties.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
The GPL's negative effect on freedom
Nope. The government stepping in and putting you in jail for lynching undesireables is a "negative effect on freedom" but is still a net gain in freedom. "Forcing" freedom is still more freedom than anarchy. In practice, anarchy quickly becomes a warlord system. So GPL, forcing those who use it to remain open isn't a negative effect on freedom.
Unless you think that putting a mass murderer in prison is a negative effect on freedom.
Learn to love Alaska
I'm a little less jazzed to find that it installs Bonjour, without telling you, and it doesn't provide a visible uninstall option unless you do some research and learn that there's a command line uninstall. My system's performance dropped sharply and only recovered once i'd managed to pry Bonjour out of it.
there is
There are
at least 40 definitions for the word free
"free"
in the dictionary,
dictionary.
its
It's
no one elses
else's
fault or problem you
that you
are to
too
fucking stupid to remember more than one
one.
Sorry, why were you saying he was stupid? I was a bit distracted.
The fact that the GPL "requires" people to do so many things means that it's taking away freedom.
Whose freedom? Users, distributors, maintainers, vendors, service providers? You can't guarantee 100% freedom to each of them simultaneously. They are incompatible. For example, allowing distributors to do everything they want (e.g not providing source code) will prevent users to do everything they want (e.g modifying the program). So, it makes no sense simply to state that a license "reduces freedom in general". So, let's please stop saying imprecisely wrong things like "GPL code doesn't give me freedom because it puts restrictions on the way I can redistribute it". The GPL has always been about protecting the freedoms of the end-users at all cost, not the the vendors' freedoms.
Two things:
1. The PC version doesn't install Bonjour. Maybe the Mac version does, but the PC version doesn't (yes I know they should have used "Windows" instead of "PC", but that ship has sailed just like the "hacking" vs "cracking" linguistic saga)
2. Let the installer download and unpack the game files and archive the installation directory. The game itself is not dependent on any remote server and seems to be completely portable, so as long as you have the archive available, you don't need to worry. Installer stubs are becoming more and more common these days - getting riled up about such things is not worth your blood pressure.
Yet it is the most popular open-source license by far, and has given us the infrastructure for the entire internet, powered some of the biggest supercomputers ever built which are helping to solve the mysteries of the universe and so on and so forth.
The BSD systems, even after release, and despite being arguably better in some technical measures never achieved such an impact on the world, their biggest achievement was having MacOSX based on FreeBSD. Sure the GPL precluded what apple did there - and that was why apple chose FreeBSD - but the BSD Licenses failed to build an open internet for the masses or an OS that runs most of it's servers (and a growing number of desktops and virtually all of it's mobile devices).
The GPL succeeded where the BSD licenses failed exactly because it understood that to make society, overall, more free you must REDUCE the freedom of the few in favour of the freedom of the many. Because when you do not, the few will use their freedom to remove freedom from the many - they will BECOME tyrants.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
It is illegal to dissasemble and modify freeware, so GPL software is not worse there.
Yes you can. If you don't modify it, you can simply copy the offer that was handed to you as your user right. (GPLv3, section 6c). Please don't spread misinformation. (Section 6c is limited to a noncommercial context, but that is the use case you were arguing, and the only possible one with shareware/freeware).
If you did modify it, well, that's already something that you couldn't have done legally with freeware.
You can't do that with freeware either, so how is it any better?
Myself, I like to see it with respect to what is protected by the license in terms of freedom.
- "Permissive" licenses (BSD-like) protect a single snapshot of the code, as it exists the day it is released. That version can be used freely by anyone, but the possibility to impose additional restrictions means that you won't necessarily be free to use the versions derived from that snapshot.
- "Protective" licenses (i.e. Copyleft) protect the whole project in the long term, whether it is the snapshot released under the license or any later modification of it. You are guaranteed access to any version that someone releases of that code, under the same terms that give you the freedom to use code.
The idea of the constraints in Copyleft is that the constrained environment should have more total possible actions in the aggregate, even if every individual player has one less action available on paper. If you don't acknowledge this possibility, you are not getting the point why the constraint was added to this kind of license.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
He did try whining. Does that count?
http://redmonk.com/sogrady/201...
The very first link if you google it, is to the most comprehensive study that exists - and the most up to date data. And it clearly shows that the GPL2 is still by far the most popular license with GPL3 in second place - combined they cover a full 37% of all projects by themselves -the remaining 63% divided among ALL OTHER licenses - including the other GNU copyleft licences like the AGPL.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
You need to spawn more overlords first.