Richard Stallman Comments On Valve For Linux

[Hamish Wilson]

There isn't any inherent disadvantage to open sourcing abandonware, to be fair. But that's really a strawman, because we were talking about open sourcing new games.

The same idea applies to all game titles, not just abandonware. It is just that when something becomes abandonware the problem becomes more acute.

Wine has an excellent track record of emulating games. While they don't all work well, a ton of them do. Every single Blizzard and Valve game since 2006 has worked on the release date in Wine.

There exists more than just two game developers in this world. I will never say that Wine is not a technically impressive project, but people give it more credit than it deserves. Hell, at the moment no game works for me properly as the sound started stuttering when I got my latest Wine update. And there are plenty of game titles that I own that do not work in Wine. I am not being unfair, I fully realize that Wine can not be expected to run them all. But that is kind of my point.

[Ishayu]

The same idea applies to all game titles, not just abandonware. It is just that when something becomes abandonware the problem becomes more acute.



There exists more than just two game developers in this world. I will never say that Wine is not a technically impressive project, but people give it more credit than it deserves. Hell, at the moment no game works for me properly as the sound started stuttering when I got my latest Wine update. And there are plenty of game titles that I own that do not work in Wine. I am not being unfair, I fully realize that Wine can not be expected to run them all. But that is kind of my point.

I have Steam working, Skyrim works, I've played Star Wars: TOR on it, Civilization 5...
Check out the channel jakejw on YouTube (appended by some number, I forgot). He has like 400 videos about popular game titles running in Wine.

This isn't to say that there aren't huge advantages to porting it native in terms of speed, reliability and accessability (Wine updates a lot and often breaks your game), but still...

The problem doesn't just become more acute. You just don't seem to understand that it's very difficult to earn money on an open source game. Open source programs work because the company then charges for support, but charging for support when it comes to a video game just means that every time it doesn't work people just won't play it, period. It's completely unrealistic. The only way to do it from thereon is to use ads, but you can't because it's open source and people mod out the ads. So yeah... it ruins your business. You just can't do it. I haven't found a single company where their upcoming title will be built as open source. I'm sorry but it just isn't gonna happen.

[Hamish Wilson]

The problem doesn't just become more acute. You just don't seem to understand that it's very difficult to earn money on an open source game. Open source programs work because the company then charges for support, but charging for support when it comes to a video game just means that every time it doesn't work people just won't play it, period. It's completely unrealistic. The only way to do it from thereon is to use ads, but you can't because it's open source and people mod out the ads. So yeah... it ruins your business. You just can't do it. I haven't found a single company where their upcoming title will be built as open source. I'm sorry but it just isn't gonna happen.

Sorry, but you completely fail to understand Stallman's and by extension my point. You seem to be acting as if these games would be able to be distributed as gratis, but that is not what we are asking at all. The game data, what actually is of value from an entertainment stand point, would still remain closed and that is what would be sold by the company. As much as people try to cast Stallman as someone living on the far fringe, he is not actually that much of a believer in free culture - he only really cares about software. He does not care about the game data - as long as people can make the games work as they want them he is perfectly happy with people buying and paying for closed game data. This is a sadly common misconception. I must admit I am somewhat interested in the free culture idea myself, but all we are asking for here is free software - not free games. You seem to fail to understand that.

[Ishayu]

Sorry, but you completely fail to understand Stallman's and by extension my point. You seem to be acting as if these games would be able to be distributed as gratis, but that is not what we are asking at all. The game data, what actually is of value from an entertainment stand point, would still remain closed and that is what would be sold by the company. As much as people try to cast Stallman as someone living on the far fringe, he is not actually that much of a believer in free culture - he only really cares about software. He does not care about the game data - as long as people can make the games work as they want them he is perfectly happy with people buying and paying for closed game data. This is a sadly common misconception. I must admit I am somewhat interested in the free culture idea myself, but all we are asking for here is free software - not free games. You seem to fail to understand that.

And you fail to understand how piracy works:

By modifying the executable, people redistribute the entire game.

You're about to make it easier.

That's not to say I directly advocate DRM, but making it even easier than it is by default is taking it to a stretch many companies would be very uncomfortable with.

[Hamish Wilson]

I fully understand how piracy works. But this would not really make all that much difference - even the most stringent DRM measures get cracked soon after a games release, and distributing a full complied binary is still very straightforward. So I do not consider it to be that large an issue. But there is a big difference from you saying that you could not sell a free software game and saying that it would be easier to pirate. And for your information, there are several games that already operate in this manner. There have been a few abuses, but for the most part this has not been a big issue.

