On my part, I was never particularly crazy about them. I use the search engine, have an unused gmail account and that's about it. Right now I'm seriously starting to ponder how to avoid them as much as possible.
Unfortunately they have the one more or less decent phone OS left, so now I'm pondering if it's possible to get an Android phone devoid of anything Google related.
The insanity of the software patents seems to be finally blowing up in an extremely public way.
I really hope that the lawsuits against Apple result in very harmful for them consequences, ideally something ridiculous like forcing them to pull iPhones and iPads from the shelves.
Why? Because if that happens, there's no way it will stand. It will be discussed all over the world, and everybody will agree it's a crappy state of affairs. Maybe then some sanity can be introduced by eliminating them.
That might be a bit too optimistic, but still this is a perfect example of what's wrong with the system. At least it'll make a good explanation of why software patents are a bad idea, and should be kept out of the places that don't yet have them.
It won't cost Linux the desktop for the same reason why having to choose between Google Talk, AIM and MSN doesn't do that to the Windows desktop: those things aren't really significant and not new either.
Evolution vs Thunderbird doesn't matter, as they're pretty much equivalent for most purposes. Besides, a lot of people use gmail and don't really care about either. Then it's not like Thunderbird doesn't run on Windows, creating exactly the same choice.
Libre Office vs OpenOffice doesn't really matter at this point in time either, as the differences are tiny, and the file format is standard anyway. Long term there'll probably be a clear winner. I'm betting for Libre Office because that's what Ubuntu is shipping right now, and Oracle is a hulking behemoth.
But, there's a bigger thing here, and it's that all such discussions are ultimately pointless. The OSS world is fluid and distributed. No matter how much somebody might pontificate at great length about the need for unity, nobody is obligated to care.
Libre Office for instance, appeared for a good reason, and I doubt very much the developers that work on it will suddenly "see the light" and go back to trying to submit patches to Oracle, just because some guy wrote an article saying it "might cost Linux the desktop". I'd say that most developers don't really care. At least when I contribute patches to Linux software I don't do it because of some world domination long term goal.
I think what is needed is open standards. So long I can use whatever I like to do my work, why would I need to care about what the rest of the world uses?
"peanuts" is relative to what is needed, and what the donor can give, as well as the actual value of the contribution.
For instance, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation intend to create social change. $100K to say, 200 schools would indeed be peanuts because it wouldn't change much of anything.
With Microsoft it's mostly that they can donate any amount they like. After all, they set the price on their software, and it's what they donate. Plus that kind of donation is mostly an investment. I've never heard of MS donating on anything that didn't imply more usage of MS tech.
As far as Bletchley Park is concerned: I've been there. It looks pretty good, and most of the restoration work seems complete and have been in a large part done by volunteers. So the main costs are that of maintenance, and for that $100K is a pretty good amount.
It was just a set of offprints -- meaning it's not the manuscript or an unique copy of something.
I'd much rather they used the money to maintain the buildings and recreate the hardware.
Then there's the weirdness of obsessing so much about a bunch of papers left by somebody who pioneered the digital computer. I think he'd be much better honored with high resolution, digital files.
Except the post is wrong, the article isn't about Oracle damaging the OSS community, it's about them damaging Java.
Releasing a JVM with a serious bug doesn't damage the OSS community. In fact it's an excellent way to give it more influence. Issues like these provide plenty incentive to fork.
The worst case for Oracle would be it goes the way it happened with XFree86: every distribution ships the Apache version, and everybody stops caring about the original project's existence.
I must be imagining working in a company that mostly works on GPL2 and GPL3 software.
Nothing in the GPL3 makes making money harder than the GPL2 does.
So I'll develop for a closed platform where I have the potential to keep my kids fed and invest in their college. And the community isn't openly hostile to the idea of me being successful.
That's perfect, I'll continue releasing GPL3 released software for precisely the same reason.
You see, I get my payment either via code or money. I get code if you comply with the GPL and release your improvements. I get money if you're unhappy with that and negotiate a different deal with me. You finding a way around the GPL2 that lets you technically comply while escaping its intent is a negative for me, so I have absolutely no reason to let that loophole stand. That's why I now license everything under the (A)GPL3.
As far as I'm concerned, if she wants herself to be addressed as "Lady Ada", then that's her real name for me. In fact I've never heard of Limor Fried before, while I have heard of Lady Ada. If she's forced to go by what it says in her documentation, I'm not going to know who is that
From what I hear in many places just using a different name is an acceptable way of changing it.
This isn't my real name either, so after hearing this I'm obviously not going to be on google+
Re:They opensourced the engine, but not the data.
on
Aquaria Goes Open Source
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Why a non-story? I have the data already, since I bought the game. The source code was what I was missing to be able to make some improvements I've been thinking of.
This is exactly what I wanted, and I didn't expect anything more than that.
If you're the same guy who keeps posting about this on the wolfire blog, just do a favour and stop complaining. If you don't see this as an opportunity for some improvements, then perhaps you're not really able to do any, and what you really want is free of charge game, but that was never promised in the first place.
On my part, all I wanted is the source, I got it, so I'm happy.
The outcome of the humble bundle couldn't have been better IMO, and I'll gladly contribute to any future initiatives of the sort.
I'm not going to reply to your whole post, because this conversation is tiring me, and it's now MORE than obviously you're never going to even attempt to support your initial statement no matter how long this goes on.
Disappointing. I was looking forwards to more of those "The World Does Not Fucking Revolve Around You";-)
Did you at least get that I don't pirate and that I actually do pay for stuff I like?
That is complete nonsense.
Explain why then.
Software isn't a physical product. More bits don't weigh more or take more to manufacture. If you did a full version already, you don't save money by stripping features, you spend it.
You missed the point. You said it was suicide, I said if it was suicide, then after 25 years of it they'd probably be dead and they aren't. You then wrote this response which has absolutely nothing to do with your initial statement (that DRM is suicide.)
