Author: Zitheral <yep>     Reply to Message
Date: 9/14/2005 1:14:58 PM
Subject: RE: TCFusion

Zith: A mod project is by definition a not-for-profit enterprise. The only thing "gained" by modding is appreciation of your players, the skills you acquire while doing the work, and possibility the appreciate of other developers if you choose to open source it. Companies that open source their game code still make their money on every copy sold for each player playing any mod.

Mook: That goes without saying; what exactly is your point?

Zith: My point is that the primary motivation for a business to make an entertainment product is to make money from it. This objective is met and even enhanced by derivative works. How many CDKEYs were sold to players who wanted to play WFA? Noone knows but I know for a fact we made id some money. The same is not true of derivatives of open source software since the primary motivation is different and far less tangible.

Zith: This makes sense but if you open source your game, you lose decision making control over your assets and your work.

Mook: Incorrect. Open Source licensure has absolutly NOTHING to do with loosing, or compelling the loss of creative control over YOUR work, in fact it can greatly enhance it... You can maintain complete, autonomous and exclusive control over your core project, it's title trademarks, its content, its features, its retail sale-ability and the talent you allow to contribut to it... Open Source only allows others to make derivative works based on your work, and gives you full reciprocity to use and leverage any work they've created based on your the original work. This is one of the core concepts of Open Source; to avoid redundant effort, and allow full reciprocity in selectively leveraging creative effort.

Zith: It also creates competitors. It CAN create poorly documented alternate versions by lazy, ignorant, or malicious people. To state that there is no loss of creative control over the project is absurd. If you have an audience that likes 80% of your project and someone creates a derivative work that addresses the 20% minority, you will lose that minority of players. If someone ELSE spawns a fork that addresses some other factor of your project that appeals to only 10% of your players, you lose even more players. As each new fork chips in to your playerbase, the community splinters and dwindles. To argue otherwise is insanity. This is looking at playerbase from the developer's standpoint. If there is no audience, there is no reason to develop the game. I can promise you with 100% assurity that there is no way to please 100% of the people 100% of the time. Each fork that chips away at your player base reduces your desire to continue developing. Creating the need to compete with other developers for a playerbase is not something I'd enjoy.

Zith: I would be very disappointed if someone took my work and maybe something I considered substandard.

Mook: Why? Should John Carmack consider it very dissappointing because he consideres your Mods "substandard"? Shold the inventor of the pencil, pen, and word processor consider works you write an embarassment to his invention? That...is a moot and rediculous argument IMHO...

Zith: John Carmack has already accomplished his goal -- the sale of the underlying software. Even if a mod only attracts 3 people who might not have purchased the game otherwise, John Carmack still wins. This arguement is neither moot nor ridiculous. Open source software has a completely different set of goals attached to it and the evaluation of success for a project is totally different.

Zith: Even worse are the cases where changes are made and either through maliciousness or ignorance, other players end up with a version of the software that is still attributed to you even though it has been changed in ways you don't approve of.

Mook: Open Source licensure does not allow the 'works of others to be attributed to you' whether you approve of them or not, such a statement is a fallacious nonsequitur...

I don't know why you have busted out your logic textbook but it is pretty amusing considering how poor your premises and assumptions are, please don't try to use SUPAR LOGIC SKILZ if you are going to try to say apples and oranges are equal. The EULA of almost every piece of commercial software states that you cannot use the software if you have not purchased it. How many pirate copies of Windows do you think are out there? To say something won't occur just because it is against the rules is either retarded or naive... and I doubt you are very naive. It isn't like a non-profit group would have the resources to seek redress in court either to protect their work.

Zith: And then there is the problem where something is popular enough to spawn so many forks that your personal contribution disappeared. VNC is a good example... there are a whole bunch of VNC projects... I use UltraVNC myself but I have no clue who wrote the original.

Mook: Another bizarre inference, that demonstrates a very limited understanding of Open Source licensure on your part. Do you for example KNOW who created each game code and art asset in the games you Mod and the tools you use? Do you make sure all your Mod Fans know? Do you write a TOU agreement to make sure they are aware of all your derivative work, and that in fact your work is not original but deravitive? Do you think your lack of dilligance in this regard makes the original work invisible?

AGAIN you mix apples and oranges. The motivation behind development in these two cases is TOTALLY different. id Software's goal is to make money. They continue to make money from every copy of the base software used in any derivative work. Open source software has completely different motivations. Every download that occurs of UltraVNC may or may not contribute at all to the original developer's goals for creating the software. id Software did not open source their work until they had reached a point where they felt it could no longer achieve it's primary goal (to make money.) Their goals at that point changed to more altruistic ones.

Zith: In summary, I think ultimately the benefits of open source software to the developer depend heavily on why someone is writing the software in the first place. If they are interested in exploring a specific style of gameplay, allowing forks of their projects is not going to appeal to them. If they are interested in the act of creation itself, then open source software is something nice to do with it once you are done.

Cleary you demonstrate a very limited understanding of what Open Source licensure can and and in fact does offer and provide for... There are nearly as many variations on Open Source licensure as there are Open Source projects, and suggesting that the concept of Open Source is limited in the regards you imply here is patently ridiculous...

Forgive me for being blunt. But you are not interested in making a game, you are interested in being popular.

Then forgive me for being crass: you don't you know what the fuck you're talking about as far as what my interests, concerns, and motivation are in developing games.


Clearly you are ignoring the fact that different people have different motivations for working on free software. You don't seem to recognize the difference between commercial interests and personal interests. Am I developing WFR because I am a super nice guy with 3 more years on my hands that I'd like to donate to the world? Newp. I am doing it to further develop my own skills, help my teammembers develop their skills, and to create a project in my own vision that is enjoyed by as many people as possible. If you call that wanting to be popular, I'm ok with that. I'm not interested in creating something only to have 20 people spend 1/100th the time to splinter my audience across 20 subprojects. If that makes me a bad person, I can live with that. Those are MY goals.

As for being crass, you didn't need to specify that directly... all of your wannabe logic jargon has made all of your posts crass. It doesn't help that most of your arguements treat two subjects as being equivilent which are almost opposites.

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