And the sad part is that strategy games are OSS's strength. You want to find a good JRPG or adventure game? Man, you are totally screwed.

Yeah, that vocabulary was bad. (I'd been awake for about 20 hours.) Alright, let me rephrase then.

Games work on a somewhat different market than non-game software does. The goal isn't to make a "useful, productive package" and then keep improving it. The goal is to make a "fun game" and then - fundamentally - it's done and you don't keep mucking with it, besides fixing any major bugs.

Games aren't replayed nearly as often as office or utility software is re-used, and there's very little point in constantly improving the same game when you could, instead, be working on a new game.

(Multiplayer games work on somewhat different rules, but I generally prefer single-player anyway, and that's what I write, so.)

Well, so far, every single one of my games has been released with the .lua source in plaintext. To my knowledge, exactly one person has ever opened any of the files, and that was just to look at the various ending texts without having to play sixteen times.

On average, people don't care.

(The ability to be modded is somewhat more important, but even then, they are rarely interested in modifying more than the obvious things that can be exposed through the mod interface.)

I'm rather obviously referring to using open-source, specifically, in an environment where you may need to fix issues ASAP or lose business.

Very few businesses rely on fixing games that they, themselves, did not write.

Pretty much. If you think my game is more fun than GPL games, you should probably play mine. If you think GPLed games are more fun, go ahead and play them. I'd like to think that my bugs are minimal enough, and the game is fun enough, that it's not an issue.

Luckily for me, the vast majority of GPL games are awful - largely thanks to the major differences between gamedev and OS/application dev - so I don't worry a whole lot about that competition.

I'm not a hypocrite, I'm just more concerned with my own software production than I am about someone else's. My time is about my benefits. Open-source availability benefits me, and is convenient to use. So I do.

I am pretty sure that IBM and the like aren't recommending Ubuntu for altruistic purposes, but because they can make money off support. I'm equally sure that the companies using Ubuntu aren't doing so for altruistic purposes, but because it's cheaper for them.

That's about all there is to it.

My time is about my benefits. Open-source availability benefits me, and is convenient to use. So I do.

I am pretty sure that IBM and the like aren't recommending Ubuntu for altruistic purposes, but because they can make money off support. I'm equally sure that the companies using Ubuntu aren't doing so for altruistic purposes, but because it's cheaper for them.

That's about all there is to it.

Time, really. Open-sourced game engines invariably go nowhere - at the absolute best you end up with someone making a clone of the exact same game. The only exception to this, ever, was the Quake engines, and there were orders of magnitude more Quake mods made than there have been fun games based on the open-source engine.

Meanwhile, I have to package it up, distribute it or make a source repo, get tech support questions which - even if I completely ignore - I'd still have to, y'know, look at to determine if they were important or not.

So as to what I have to gain by closing the source, not a whole lot. As to what I have to gain by opening the source, even less.

Games work on a somewhat different market than proprietary software does - the goal isn't to make a "good product" and then keep improving it, the goal is to make a "fun game" and then - fundamentally - it's done and you don't keep mucking with it besides fixing any major bugs. Even if I did open-source it, the most that would happen would be a few bugfixes and a few crummy third-party games with the same engine. It's just not worth the trouble - no gamers really care.

(See the open-sourced Quake engines to see the absolute most that you can get out. It's not much.)

I just purchased a cheap NVidia card for my mom so her Ubuntu box would work with hardware acceleration, which it doesn't with the onboard ATI card. The issues haven't been fixed.

I do game development, and I use a lot of open-source libraries (BSD, LGPL, and the like, since I value having my source closed.) Every once in a while people ask me why I rely on libraries that I didn't write myself since, after all, they may be buggy!

Well, a few months ago I ran into a nice hidden bug. I tried to track down the developer and couldn't, and I needed a fix right then, like, within a few hours. So I wrote one, and it worked.

A month later I ran into a new bug, but this time I managed to find the developer. Turned out my fix was buggy (in a way that hadn't been triggered in the first place), but he'd just finished a non-buggy version, so I ripped out my patch and jammed his in and it worked. If I hadn't been able to find him, I would have had to sit down and fix it myself . . . but I could have.

Meanwhile, I have many, many thousands of lines of libraries that just tick along joyfully without a hitch. Overall, it's a huge win, and the fact that they're open-source means that I can fix them if they break.

It really is the way to go.

If we make PA expect more correct behaviour from the apps, or that applications stop making particular assumptions about the audio stack, we need to fix the applications at the same time.

This is not entirely true.