I said "Fighting your own customer base is suicidal". There are degrees of that, some worse than others. The Mac guy did an extreme version, Games Workshop seems to be intent on achieving the same result in another way, and the rest are for the most part just screwing up enough to lose money.
Not only can you not debate, you can't even keep a single thread of conversation in your brain longer than 5 minutes, apparently. You're the enemy of rational thought and civil debate.
Heh, how dramatic.
Please take your own advice and reply to the whole post, then.
Nooooo, you said that Wikipedia said that it's the most pirated game of 2008. It's possible for it to simultaneously: 1) Be defeating casual piracy efforts with DRM 2) Be the most pirated game of 2008 Those two things aren't mutually-exclusive. Once again, you've shown absolutely nothing.
How come they aren't? What is your definition of "casual piracy"?
Mine is that you can easily grab it from BitTorrent. That's how the vast majority of it works.
Because DRM systems are often made less restrictive after the title is released; I can think of a dozen games where this has happened. It has nothing to do with the success of the DRM system, it only has to do with the vast majority of the game income coming in the first few months of sales.
So again, if it was working perfectly fine, why change it? To reduce the amount of DRM you need to pay programmers to do the work, make a new release, get it through QA, get it to various distribution points, etc. It's very real work and it costs money. So why on earth would they do it, if things were perfectly fine in the state it was released?
No it's not. The only way I can think of that it's easier is that the download size is smaller... other than that, it's exactly the same.
I already gave you an example: I have a "send by bluetooth" option on my phone, for any song. If somebody says "I want that one!" it's all of 5 seconds to start a transfer to their phone/laptop.
Game piracy is more involved, you need a suitable network, or to burn a CD, or to find a flash drive, or some such thing. In comparison, music piracy is so easy I can send songs to any random person anywhere. I could do it while standing in a train in the underground. No wifi, no wires, no messing with networking.
And it's also small enough to be emailed.
Wha-huh? Are you talking about the composer of the video game soundtrack? You lost me.
My mistake. Should have been "Really music artists are probably nervous as heck at the prospect of their music not selling"
It takes more than 10% additional effort to produce a version for another platform. I hate to break this to you, buddy, but we're in a world where game makers are contemplating not even making *Windows* versions in favor of consoles... I recall (and I'm not going to cite this, because you're an idiot) the makers of Modern Warfare 2 saying that even with the reduced feature-set, and piracy completely aside, the Windows version of the game barely broke even.
Wait, wait. They removed functionality and are suprised it's not selling? Well, duh.
"Dedicated server support is removed, eliminating the ability for mods or user-created maps to be incorporated. This removal has created anger among many PC gamers." -- well there you have the reason it didn't sell.
As a PC user, I don't want a crippled console game, I want a fully featured PC game.
Also, reduced feature sets in software don't actually save money. You have to code the feature anyway, it costs you extra money to make sure it can be left out and everything works without it. Software removes features for market segmentation, not because it somehow makes things cheaper.
If you think the law is not moral, then work to change the law. Don't just break it!
I'm sorry, do you have problems with reading comprehension? I never spoke of breaking the law. I repeat:
1. I buy games without DRM. 2. I don't buy those that have it (but don't pirate them). 3. I work to change the law, by for instance belonging to the Pirate Party and donating to the EFF, among other things.
Need me to repeat it another time?
Yeah, but they're already doing that... so you're really saying nothing!
How would what? Your question doesn't make sense. What are you asking?
Reduce casual piracy. How is it supposed to be doing that, given the miserable failure that it is? I give Spore as an example as how it's completely failing to do that.
Ok, so these three points translate as: 1) Not relevant to my point 2) Not relevant to my point (also incorrect) 3) Not relevant to my point
1. Why? It clearly failed to prevent any piracy. 2. Why? What do you mean it's not trivial? Go look on the pirate bay. Download, install a while later. My grandma could do it. 3. Why? Isn't it supposed to be preventing something? Given that it was the "most pirated game of the year" it clearly didn't do what it was supposed to.
You can doubt all you want, but EA hasn't gotten rid of DRM on any of their titles.
They did do some changes. Spore got the activation limit bumped, then released on Steam without the original DRM. Now I wonder, why would they relax those restrictions, if it wasn't losing them sales?
The World Does Not Fucking Revolve Around You
So? All I'm saying, I'm a potential customer, and one that they lost due to DRM. Can't be the only one. So any company doing it has to have in mind that it's going to lose them some sales.
Well, the difference is music "is contained in small files that are useful on their own." That's the fucking difference. You typed it in the same paragraph where you asked what the difference was, idiot.
Well, exactly. Music is much, much easier to pirate. So by all logic, un-DRMed music should be suicide. But hey, what you know, it's selling, and stores are dropping the DRM.
The cost of producing a song (the smallest unit of "music") is orders of magnitude less than the cost of producing an entire video game (the smallest unit of "video game"). That *is* the difference. The economics are all out-of-whack from that alone.
I don't think that has much to do with it. Making music is very risky. Record companies drive a hard bargain and many popular artists end up not earning much, or in debt. Really music artists are probably nervous as heck at the prospect of their game not selling.
Ok then let's go by Wolfire's numbers-- 10% is still massive loss. Christ. Am I debating with a kindergartner or something?
I disagree with the "massive" part. The numbers normally discussed suggest a 90% loss or something equally gigantic. This is peanuts in comparison. And again, the stats show that if you want 10% more, make a Mac version.
See what they have in common? BOTH OF THEM ARE IN VIOLATION OF THE FUCKING LAW YOU FUCKING DOUCHE.
I'm sorry, the "THE FUCKING LAW" argument never impressed me much. Some things are legal and shouldn't be, and some aren't and should be. Repeat after me: law doesn't equal morality.
Not that it's my argument anyway, but that point seemed to be worth making.
