Sure, the games world is a lot different from OS world, I realize that. And when I was talking about commercial quality, I didn't really refer to Microsoft, if that gives you the peace of mind:-)
I do know something, however, of both worlds, and there are some things I disagree with.
1) I can't seem to fit in the compile cluster. You only recompile what you've changed, right?
2) Advertising. If an operating system like Linux got the position it did without significant advertising, don't you think a game will too?
3) "it takes a lot more than any group in the Open Source community can muster". Who would have thought of a successful open source OS ten years backwards?
Sure, an open source game will probably lack some flashiness at first, like movie clips at the beginning. I do believe however that people would rather buy a game without movie clips for a price of a blank CDR and use the rest of their money to rent some good movie.
I consider BIOS to be more like firmware in an embedded system. It wouldn't hurt if it were free (as in speech) too, but I don't think the free software ideology scales well into the embedded market. And I write code for these embedded systems for my living, so I do know they are proprietary pretty much without exception.
Hmm. Perhaps it depends on the kind of games you play. Certainly I understand this holds quite well for adventures and such.
I'd like to mention Freeciv as an example of an open source game which in my opinion was good already in 1996 and even better and more enjoyable today. Others? Nethack comes to my mind, although I must admit the proprietary Adom is better (just my view).
But then, people generally regard me as a weirdo - and that seems to be true even for my taste of games:-)
I think YOU are the one who is confused here. If you have read the GNU license, you will see clauses that are against capitalism. Businesses really have no chance of making a profit under the GNU license.
Oh. Why don't you tell that to Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSe, Progeny and countless other companies - some of which make distributions, some of which sell support, some of which do a lot of other things?
Yes, it requires a change in the business model. But it's definitely wrong to say it's bad for businesses.
The moment there starts to be enough demand for commercial quality games for Linux I believe the open source community will start writing those.
Think it's impossible? These people did write a commercial quality OS, not a small task compared to writing a commercial quality game. Why would it be any less possible to write a commercial quality game then?
Hmm, no. Most of us simply don't install Linux to play games. Plus the fact that Linux is an open source OS whose user base has quite a hostile attitude against proprietary (NOTE: I didn't say commercial) software. I think it's really a wonder they survived this far.
No matter how much you think every Linux user would love to have a mass of proprietary games, you're wrong. At least not before Linux has some more of the market. And even then many of us will stick to quality open source software - yes, it's quality software, and I claim it's possible to make commercial quality open sourcegames. In case you wonder why you haven't seen any, I can tell: Many of us developers like to write something that gets actually used. Games market is simply not a good frontier to fight proprietary software - yet.
I for one run Debian mainly for the reason that it makes me clear what is free and what is proprietary so I can avoid installing non-free software. Though it's a very good distribution in many other ways.
Sure, I feel bad for Loki - the Linux commercial quality games pioneer, it's fair to say. Still, I wouldn't buy (or pirate for that matter) any of their games. I wouldn't install them even if they were free-as-in-beer, unless they're also free-as-in-speech.
Think I'm trolling? Ok, that's your view. Mind you, there are still a lot of even more fanatic open source advocates.
In the open source model you have a lot of software for all common tasks - after learning German, you can handle most translation tasks. But when you want to do something you can't with the current software (most probably because your skills aren't quite enough), you pay someone to write software to do it. Likewise, if you can't handle some important German, you pay a translator to do it.
To me this seems like natural development of the software industry, not like a move towards communism.
Yes. And teaching foreign languages costs REAL jobs of translators and interpreters. Therefore I suggest we immediately cease all foreign language education.
While at it, we might ban non-professional fishing too. That's what those egoistic bastards who can't think from the fishing industry point of view deserve!
Someone somewhere explained that the wording is so harsh not because the court believes these "Facts" to be true, but because it must assume the complaint is true for the sole purpose of determining jurisdiction - that is, it can't decide whether the facts are true or not unless it has jurisdiction, which hasn't been decided yet.
Tried to read that. Why, oh why can't they just use diff instead of writing "strike that, and replace that with that, redisignate those as these and add a semicolon"?
The first thing to do is to forget that stupid buzzword "intellectual property". This gives the impression that it's somehow analogous to real property, which it obviously is not. IMO it's not any less stupid than MPAA's "digital crowbar".
4. Code is Speech. If you claim that it is not, please explain how RSA encryption was exported as a book[...]
Not to mention that speech and only speech can be under copyright, at least in the current system. So, if code is not speech, it follows that code can not be copyrighted. I believe that's even worse for Adobe (and many other companies).
Well, of course they can take out your contribution and not ask you if they want. If your contribution was patches (say, more than five lines or so) this would be less easy, if it was new courses this would be more easy.
