[OT] Re: Two questions

ruby-talk
1

From: “Daniel Carrera” dcarrera@math.umd.edu

It is an error to think that open source
licenses prohibit commercial products.
If I may ask, why would you want to keep the
user from the source? I’m curious.

Try making a living as a game developer…
Try making a living as an independent game developer…

Sounds like a tough challenge.

It isn’t a matter of wanting to keep the
source from the user.

Okay.

It is simply “an error” to think that many
people pay for games when they can download
an unprotected copy for free. (Sad, but
very, very, very, very, . . . .true in my exp.)

This is hard for me to follow. It has nothing to
do with making source available, and it ignores the
fact that ALL games are available as a free
download (warez).

It’s definitely true that many people just warez
their games. It’s also true that many people just
play free games and ignore the commercial ones.
But it’s also true that a successful game can make as
much profit as a moderately successful movie can make
box office reciepts – so there are people who DO pay.

I personally embrace id Software’s enlightened
compromise: release a protected, closed-source
version of the game. Work on next game
for a few years. Release open source final
version of previous game.

I definitely respect and appreciate that as well.

It’s also worth noting the model in which you allow
the release and use of the code and the program,
but restrict the distribution of the data (levels,
art, helpfiles, etc).

Bill

-Billy

···

From: “Bill Kelly” billk@cts.com

2

It is simply “an error” to think that many
people pay for games when they can download
an unprotected copy for free. (Sad, but
very, very, very, very, . . . .true in my exp.)

This is hard for me to follow. It has nothing to
do with making source available, and it ignores the
fact that ALL games are available as a free
download (warez).

It’s indeed possible to break any protection scheme
based on security-through-obscurity. I’m no crypto
expert - far from it - but I understand that anyone
with the right skills can crack my protection schemes
given enough effort and persistence.

However, in practice, it has seemed possible to produce
obscure enough schemes that during the [early] lifetime of
the product, no known successful crack has surfaced.

So my stance toward delaying the release of the game
source for a few years is predicated on the assumption
that there hopefully won’t be a warez version available
“real soon” after the release of the product.

. . . To try to contribute something slightly on-topic
in this thread, however… … I’m strongly
considering embedding Ruby into my next game, and writing
as much of the game code as I can in Ruby… Time-critical
components would still be in C++, of course, along with the
copy protection scheme…

Regards,

Bill

···

From: wtanksleyjr@cox.net