Whatever the percentage of A compared to B is, you're arguing in favor of assholes who have zero respect for the time and effort of game creators.
No, I'm arguing a very simple thing: ignore the assholes, and make your customers happy, because you know, those are the ones that actually pay you the money, and may choose not to.
Your argument, in short, is: "hey games industry, FUCK YOU."
No, it's "hey games industry, make games without DRM and I will buy them"
I'm NEVER going to agree with that, whether the number in A is 100%, 10% or 0.01%.
Then you have no business sense. Every retail business has to contend with things like product breakage, employees stealing the product, etc. The sane ones recognize that piss
Point A doesn't lead to point B here. If DRM is effective at reducing casual piracy, then it's not wasting money.
How would it?
There you have an example with Spore. Please explain where the effect was. It still got released on BT before the official release. It's entirely trivial to "casually pirate" it. Wikipedia says it was the "most pirated game of 2008".
So was all the drama really worth it? I really doubt it, because that HAD to lose sales, while it obviously completely failed to prevent any piracy.
Once I heard of the DRM I decided not to buy it, and until that point I was quite interested.
Holy fuck, a cite!? It's almost as if you're not spewing nothing but ignorance! Of course, it's a cite of The Inquirer. Better than nothing, I guess... slightly.
It was discussed extensively back then on different sites, but this was some years ago so probably a few links disapeared. I think it was discussed on Slashdot at some point as well.
Possibly, and yet games are not music.
Please explain where the difference is. Music should be even worse, as it's contained in small files that are useful on their own. Music is even more trivial to swap than games. I have a "send over bluetooth" option on my phone, for the currently playing song.
Yet, it sells just fine.
Ok, but it's simultaneously true that massive amounts of loss is due to piracy.
Proof please. All instances of "massive loss" I've seen assume that 1 copy=1 lost sale. But that's clearly bullshit.
That's because a lot of people: 1) Bitch about DRM, then buy the game anyway.
Possibly, but people do have a breaking point, and some do indeed end up not buying it, or not buying the next game from that company.
And I do indeed not buy games with DRM, but you can bet there are people who don't believe it.
2) Bitch about DRM, but they really weren't your customers in the first place. In the same way a lot of people who pirate weren't your customers, a lot of people who bitch about DRM aren't your customers. That doesn't stop them from bitching. Hell, Slashdot Games seems to be read entirely by people who, by and large, do not actually buy video games. But they sure as hell bitch about DRM.
Why would they bitch about it? Those people who are not your customers don't have DRM! They got their copy from BitTorrent pre-cracked, and it installed without asking any questions. It doesn't do CD checks, doesn't have activation, doesn't refuse to work with DaemonTools, and has no installation limits. Besides, it often starts faster and crashes less. They have absolutely nothing to bitch about.
That's the funny thing about DRM -- the people it annoys are the customers. Every Spore pirate out there has no clue what the hoopla is all about, because for them it works perfectly fine, and they can install it anywhere they want as many times as they want.
Same as with the NWN case: the one doing the bitching was I, the customer. Anybody with a pirated copy either didn't need to enter a serial number at all, or it came in a "serial.txt" file they could copy and paste from.
1) A good estimate of the number people who pirate the title
A hard to get number, especially with the existence of offline distribution.
And also not the number you want. What you want is the number of people who pirated it, but who would have paid for it if they couldn't. The rest aren't losing you money.
2) A good estimate of the number of people who would not buy the title had it DRM (which, contrary to Slashdot's estimation, is extremely tiny)
I'm probably rather extreme in my tastes, but I make an effort to make as much effect as possible. For something I really support, like Wolfire's initiative, I'll make sure to plug it everywhere posible. If I'm especially annoyed I'll make sure to get the company to lose at least a couple of sales.
Considering the amount of noise about Starforce, I do think it has to lose quite a few sales.
3) An estimate of the cost of developing adequate DRM policies and code
Hard to get an estimate, companies don't seem to publish prices on this. But doubt it's very cheap.
You haven't provided any of those numbers. Not even rough estimates. You have absolutely no case here, none at all.
Well, provide your numbers then. Real numbers I mean, because the "1 pirated copy=1 lost sale" is nonsense.
Instead of providing figures to back-up your assertion, you throw in shit like your point 5 which is completely irrelevant to the problem
It's very much relevant. I don't know of a single game that hasn't been cracked. No matter what you do, no matter how you try to stop it, eventually I can get a copy from bittorrent. So you'd be wasting money.
There's a Spore torrent on the pirate bay right now. In exchange for the DRM they got a lot of annoyed people who mounted a campaign against it, and went to the point of a class action lawsuit and it still was pointless because it still got cracked before the release and is still right there.
They also ended up relaxing the restrictions, so evidently it had to be losing them money, because otherwise, why would they have done it?
Point 6 which appears to be a scaremongering urban legend at best.
Is it possible you're correct? Yes, I concede that. Is it likely? No-- if it was, then you'd see major studios ditching DRM as quickly as possible.
Online music stores have ditched it, which seems to point to something.
Also, it's very attractive to blame every loss of sales on piracy. It's something external you can blame and avoid ever blaming yourself for anything. Many claims not to buy a game because of DRM are met with disbelief.
The "Law Of Look In A Goddamned Gaming Store" says that your assertion is wrong, and I see no reason to believe that all game studios are somehow insane and you're not.
It wouldn't be the first time an ineffective measure was adopted even though it miserably failed to work. See also the war on drugs that keeps their merchants in business, and the prohibition that miserably failed to do anything useful, and still took a long time to get rid of.
You haven't shown that at all. Unless you're taking your personal opinion, and extrapolating it to the entire rest of the planet.
Start from Wolfire's own numbers.
1. Of all of piracy, maybe 10% could be paid for.
2. If those people were prevented from using the game without paying, it still doesn't mean they will pay. I have the ability to say, go and and buy an iPad right now. I can afford it, but I still don't. So just plain having enough money isn't enough, and that reduces the percentage further.