I somehow feel bad about this change, even if it seems to be "+1, Insightful" to claim that "it's his code, he can do whatever he wants with it, you 15-year old idiots!". Especially if not all contributors agreed - that clearly makes it illegal and doubly unethical.
I wonder if they got permission to do this from all of those 18 contributors listed in the AUTHORS file. Well, I guess they did, they probably aren't stupid.
Well, let's at least make sure this game gets some good competition. I really do believe that a good, free alternative actually can succeed against a proprietary solution with some flashy mpegs added.
I really hope no Linux OEM (like Loki) will take this. On the other hand, it's hard to see why they would - the risk of good open source competition seems high, and releasing a commercial/proprietary game isn't exactly free.
Re:Well why not study and find out WHY!!!
on
The Immortal Cell
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· Score: 1
You have no inherent, natural, or legal right to use a copyrighted work, simply because you think you paid an appropriate price for it.
That's just pure BS. Ever heard of the first sale principle? Essentially, the copyright holder has legally no control of the work after first sale (other than preventing copying, derivative works and public performance). Well, in most countries anyway, including US (France is different).
You will NEVER discourage government agents violating the Constitutional rights of citizens unless you then DENY them the rewards of the violation, ie, the illegal evidence that leads to a conviction. To the courts, there is no difference at ALL between illegally obtained evidence and false planted evidence, and that's the way it should be.
You somehow seem to forget that even government agents want to have a life and not end in jail. That should be used as a deterrent, not freeing criminals.
Ok, I believe I now understand the reasoning for this law better - thanks for explaining so patiently.
I must say, though, that I think the system use here in Finland has also worked remarkably well. I admit it has its own problems, too. In an idealistic situation it should prevent rogue law enforcement because they don't want to risk losing their jobs or ending up in jail.
Too bad there's not always a solution which takes the best from both approaches and still works in a non-idealistic world.
Which is why we need the courts to defend the Constitution. While I'm all for putting mobsters away, the ENDS DO NOT JUSTIFY THE MEANS. To advocate that is to advocate lawlessness and anarchy.
The ends do not justify the means, and therefore the violator should be punished.
But in the US it seems the means justify ends - letting someone known to be a serial killer free just because some inspector or police made a mistake.
Actually I wonder why terrorist organizations couldn't at least theoretically use this for their advantage. It shouldn't be too hard to get a corrupted, underpaid policeman to intentionally make a "mistake" (for some nice amount of cold cash), should it?
How many cops are in Jail for gathering evidence illegally in Finland?
To be honest, I don't know of any.
It's true that the courts generally trust here the police more easily than a "normal citizen", especially in a word-against-word situation (should I believe it's much different there?). But then, I haven't heard of any such crime committed by the police for which imprisonment is the punishment. I believe they're rather often prosecuted for lesser crimes though.
To me it just seems a bit too twisted logic that a murderer or a rapist should be let free just because some police makes a mistake, whether intentionally or not.
Can you imagine the public outcry if McVeigh had been let free because of some minor mistake on the FBI's part? Would it have been right?
This particular event needs to be punished, and unfortunately in this case it means a guilty person goes free.
This is a thing I've never understood in the US legislation. Here in Finland a court has to consider any evidence, even if obtained by illegal means. This just means that the person who used illegal means will also be prosecuted.
Perhaps someone knows something more about the history of this piece of legislation which seems particularly strange to me?
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I do know something, however, of both worlds, and there are some things I disagree with.
1) I can't seem to fit in the compile cluster. You only recompile what you've changed, right?
2) Advertising. If an operating system like Linux got the position it did without significant advertising, don't you think a game will too?
3) "it takes a lot more than any group in the Open Source community can muster". Who would have thought of a successful open source OS ten years backwards?
Sure, an open source game will probably lack some flashiness at first, like movie clips at the beginning. I do believe however that people would rather buy a game without movie clips for a price of a blank CDR and use the rest of their money to rent some good movie.
I consider BIOS to be more like firmware in an embedded system. It wouldn't hurt if it were free (as in speech) too, but I don't think the free software ideology scales well into the embedded market. And I write code for these embedded systems for my living, so I do know they are proprietary pretty much without exception.
I'd like to mention Freeciv as an example of an open source game which in my opinion was good already in 1996 and even better and more enjoyable today. Others? Nethack comes to my mind, although I must admit the proprietary Adom is better (just my view).
But then, people generally regard me as a weirdo - and that seems to be true even for my taste of games :-)
Oh. Why don't you tell that to Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSe, Progeny and countless other companies - some of which make distributions, some of which sell support, some of which do a lot of other things?
Yes, it requires a change in the business model. But it's definitely wrong to say it's bad for businesses.
The moment there starts to be enough demand for commercial quality games for Linux I believe the open source community will start writing those.
