Okay, judging from the posts here, a lot of people really do not get it. The reason you should want to boycott Warcraft III is not because its source is closed. It's not because you want to use bnetd, or even care about bnetd. It's because bnetd is a legal reverse-engineering piece of code, and Blizzard is trying to shut it down.
You may not care about bnetd specifically, but what if in the future you write a piece of code that interoperates with something else? Would you be happy if MegaCorp X shut you down on the precedent that Blizzard set by killing off bnetd?
As an open source developer *and* as someone who cares about fair use, Blizzard isn't getting any of my money. If their revenue models rely on crappy CD key checking, it's not my problem or that of the bnetd authors (although they supposedly asked Blizzard for help with that issue anyway). They're not obligated to emulate the copy protection as well as the network protocols. All they did was reverse-engineer the underlying networking, which IN THEORY is protected by our laws.
So again, I have to say -- stop bitching about people saying "boycott Blizzard" if you don't understand the issue. This is NOT about open source, it is about fair use. It's also not so much about trying to make a dent in their profits, because even if all of Slashdot boycotted Blizzard, they would barely notice. It's about the principle, which for me (and others) is a big deal. No game is worth filling the pockets of lawyers and PHBs that want to take away fair use rights. I'd rather keep that $50 and buy something else, or donate it to some open source authors.
That's why, really, everyone should back up their personal files. I don't care if you're on Windows, Linux, Mac, BeOS, or Commodore 64, you need to back up anything that's worth anything to you. If you don't, honestly there's no one to blame but yourself -- no amount of bitching about a virus author or compromised chroot'ed app will bring back your data.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, judging from the posts here, a lot of people really do not get it. The reason you should want to boycott Warcraft III is not because its source is closed. It's not because you want to use bnetd, or even care about bnetd. It's because bnetd is a legal reverse-engineering piece of code, and Blizzard is trying to shut it down.
You may not care about bnetd specifically, but what if in the future you write a piece of code that interoperates with something else? Would you be happy if MegaCorp X shut you down on the precedent that Blizzard set by killing off bnetd?
As an open source developer *and* as someone who cares about fair use, Blizzard isn't getting any of my money. If their revenue models rely on crappy CD key checking, it's not my problem or that of the bnetd authors (although they supposedly asked Blizzard for help with that issue anyway). They're not obligated to emulate the copy protection as well as the network protocols. All they did was reverse-engineer the underlying networking, which IN THEORY is protected by our laws.
So again, I have to say -- stop bitching about people saying "boycott Blizzard" if you don't understand the issue. This is NOT about open source, it is about fair use. It's also not so much about trying to make a dent in their profits, because even if all of Slashdot boycotted Blizzard, they would barely notice. It's about the principle, which for me (and others) is a big deal. No game is worth filling the pockets of lawyers and PHBs that want to take away fair use rights. I'd rather keep that $50 and buy something else, or donate it to some open source authors.
</rant>
That's why, really, everyone should back up their personal files. I don't care if you're on Windows, Linux, Mac, BeOS, or Commodore 64, you need to back up anything that's worth anything to you. If you don't, honestly there's no one to blame but yourself -- no amount of bitching about a virus author or compromised chroot'ed app will bring back your data.