LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Airlink IT <it@airlink.com.pg>
  To  : <tjcorkin@steadycom.com.au>, "Alan Kennington <tjcorkin@steadycom.com.au>
  Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1999 13:13:12 +1000

Software rights

If I am not mistaken

If I invent a machine and patent it, and you come along and improve it. Your
improvements now come under my patent and I have the right to modify my
original and sell it, incorporating your ideas, without compensating you in
any way. The same holds true for music. You improve my song and release it,
you pay me royalties, but I can release your new version/interpretation
without paying you royalties.

I wonder if the same could apply to software.

David

-----Original Message-----
From: Toby Corkindale <tjcorkin@steadycom.com.au>
To: Alan Kennington <akenning@dog.topology.org>
Cc: Natalia.Ford@dsto.defence.gov.au <Natalia.Ford@dsto.defence.gov.au>;
LinuxSA <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
Date: Thursday, 1 April 1999 10:58
Subject: Re: Just an introductory comment


>Just a thought: (this is just a hypothesis)
>
>Say I write a game, that consists of an interpreter, and of "world data"
>or "scenarios", "maps", etc.
>Now, I make the interpreter and level editor free opensource software.
>Anyone is welcome to use my source code and improve the interpreter -
>say to develop better 3D support. Maybe someone makes a better editor.
>Now, you are right in that I'd have a hard time trying to live off the
>proceeds of a free, opensource, game engine.
>But, what if the scenarios are not free & opensource? (They wouldn't be
>in any source language anyway...Just compiled bundles of graphics,
>sounds, textconversations and scripting.)
>Now, I go around selling my game packaged with a few scenarios.
>Then, I release expansion scenarios. Each one is sold in a box.
>Now, other people are welcome to create and release their own scenarios,
>or levels, or whatever. They can sell them if they like.
>People are welcome to write a better interpreter, that will play my
>levels (or theirs) better.
>The money though, is made by releasing the best scenarios, and selling
>them.
>It takes a fair bit of time and money to make a soundtrack, speech,
>hoards of graphics and levels, and to script up a good plot, etc. All
>this material would be copyrighted, and able to be sold for a profit.
>
>ID software released free versions of doom and quake, etc. and made it
>possible for anyone to write levels for them. People could conceiveably
>download a free engine and only play the millions of user-created
>levels.
>However, enough people wanted to buy the genuine product, and the
>genuine ID expansion packs, that ID made a lot of money. Quite a lot of
>money ;)
>
>So, I think my theory has some merit.
>Or maybe I should be bringing this up at the meeting instead?
>
>Toby
>
>Alan Kennington wrote:
>>
>> Natalia,
>>
>> Your comments on how linux "should" be free etc. sound very much like
>> the statements of the hippies who went to Nimbin in the early 1970s.
>> Those hippies are now back in the conventional economy.
>>
>> Similarly, my statement was not that linux should or should not
>> _idealistically_ be free, but rather that it is difficult to make money
>> from creating free software.
>> You are not making a living from giving away free software.
>> Even Richard Stallman has to ask for charity.
>>
>> Nothing you have said contradicts the notion that you can't make a real
>> living from giving away free software.
>> Linux can survive without paid developers (by relying on
>> charity, hobbyists, students, and left-over software
>> from failed projects or benevolent organisations), but my
>> statement was that _developers_ can't survive merely by writing
>> free software. I.e. you have to charge someone for something
>> somewhere along the line.
>>
>> Cheerio,
>> Alan Kennington.
>>
>> --
>> Check out the LinuxSA web pages at http://www.linuxsa.org.au/
>> To unsubscribe from the LinuxSA list:
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>
>--
>...Veni, Vidi, VC++. (I came, I saw, I kludged)
>
>--
>Check out the LinuxSA web pages at http://www.linuxsa.org.au/
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>

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