3. Any gains may be offset by people who were formerly willing to pay, and now may not be. See my requirements from earlier, they're pretty tight. Any customer that you anger by locking them out of a legitimately paid game is potentially several lost sales, due to them ranting on any medium available to anybody who cares to listen. The more people run into issues, the more the amount of these people grows.
4. This stuff isn't free. It needs to be licensed/programmed and tested. You need to spend more time on support for people who run into issues caused by it.
5. Perfect DRM doesn't exist anyway. No matter how fancy it is, if it's something wanted enough, somebody's going to crack it, and that only needs to happen once. Then all the others just copy the crack around.
6. Once you're done with that, in the absolute best case you gain some fraction of the 10%. In the absolute worst case it backfires on you so badly that bankrupt yourself. It has happened. IIRC it was the guy who said the program would delete the user's home folder if a pirated key was used. There was such a firestorm that several days later the program was pulled from sale entirely, probably due to the threats of lawsuits. Though that's a rather extreme example.
7. Since you're trying to make a profit, and all this costs time and money, it's very possibly not the most cost effective way to earn money, especially when considering the risk involved.
Corporations as a whole, maybe. But how many programmers and artists are only in it for the money?
Quite a few. Never ran into one of those "I'm here for the $$$!" people at school?
But yes, some are motivated by principles. My current job is what it is in large part because it involves working with and contributing to open source software. Some people get jobs because they get to work with Macs, Sun hardware, etc.
But, I've not yet met anybody who writes DRM software out of principle. The reasons I've seen are:
1. Believing that doing so will make more money. 2. The publisher/investor/etc demands it 3. To get revenge on those they believe are using their software unlawfully.
These both things are not a case of something done out of a principle. The first comes out of a belief of necessity, the second because other people mandate it, and the third out of anger.
The third reason is often a bad idea, as it's done under the wrong state of mind for good coding. It goes wrong especially when a bug backfires in a bad way, or when the developer decides to get "REVENGE!" and comes up with some crazy scheme like deleting the user's home directory. This of course ensures many people decide they won't touch their software with a 10 foot pole.
Uh, maybe I misread, but wasn't his conclusion that 10% of piracy is probably completely genuine?
Yes, meaning it's not a very big deal.
10% is certainly money, but it's not the huge amounts being implied in various press releases. It's also an amount that can be easily made or lost through other decisions.
No company makes 100% of the money it could potentially make. Some potential customers don't know about the product, some are on the wrong platform, some are annoyed by DRM, some are unwilling to pay the price but would buy if it was cheaper, some pay but would be willing to pay more. You can't please absolutely everyone, or make everybody pay precisely the amount they're willing to pay, so you're always missing on some money you could possibly have if everything was ideal.
And according to their numbers, their time is much better spent on Linux and Mac support.
Look, Wolfire doesn't care about piracy because they're a tiny indie studio and they care a lot more about getting their games into people's hands than anything else. That's true of pretty much every tiny indie studio. While it's great that he's running the numbers and figuring out a better estimate for the piracy rate, his opinion on DRM is *not relevant* to studios like, for example, Nintendo.
Don't think it's completely irrelevant. I follow the same logic when buying the games from any studio. DRM will ensure I will not buy it, and that's a guaranteed lost sale right there.
After getting burned, I got much more careful. So, for me personally:
Required internet connection when not required for multiplayer and such: no sale
Activation and such schemes: no sale
Limited installation attempts: no sale
Calling home: no sale
Refusal to work with software like Daemon Tools installed: no sale
Checking if the hardware changed: no sale
Requirement for CD key: Will be treated with extreme suspicion, likely no sale.
CD check: Likely no sale
Console game only: no sale, I only buy PC games
If any of the above sneaks through because it wasn't properly disclosed before I bought it: I will call your tech support and complain for as long as possible, after that guaranteed no sale for anything else you make. You can bet I will make every effort possible to return it, as well.
Things that make it more likely I will buy your stuff:
Lack of the things mentioned above.
Linux support
Buying by downloading an installer.
Direct sale without middlemen
Ability to make mods
And that's assuming you agree with his conclusion. I also think his argument is completely flawed. Whether you could have otherwise afforded the game or not, the fact is you still pirated it.
Sure. And what about it?
I mean, there's no "oh well he couldn't afford it anyway" clause to any other kind of theft, right?
Because it's not theft. It's copyright infringement. And unlike with theft, where something is permanently removed, in copyright infringement nothing disappears. The maker possibly fails to gain money, in some cases of it. But doesn't lose it.
Why should there be one for IP theft?
First, there's no "IP". There is copyright, trademarks and patents, all of which work differently. In this case we're exclusively discussing copyright, so no need to muddle the issue.
Second, it's not theft but copyright infringement.
Third, where did you get that I'm advocating piracy?
I repeat: I just think it's not a very big deal. It may be illegal, but so is jaywalking. I think a disproportionate amount of time and resources are spent on trying to prevent it, which can be counterproductive when overdone, because it loses more than it gains back.
If somehow piracy could be entirely prevented, it'd gain mayb
And if you choose not to buy it, you should not be able to use it. The use and the compensation are thus linked.
Sure. I don't advocate piracy. I just don't think it's such a big deal.
As I said earlier, I very prefentially pay for things whose creators aren't obsessed with control. The more controlling, the harder I will try to find an unrestricted alternative (or just go without).
And then of course I get added to the piracy statistics anyway, because people can't possibly be refusing to buy things with DRM, it has to be because it's getting pirated.
Now I've just described what IS the case, not what OUGHT to be the case. I don't know what the case ought to be. On the one hand, I hate not being able to copy my music across devices. I hate having to be connected to the internet to be able to play a certain game.
Right. That's why I don't pay for such things.