Now, I don't know what the exact bugs are that are causing problems. But the API should be stable no matter what happens to the outside. There should be no way to destabilize or crash the audio layer from a usermode application. So, if by "expect more correct behavior from the apps" he means "garbage in, garbage out", then that's fine. But if by "expect more correct behavior from the apps" he means "no error checking and if any app screws up then everything melts", then that's not fine.

I don't know which he means, but I've seen instances of both.

Sure, so I buy 2000 points in the first place. Now I have 800 points left over. The next game I want to buy is 1200 points. Now what?

My point is that MS makes the entire process more irritating, more timeconsuming, and more mentally frustrating than the Sony process. Whenever I buy something from MS I have to buy at least two things, possibly more, each one taking five to ten seconds to talk to the servers, and with me having to do some mental math and check my balance to figure out what exactly it is that I have to buy in order to buy the thing I actually want.

With Sony, I push the "give me a game" button, and they give me a game.

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the Doubloon Oceans on Puzzle Pirates yet.

A while back Puzzle Pirates set up a bunch of new servers with no subscription fee. Instead, they had a second currency. Besides Pieces of Eight, the standard currency, there was a new one called Doubloons.

On normal oceans, you could play for free with some restrictions, or you could subscribe and have all the restrictions lifted. On Doubloon oceans, you buy off those restrictions with Doubloons - some on a monthly basis, some on a 30-day-played basis (my 2-year-old character is about three weeks through his first "30-day-played" badge. I don't play often.) You can buy off only the restrictions you care about, or you can buy off everything, or you can even buy "super-badges" that give you more capabilities than you'd have normally on a subscriber ocean.

The trick is that you can convert PoE into Doubloons. And not at a fixed game rate, either - it's player-driven.

So let's say I play Puzzle Pirates for the fun of it, and don't care about all the subscriber features. I go out pirating, I make money, I buy doubloons off the market, I can get my badges.

Or, alternatively, let's say my time is valuable to me and I don't feel like grinding. I go blow $20 on doubloons, then trade them for a huge number of Pieces of Eight. Now I'm rich, and I can go buy the pretty clothes and furniture that I want.

Everyone wins! Including the publisher! Because, remember, at no point in this system can you actually create PoE with doubloons or vice-versa. It's always a trade. If a group of players want to spend $10 in doubloons on a bunch of high-level features, someone, somewhere has paid that $10.

Eve Online does something similar. Now, Eve is a subscription-based service, but you can also convert timecards into items called PLEXes. Pilot License Extensions. Each PLEX is a 30-day subscription, and PLEXes can be traded, at will, on the open market. So, again, if you don't want to pay any money for the game, you don't have to - make the money ingame, buy a PLEX, use the plex, repeat. As long as you can buy one PLEX every month, you're set! (You may have to subscribe for a few months to gear up your PLEX-making.)

Alternatively, if you want a small fleet of battleships, go buy some timecodes, turn into PLEXes, and sell. Lots of money, lots of battleships!

Everyone wins!

Let's imagine I want to buy a game on my XBox.

The game is 1200 Microsoft Points. I can't buy 1200 Microsoft Points, though. I can buy 2000. But then I have 800 Microsoft Points left over. I don't want that, so I navigate through the menu structure to buy 1000 Microsoft Points (wait for confirmation), then again to buy another 250 Microsoft Points (wait for confirmation). Now I can buy the game (wait for confirmation) and start downloading. Oh, look at this, here is another game I want, I didn't see this before. It is 400 Microsoft Points. I have 50. I go to buy another 500 Microsoft Points (wait for confirmation) and then buy the game (wait for confirmation). Now I've got 150 Microsoft Points, and next time I buy a game I get to go through the dance again, trying to figure out the set of "Microsoft Point" purchases that minimizes my missing money. Thanks Microsoft. Always a pleasure.

Let's imagine I want to buy a game on my PS3.

I find the game. It's $14.99. I choose "buy" (wait for confirmation). I start downloading. Oh, look at this, here is another game I want, I didn't see this before. It's $4.99. I choose "buy". Sony informs me that the minimum credit card charge is $10.00, so I'll have $5.01 left over, but that will automatically be stored and used on the next game. Okay, accept (wait for confirmation). Now I have $5.01 stored on the Sony servers, and my next game - or set of games, since I can buy a bunch of games together - will just be cheaper.

Take a wild guess as to which of these I prefer.

(I'm not going to go into the Wii method because . . . well, there's a reason I've only bought one game ever on the Wii.)