[Artemis3]

The freedom of free software allows you to charge for it. You can do a kickstarter like project to pay for the development; you could also charge later for services, such as providing an official server, or for the main developer to address your needs.

Content could also use a different license, such as Creative Commons.

The position of Stallman is consistent to his philosophy, and its redundant to even make an article about it.

Stallman is not in the position to promote Linux, his goal is to promote Free Software, Linux just happens to be a single piece in that ecosystem. Perhaps you should try asking Linus Torvalds instead?

Stallman is not wrong, by the way. But in the end it is your call if you want to use proprietary software. You are being warned, that's all.

[disi]

I like to compare Free Software with the Internet itself. First there was an exchange of information going on, then there was html to easily share even more information and then the market discovered the internet and now we are tracked by IP address and watched which websites we visit to make sure they do not loose their market or even harm it

First there was software, which was freely shared. Then there was some blocke who said, hey you cannot copy my software. Now we have hardware, which watches data on our computers, to make sure we cannot copy software any more.

[kpedersen]

Honestly, I am not too bothered about getting the src of games opened.

I kinda see games as art, and you wouldnt want to rip a Picasso to shreds to see what paint combinations he used etc...

However, what really grinds on me is the DRM. For example:

1) Imagine if you bought a painting for a lot of money and you couldnt move it from one museum to another when desired.

Or perhaps a more literal example...

2) Imagine if your painting was locked in a completely impenetrable metal box that could only be opened as long as some greedy idiots activation server remained online.

So while I feel that proprietary software does drive innovation. DRM just leaves legitimate users / customers with sod all at the end of the day. (The pirates are fine however).

[Del_]

Of course, proprietary development drives innovation. It is just that open development drives innovation much more efficiently.

Games may very well prove to be the last bastion of proprietary development, but also here I expect to see large changes over the next years. There are already numerous examples of open technologies making game development more effective. OpenGL and SDL are two prominent examples. Without OpenGL, every platform would have it's own graphics stack (just like windows/xbox and ps3 has), now that is not very efficient, is it? Proprietary development have two major shortcomings. One is that every competitor typically needs to re-program almost everything, the second is that it typically leads to one dominant player (i.e., monopoly). For games we still have competition with multiple large vendors, but one may question just how long that can last (seems Gabe and Valve see those dangers right now). Actually, games is just about the only software category left with lively competition among proprietary vendors.

I see also here people comparing free software to communism. This is totally mistaken. Communism was about "giving according to abilities and receiving according to needs", free software is the total opposite, namely, "giving according to needs and receiving according to abilities". This fact has become increasingly obvious to me over the years. Actually, the monopolies almost always caused by proprietary software development is far more resemblant of communism. When free software enters a software category, competition, diversity and innovation is abundant.

The main difficulty today is finding good business models for open development. I hope this will improve the coming years as knowledge about the benefits hopefully improves.

[crazycheese]

In the Soviet Union, everything was required to be in the Public Domain, and your work could not be considered private property.

We don't live in the Soviet Union. Stallman wishes we did. Too bad for him.

How about you talk about Soviet Union ONLY if you lived there and STFU otherwise, really....

Because in Soviet Union everything was property of the communist party. HUGE "private" property.

And one more, you and whole world LIVES FROM AND DEPENDS UPON a communist country. A country that was complete wrack, yet managed to take first place in near 50 years thanks to communism.

True freedom has nothing to do with democracy. Take current Russia, you have best "democracy" on the planet ever. At least official internal TV says so. Same with US.

Democracy has nothing to do with economy model, capitalism, or communism, or anything else.

Its all about if person is really free, and if the state model actually helps its citizens.


That said, information is completely different thing as material world and hence, for information, it is much better to be free. Where everything materiel is much better with capitalistic approach. Even so, probably only until huge computer can calculate and predict the best prices for each good - then communism is back again as better (only to some degree though).

Now ask Stallman what he means by his "definition of freedom": A freedom from cost, or a freedom of information, and be surprised.

Additionally, even if you (incorrectly) force-project Stallman's view on freedom of information into communist view of freedom of material, you will still have problems to prove why communism sucks - just look what a boost USSR had in all directions during Stalin until WW2.