On the other hand, people who create useful/entertaining/valuable things should be compensated for it, if they so wish.
No, there's no right to compensation for creation. The creator may set their work for sale, and I may choose to buy it, but that's it. If the creator sells their work under conditions people aren't willing to put up with the creator should go out of business.
This is why I don't support schemes like a "piracy tax".
SaaS solves the problem by giving control to the software publishers. The client only gets to use the software when he pays for it, and on the publisher's terms. Would the same model applied to music or games not work? Why wouldn't it work?
I wouldn't go with it because I can't copy the music to whatever device I please, or use it without an internet connection. Being able to do this is a requirement for me paying for it. Either your music is sold as a plain file (preferentially lossless) with no strings attached, or I don't pay for it.
Is it just a conceptual problem (i.e., we have this idea that we should "own" music or games that we pay for)?
Right.
What if it was marketed appropriately (i.e., just honestly tell people that they're simply paying for a license to play the game or listen to music on the licenser's terms, instead of implying that paying for it = owning it), would that solve the problem?
No, it isn't. I absolutely refuse to contribute a cent towards any such a thing, no matter how marketed or presented, or even at what price.
And since DRM-free music stores are common there's no need for me to even consider using such a service.
Well, since I object to the entire concept of letting some external force decide what I can or can't do with my hardware, and what I can or can't play, I don't own any consoles at all, or any similarly restricted equipment (like anything made by Apple for instance).
So for me it's PC gaming only, very preferentially on Linux.
Piracy is not meaningless. People are still using your product unlawfully.
So?
The way I see it, businesses don't make games because of a principle. They do so because you want to make money. And, annoying your customers with DRM might well make you less money.
I stick to one principle: If you make things available under conditions I like (no DRM) I will preferentailly buy it and recommend to other people. On the other hand, the more control the owner attempts to exercise, the more effort I will expend to avoid paying a cent for it.
Why don't you try hinging your livelihood on writing a book and then have people photocopy it instead of buying it? We'll see how you feel about piracy then.
Cory Doctorow seems to be doing fine. I bought a physical copy of the Mercurial book, though it's all right there, in the link. With source available. I also paid for the games linked above.
Short explanation of the link: Since pirates do not pay, they can download more than they could ever afford. So for a large part of what's pirated you couldn't force payment in any manner, since the money to do so simply doesn't exist.
I know of people who have enormous collections spanning thousands of movies, games, and music CDs, most of which they haven't even tried once. It seems that once somebody gets into that particular mindset they operate on a "Oh, this sounds interesting. *Adds to queue*" basis, and by the time it's done downloading they often don't remember what it was and why they have it.
Those people are largely unaffected by all this. If they can't get a copy of Nintendo's latest game, oh well, they have downloaded 20 others last week. And what they download is all pre-cracked already.
The people who it does affect though are the legitimate customers. I remember getting very angry (which doesn't happen very often to me), when I purchased Neverwinter Nights, and couldn't use it. Turns out the morons printed the CD key in a font that made B/8, O/0 and such indistinguishable. After 15 minutes I finally figured out one that worked, and I still don't know if that's the one I was supposed to use, or just a similar key that happened to work, and that will prevent somebody else from playing. I bet the pirates don't need to put up with that.
Slashdot Mirror
OSS doesn't have anything to do with marketing though. That's just how Google does things.
OSS usually earns money through support and custom solutions.
Opinions about Google are starting to change.
On my part, I was never particularly crazy about them. I use the search engine, have an unused gmail account and that's about it. Right now I'm seriously starting to ponder how to avoid them as much as possible.
Unfortunately they have the one more or less decent phone OS left, so now I'm pondering if it's possible to get an Android phone devoid of anything Google related.
The insanity of the software patents seems to be finally blowing up in an extremely public way.
I really hope that the lawsuits against Apple result in very harmful for them consequences, ideally something ridiculous like forcing them to pull iPhones and iPads from the shelves.
Why? Because if that happens, there's no way it will stand. It will be discussed all over the world, and everybody will agree it's a crappy state of affairs. Maybe then some sanity can be introduced by eliminating them.
That might be a bit too optimistic, but still this is a perfect example of what's wrong with the system. At least it'll make a good explanation of why software patents are a bad idea, and should be kept out of the places that don't yet have them.
It won't cost Linux the desktop for the same reason why having to choose between Google Talk, AIM and MSN doesn't do that to the Windows desktop: those things aren't really significant and not new either.
Evolution vs Thunderbird doesn't matter, as they're pretty much equivalent for most purposes. Besides, a lot of people use gmail and don't really care about either. Then it's not like Thunderbird doesn't run on Windows, creating exactly the same choice.
Libre Office vs OpenOffice doesn't really matter at this point in time either, as the differences are tiny, and the file format is standard anyway. Long term there'll probably be a clear winner. I'm betting for Libre Office because that's what Ubuntu is shipping right now, and Oracle is a hulking behemoth.
But, there's a bigger thing here, and it's that all such discussions are ultimately pointless. The OSS world is fluid and distributed. No matter how much somebody might pontificate at great length about the need for unity, nobody is obligated to care.
Libre Office for instance, appeared for a good reason, and I doubt very much the developers that work on it will suddenly "see the light" and go back to trying to submit patches to Oracle, just because some guy wrote an article saying it "might cost Linux the desktop". I'd say that most developers don't really care. At least when I contribute patches to Linux software I don't do it because of some world domination long term goal.
I think what is needed is open standards. So long I can use whatever I like to do my work, why would I need to care about what the rest of the world uses?
"peanuts" is relative to what is needed, and what the donor can give, as well as the actual value of the contribution.
For instance, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation intend to create social change. $100K to say, 200 schools would indeed be peanuts because it wouldn't change much of anything.
With Microsoft it's mostly that they can donate any amount they like. After all, they set the price on their software, and it's what they donate. Plus that kind of donation is mostly an investment. I've never heard of MS donating on anything that didn't imply more usage of MS tech.