Think it's impossible? These people did write a commercial quality OS, not a small task compared to writing a commercial quality game. Why would it be any less possible to write a commercial quality game then?
No matter how much you think every Linux user would love to have a mass of proprietary games, you're wrong. At least not before Linux has some more of the market. And even then many of us will stick to quality open source software - yes, it's quality software, and I claim it's possible to make commercial quality open sourcegames. In case you wonder why you haven't seen any, I can tell: Many of us developers like to write something that gets actually used. Games market is simply not a good frontier to fight proprietary software - yet.
I for one run Debian mainly for the reason that it makes me clear what is free and what is proprietary so I can avoid installing non-free software. Though it's a very good distribution in many other ways.
Sure, I feel bad for Loki - the Linux commercial quality games pioneer, it's fair to say. Still, I wouldn't buy (or pirate for that matter) any of their games. I wouldn't install them even if they were free-as-in-beer, unless they're also free-as-in-speech.
Think I'm trolling? Ok, that's your view. Mind you, there are still a lot of even more fanatic open source advocates.
In the open source model you have a lot of software for all common tasks - after learning German, you can handle most translation tasks. But when you want to do something you can't with the current software (most probably because your skills aren't quite enough), you pay someone to write software to do it. Likewise, if you can't handle some important German, you pay a translator to do it.
To me this seems like natural development of the software industry, not like a move towards communism.
While at it, we might ban non-professional fishing too. That's what those egoistic bastards who can't think from the fishing industry point of view deserve!
Well, the winner demo was for Amiga.
Someone somewhere explained that the wording is so harsh not because the court believes these "Facts" to be true, but because it must assume the complaint is true for the sole purpose of determining jurisdiction - that is, it can't decide whether the facts are true or not unless it has jurisdiction, which hasn't been decided yet.
Tried to read that. Why, oh why can't they just use diff instead of writing "strike that, and replace that with that, redisignate those as these and add a semicolon"?
This has nothing to do with words. It's speech as protected by the First Amendment.
The first thing to do is to forget that stupid buzzword "intellectual property". This gives the impression that it's somehow analogous to real property, which it obviously is not. IMO it's not any less stupid than MPAA's "digital crowbar".
Not to mention that speech and only speech can be under copyright, at least in the current system. So, if code is not speech, it follows that code can not be copyrighted. I believe that's even worse for Adobe (and many other companies).
I somehow feel bad about this change, even if it seems to be "+1, Insightful" to claim that "it's his code, he can do whatever he wants with it, you 15-year old idiots!". Especially if not all contributors agreed - that clearly makes it illegal and doubly unethical.
I wonder if they got permission to do this from all of those 18 contributors listed in the AUTHORS file. Well, I guess they did, they probably aren't stupid.
I really hope no Linux OEM (like Loki) will take this. On the other hand, it's hard to see why they would - the risk of good open source competition seems high, and releasing a commercial/proprietary game isn't exactly free.
And why would ending aging be good?
Well, there's nothing new in sending threatening letters to ignorant customers.
That's just pure BS. Ever heard of the first sale principle? Essentially, the copyright holder has legally no control of the work after first sale (other than preventing copying, derivative works and public performance). Well, in most countries anyway, including US (France is different).
You somehow seem to forget that even government agents want to have a life and not end in jail. That should be used as a deterrent, not freeing criminals.
I must say, though, that I think the system use here in Finland has also worked remarkably well. I admit it has its own problems, too. In an idealistic situation it should prevent rogue law enforcement because they don't want to risk losing their jobs or ending up in jail.
Too bad there's not always a solution which takes the best from both approaches and still works in a non-idealistic world.
The ends do not justify the means, and therefore the violator should be punished.
But in the US it seems the means justify ends - letting someone known to be a serial killer free just because some inspector or police made a mistake.
Actually I wonder why terrorist organizations couldn't at least theoretically use this for their advantage. It shouldn't be too hard to get a corrupted, underpaid policeman to intentionally make a "mistake" (for some nice amount of cold cash), should it?
To be honest, I don't know of any.
It's true that the courts generally trust here the police more easily than a "normal citizen", especially in a word-against-word situation (should I believe it's much different there?). But then, I haven't heard of any such crime committed by the police for which imprisonment is the punishment. I believe they're rather often prosecuted for lesser crimes though.
To me it just seems a bit too twisted logic that a murderer or a rapist should be let free just because some police makes a mistake, whether intentionally or not.
Can you imagine the public outcry if McVeigh had been let free because of some minor mistake on the FBI's part? Would it have been right?
This is a thing I've never understood in the US legislation. Here in Finland a court has to consider any evidence, even if obtained by illegal means. This just means that the person who used illegal means will also be prosecuted.
Perhaps someone knows something more about the history of this piece of legislation which seems particularly strange to me?