LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Toby Corkindale <tjcorkin@steadycom.com.au>
  To  : Alan Kennington <akenning@dog.topology.org>
  Date: Thu, 01 Apr 1999 00:50:21 +0000

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/
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-- 
...Veni, Vidi, VC++. (I came, I saw, I kludged)

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