As far as Bletchley Park is concerned: I've been there. It looks pretty good, and most of the restoration work seems complete and have been in a large part done by volunteers. So the main costs are that of maintenance, and for that $100K is a pretty good amount.
Pity it went to such a pointless use, though.
It was just a set of offprints -- meaning it's not the manuscript or an unique copy of something.
I'd much rather they used the money to maintain the buildings and recreate the hardware.
Then there's the weirdness of obsessing so much about a bunch of papers left by somebody who pioneered the digital computer. I think he'd be much better honored with high resolution, digital files.
Except the post is wrong, the article isn't about Oracle damaging the OSS community, it's about them damaging Java.
Releasing a JVM with a serious bug doesn't damage the OSS community. In fact it's an excellent way to give it more influence. Issues like these provide plenty incentive to fork.
The worst case for Oracle would be it goes the way it happened with XFree86: every distribution ships the Apache version, and everybody stops caring about the original project's existence.
I must be imagining working in a company that mostly works on GPL2 and GPL3 software.
Nothing in the GPL3 makes making money harder than the GPL2 does.
That's perfect, I'll continue releasing GPL3 released software for precisely the same reason.
You see, I get my payment either via code or money. I get code if you comply with the GPL and release your improvements. I get money if you're unhappy with that and negotiate a different deal with me. You finding a way around the GPL2 that lets you technically comply while escaping its intent is a negative for me, so I have absolutely no reason to let that loophole stand. That's why I now license everything under the (A)GPL3.
Then I found about the terms, and lost all interest.
With the kind of crap included in TOS the only way I would get one is if they paid me for it.
As far as I'm concerned, if she wants herself to be addressed as "Lady Ada", then that's her real name for me. In fact I've never heard of Limor Fried before, while I have heard of Lady Ada. If she's forced to go by what it says in her documentation, I'm not going to know who is that
From what I hear in many places just using a different name is an acceptable way of changing it.
This isn't my real name either, so after hearing this I'm obviously not going to be on google+
Why a non-story? I have the data already, since I bought the game. The source code was what I was missing to be able to make some improvements I've been thinking of.
This is exactly what I wanted, and I didn't expect anything more than that.
If you're the same guy who keeps posting about this on the wolfire blog, just do a favour and stop complaining. If you don't see this as an opportunity for some improvements, then perhaps you're not really able to do any, and what you really want is free of charge game, but that was never promised in the first place.
On my part, all I wanted is the source, I got it, so I'm happy.
The outcome of the humble bundle couldn't have been better IMO, and I'll gladly contribute to any future initiatives of the sort.
Disappointing. I was looking forwards to more of those "The World Does Not Fucking Revolve Around You" ;-)
Did you at least get that I don't pirate and that I actually do pay for stuff I like?
Explain why then.
Software isn't a physical product. More bits don't weigh more or take more to manufacture. If you did a full version already, you don't save money by stripping features, you spend it.
I said "Fighting your own customer base is suicidal". There are degrees of that, some worse than others. The Mac guy did an extreme version, Games Workshop seems to be intent on achieving the same result in another way, and the rest are for the most part just screwing up enough to lose money.
Heh, how dramatic.
Please take your own advice and reply to the whole post, then.
How come they aren't? What is your definition of "casual piracy"?
Mine is that you can easily grab it from BitTorrent. That's how the vast majority of it works.
So again, if it was working perfectly fine, why change it? To reduce the amount of DRM you need to pay programmers to do the work, make a new release, get it through QA, get it to various distribution points, etc. It's very real work and it costs money. So why on earth would they do it, if things were perfectly fine in the state it was released?
I already gave you an example: I have a "send by bluetooth" option on my phone, for any song. If somebody says "I want that one!" it's all of 5 seconds to start a transfer to their phone/laptop.
Game piracy is more involved, you need a suitable network, or to burn a CD, or to find a flash drive, or some such thing. In comparison, music piracy is so easy I can send songs to any random person anywhere. I could do it while standing in a train in the underground. No wifi, no wires, no messing with networking.
And it's also small enough to be emailed.
My mistake. Should have been "Really music artists are probably nervous as heck at the prospect of their music not selling"
Wait, wait. They removed functionality and are suprised it's not selling? Well, duh.
"Dedicated server support is removed, eliminating the ability for mods or user-created maps to be incorporated. This removal has created anger among many PC gamers." -- well there you have the reason it didn't sell.
As a PC user, I don't want a crippled console game, I want a fully featured PC game.
Also, reduced feature sets in software don't actually save money. You have to code the feature anyway, it costs you extra money to make sure it can be left out and everything works without it. Software removes features for market segmentation, not because it somehow makes things cheaper.
I'm sorry, do you have problems with reading comprehension? I never spoke of breaking the law. I repeat:
1. I buy games without DRM.
2. I don't buy those that have it (but don't pirate them).
3. I work to change the law, by for instance belonging to the Pirate Party and donating to the EFF, among other things.
Need me to repeat it another time?
Well, count me as one that's not satisfied then.
Reduce casual piracy. How is it supposed to be doing that, given the miserable failure that it is? I give Spore as an example as how it's completely failing to do that.
1. Why? It clearly failed to prevent any piracy.
2. Why? What do you mean it's not trivial? Go look on the pirate bay. Download, install a while later. My grandma could do it.
3. Why? Isn't it supposed to be preventing something? Given that it was the "most pirated game of the year" it clearly didn't do what it was supposed to.
They did do some changes. Spore got the activation limit bumped, then released on Steam without the original DRM. Now I wonder, why would they relax those restrictions, if it wasn't losing them sales?
So? All I'm saying, I'm a potential customer, and one that they lost due to DRM. Can't be the only one. So any company doing it has to have in mind that it's going to lose them some sales.
Well, exactly. Music is much, much easier to pirate. So by all logic, un-DRMed music should be suicide. But hey, what you know, it's selling, and stores are dropping the DRM.
I don't think that has much to do with it. Making music is very risky. Record companies drive a hard bargain and many popular artists end up not earning much, or in debt. Really music artists are probably nervous as heck at the prospect of their game not selling.
I disagree with the "massive" part. The numbers normally discussed suggest a 90% loss or something equally gigantic. This is peanuts in comparison. And again, the stats show that if you want 10% more, make a Mac version.
I'm sorry, the "THE FUCKING LAW" argument never impressed me much. Some things are legal and shouldn't be, and some aren't and should be. Repeat after me: law doesn't equal morality.
Not that it's my argument anyway, but that point seemed to be worth making.
No, I'm arguing a very simple thing: ignore the assholes, and make your customers happy, because you know, those are the ones that actually pay you the money, and may choose not to.
No, it's "hey games industry, make games without DRM and I will buy them"
Then you have no business sense. Every retail business has to contend with things like product breakage, employees stealing the product, etc. The sane ones recognize that piss
How would it?
There you have an example with Spore. Please explain where the effect was. It still got released on BT before the official release. It's entirely trivial to "casually pirate" it. Wikipedia says it was the "most pirated game of 2008".
So was all the drama really worth it? I really doubt it, because that HAD to lose sales, while it obviously completely failed to prevent any piracy.
Once I heard of the DRM I decided not to buy it, and until that point I was quite interested.
It was discussed extensively back then on different sites, but this was some years ago so probably a few links disapeared. I think it was discussed on Slashdot at some point as well.
Please explain where the difference is. Music should be even worse, as it's contained in small files that are useful on their own. Music is even more trivial to swap than games. I have a "send over bluetooth" option on my phone, for the currently playing song.
Yet, it sells just fine.
Proof please. All instances of "massive loss" I've seen assume that 1 copy=1 lost sale. But that's clearly bullshit.
Possibly, but people do have a breaking point, and some do indeed end up not buying it, or not buying the next game from that company.
And I do indeed not buy games with DRM, but you can bet there are people who don't believe it.
Why would they bitch about it? Those people who are not your customers don't have DRM! They got their copy from BitTorrent pre-cracked, and it installed without asking any questions. It doesn't do CD checks, doesn't have activation, doesn't refuse to work with DaemonTools, and has no installation limits. Besides, it often starts faster and crashes less. They have absolutely nothing to bitch about.
That's the funny thing about DRM -- the people it annoys are the customers. Every Spore pirate out there has no clue what the hoopla is all about, because for them it works perfectly fine, and they can install it anywhere they want as many times as they want.
Same as with the NWN case: the one doing the bitching was I, the customer. Anybody with a pirated copy either didn't need to enter a serial number at all, or it came in a "serial.txt" file they could copy and paste from.
A hard to get number, especially with the existence of offline distribution.
And also not the number you want. What you want is the number of people who pirated it, but who would have paid for it if they couldn't. The rest aren't losing you money.
I'm probably rather extreme in my tastes, but I make an effort to make as much effect as possible. For something I really support, like Wolfire's initiative, I'll make sure to plug it everywhere posible. If I'm especially annoyed I'll make sure to get the company to lose at least a couple of sales.
Considering the amount of noise about Starforce, I do think it has to lose quite a few sales.
Hard to get an estimate, companies don't seem to publish prices on this. But doubt it's very cheap.
Well, provide your numbers then. Real numbers I mean, because the "1 pirated copy=1 lost sale" is nonsense.
It's very much relevant. I don't know of a single game that hasn't been cracked. No matter what you do, no matter how you try to stop it, eventually I can get a copy from bittorrent. So you'd be wasting money.
There's a Spore torrent on the pirate bay right now. In exchange for the DRM they got a lot of annoyed people who mounted a campaign against it, and went to the point of a class action lawsuit and it still was pointless because it still got cracked before the release and is still right there.
They also ended up relaxing the restrictions, so evidently it had to be losing them money, because otherwise, why would they have done it?
It did happen
Online music stores have ditched it, which seems to point to something.
Also, it's very attractive to blame every loss of sales on piracy. It's something external you can blame and avoid ever blaming yourself for anything. Many claims not to buy a game because of DRM are met with disbelief.
It wouldn't be the first time an ineffective measure was adopted even though it miserably failed to work. See also the war on drugs that keeps their merchants in business, and the prohibition that miserably failed to do anything useful, and still took a long time to get rid of.
Start from Wolfire's own numbers.
1. Of all of piracy, maybe 10% could be paid for.
2. If those people were prevented from using the game without paying, it still doesn't mean they will pay. I have the ability to say, go and and buy an iPad right now. I can afford it, but I still don't. So just plain having enough money isn't enough, and that reduces the percentage further.
3. Any gains may be offset by people who were formerly willing to pay, and now may not be. See my requirements from earlier, they're pretty tight. Any customer that you anger by locking them out of a legitimately paid game is potentially several lost sales, due to them ranting on any medium available to anybody who cares to listen. The more people run into issues, the more the amount of these people grows.
4. This stuff isn't free. It needs to be licensed/programmed and tested. You need to spend more time on support for people who run into issues caused by it.
5. Perfect DRM doesn't exist anyway. No matter how fancy it is, if it's something wanted enough, somebody's going to crack it, and that only needs to happen once. Then all the others just copy the crack around.
6. Once you're done with that, in the absolute best case you gain some fraction of the 10%. In the absolute worst case it backfires on you so badly that bankrupt yourself. It has happened. IIRC it was the guy who said the program would delete the user's home folder if a pirated key was used. There was such a firestorm that several days later the program was pulled from sale entirely, probably due to the threats of lawsuits. Though that's a rather extreme example.
7. Since you're trying to make a profit, and all this costs time and money, it's very possibly not the most cost effective way to earn money, especially when considering the risk involved.
Quite a few. Never ran into one of those "I'm here for the $$$!" people at school?
But yes, some are motivated by principles. My current job is what it is in large part because it involves working with and contributing to open source software. Some people get jobs because they get to work with Macs, Sun hardware, etc.
But, I've not yet met anybody who writes DRM software out of principle. The reasons I've seen are:
1. Believing that doing so will make more money.
2. The publisher/investor/etc demands it
3. To get revenge on those they believe are using their software unlawfully.
These both things are not a case of something done out of a principle. The first comes out of a belief of necessity, the second because other people mandate it, and the third out of anger.
The third reason is often a bad idea, as it's done under the wrong state of mind for good coding. It goes wrong especially when a bug backfires in a bad way, or when the developer decides to get "REVENGE!" and comes up with some crazy scheme like deleting the user's home directory. This of course ensures many people decide they won't touch their software with a 10 foot pole.
Yes, meaning it's not a very big deal.
10% is certainly money, but it's not the huge amounts being implied in various press releases. It's also an amount that can be easily made or lost through other decisions.
No company makes 100% of the money it could potentially make. Some potential customers don't know about the product, some are on the wrong platform, some are annoyed by DRM, some are unwilling to pay the price but would buy if it was cheaper, some pay but would be willing to pay more. You can't please absolutely everyone, or make everybody pay precisely the amount they're willing to pay, so you're always missing on some money you could possibly have if everything was ideal.
And according to their numbers, their time is much better spent on Linux and Mac support.
Don't think it's completely irrelevant. I follow the same logic when buying the games from any studio. DRM will ensure I will not buy it, and that's a guaranteed lost sale right there.
After getting burned, I got much more careful. So, for me personally:
If any of the above sneaks through because it wasn't properly disclosed before I bought it: I will call your tech support and complain for as long as possible, after that guaranteed no sale for anything else you make. You can bet I will make every effort possible to return it, as well.
Things that make it more likely I will buy your stuff:
Sure. And what about it?
Because it's not theft. It's copyright infringement. And unlike with theft, where something is permanently removed, in copyright infringement nothing disappears. The maker possibly fails to gain money, in some cases of it. But doesn't lose it.
First, there's no "IP". There is copyright, trademarks and patents, all of which work differently. In this case we're exclusively discussing copyright, so no need to muddle the issue.
Second, it's not theft but copyright infringement.
Third, where did you get that I'm advocating piracy?
I repeat: I just think it's not a very big deal. It may be illegal, but so is jaywalking. I think a disproportionate amount of time and resources are spent on trying to prevent it, which can be counterproductive when overdone, because it loses more than it gains back.
If somehow piracy could be entirely prevented, it'd gain mayb
Sure. I don't advocate piracy. I just don't think it's such a big deal.
As I said earlier, I very prefentially pay for things whose creators aren't obsessed with control. The more controlling, the harder I will try to find an unrestricted alternative (or just go without).
And then of course I get added to the piracy statistics anyway, because people can't possibly be refusing to buy things with DRM, it has to be because it's getting pirated.
Right. That's why I don't pay for such things.
No, there's no right to compensation for creation. The creator may set their work for sale, and I may choose to buy it, but that's it. If the creator sells their work under conditions people aren't willing to put up with the creator should go out of business.
This is why I don't support schemes like a "piracy tax".
I wouldn't go with it because I can't copy the music to whatever device I please, or use it without an internet connection. Being able to do this is a requirement for me paying for it. Either your music is sold as a plain file (preferentially lossless) with no strings attached, or I don't pay for it.
Right.
No, it isn't. I absolutely refuse to contribute a cent towards any such a thing, no matter how marketed or presented, or even at what price.
And since DRM-free music stores are common there's no need for me to even consider using such a service.
Well, since I object to the entire concept of letting some external force decide what I can or can't do with my hardware, and what I can or can't play, I don't own any consoles at all, or any similarly restricted equipment (like anything made by Apple for instance).
So for me it's PC gaming only, very preferentially on Linux.
So?
The way I see it, businesses don't make games because of a principle. They do so because you want to make money. And, annoying your customers with DRM might well make you less money.
I stick to one principle: If you make things available under conditions I like (no DRM) I will preferentailly buy it and recommend to other people. On the other hand, the more control the owner attempts to exercise, the more effort I will expend to avoid paying a cent for it.
Cory Doctorow seems to be doing fine. I bought a physical copy of the Mercurial book, though it's all right there, in the link. With source available. I also paid for the games linked above.
I work as a programmer and stand by my opinion.
See this for an explanation why.
Short explanation of the link: Since pirates do not pay, they can download more than they could ever afford. So for a large part of what's pirated you couldn't force payment in any manner, since the money to do so simply doesn't exist.
I know of people who have enormous collections spanning thousands of movies, games, and music CDs, most of which they haven't even tried once. It seems that once somebody gets into that particular mindset they operate on a "Oh, this sounds interesting. *Adds to queue*" basis, and by the time it's done downloading they often don't remember what it was and why they have it.
Those people are largely unaffected by all this. If they can't get a copy of Nintendo's latest game, oh well, they have downloaded 20 others last week. And what they download is all pre-cracked already.
The people who it does affect though are the legitimate customers. I remember getting very angry (which doesn't happen very often to me), when I purchased Neverwinter Nights, and couldn't use it. Turns out the morons printed the CD key in a font that made B/8, O/0 and such indistinguishable. After 15 minutes I finally figured out one that worked, and I still don't know if that's the one I was supposed to use, or just a similar key that happened to work, and that will prevent somebody else from playing. I bet the pirates don't need to put up with that.
So don't buy into this protection nonsense, and support few people who view this sanely.
It's actually a nice picture IMO, but yeah, that might look a bit odd at work.
Though you really should be more worried about the second one, as that's the front page and all sorts of things can appear there.