Where is the business case for me making more content when the first copy I sell can be freely and legally given away to anyone who wants it? This is precisely why the GPL for games is not at all a good idea.

Your post is interesting, and I wish I had time to reply point by point, but a few things:

-I am talking about the GPL in its "ideal state" (the entire kit and kaboodle, assets and all, being GPL'd, which is what the "INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FUHREEEEE" crowd goes on about).

-I am not talking about the LGPL, and I have no problem with the LGPL. I won't use it because, frankly, fuck the FSF. I would use the CDDL or Mozilla Public License instead, which are more favorable to downstream developers (the separation is not at the binary level, where you can't statically link an LGPL library without your own code being infected; the CDDL/MPL places the "boundary" at the code file, and you can have proprietary and CDDL/MPL code files in the same compiled binary with no issues).

-You are one of very few people (I'm another one) who responsibly use AdBlock to reward sites by consenting to let them sell our eyeballs to their advertisers. There aren't many.

-I'm not a game developer who has any interest in sequelitis; in fact, my company's first major project is an X-Wing style space sim which we know isn't going to make a lot of money. We're doing it because we think that catering to the hardcore audience is a decent way for a four-guy company to stay afloat, without cashing in our integrity. (But no, our game engine is very much not going to be LGPL'd. It won't be expensive, but if you want to use it, you're licensing it.)

Right, but if the code is free, why isn't the rest? Going both ways, free code but not free assets, is hypocritical.

Mind you, I don't entirely disagree with you, and I'm sure I could come up with a way to make it work. But if your whole deal isn't GPL'd, it kind of misses the "fweedom!" point according to RMS and his hangers-on.

I consider computer programming to be in many ways similar to art, yes.

Sorry, missed a bit.

There are no methods for a game that work the same way. Under the GPL, you sell it to one person and they can give it to everyone else. That isn't going to make you any money. Advertising? They have the code, bye bye advertising display code. Software as a service (an MMO, which only works for one very specific type of game)? Hello, private servers, goodbye revenue.

The pack-in model, including other stuff beside the game, is silly as well. Why? Because you are increasing your production costs to only get above a $0 sale point. All it does is increase your costs, without providing a lot of real value to the end user. Packing a game nominally worth $30 at the market with cost-$5 tchotchkes and then charging $10 for it? Why the hell would any significant group buy it? The game is the product, not the tchotchkes. Selling those won't recoup your investment.

This concept is not bad for some areas. It obviously works for Linux, although the GPL has held back advancement by fucking over driver developers (RMS still says the nVidia driver behavior is against the GPL, it's only because everybody ignores the guy that they persist). I am saying it does not work for a lot of others, and that anti-copyright fake-freedom idiots and GPL zealots alike don't consider anyone else before going I WANT I WANT I WANT.

Most likely because they're more in demand. But the stuff that pirates are pirating is clearly in demand, they just don't want to pay for it.

From an economic perspective, I think it very much is. Even from a technical perspective, I think multiplayer games are (easier to cheat if you have the code, harder to catch you).

I don't think they will. Because, frankly, people are fucking selfish bastards and will take what they can take for free. If it's not in front of them, they will never pay. Exceptions exist, but they are basically noise.

Toady is also one guy, making a game that doesn't require a lot of technical expertise outside of code. I like Tarn a lot and I love DF, and I have donated, but I don't know if you've noticed, he isn't making much at all from his work. Enough to live on, yes--barely. Very barely.

Now expand that to a hundred or two hundred people. You're not getting very far.

No, you really can't. Hint: the programming is not the largest part of making Half-Life 2. Unless you're positing that we see a bunch of recycled models in every game under the sun, you still have to pay for a legion of 3D modelers. Unless you're positing that we see a bunch of recycled textures in every game under the sun, you still have to pay for a bunch of texture artists. Unless you're positing that we hear the same sounds in every game under the sun, you have to pay for sound artists.

There's a lot more to a game than code. (And frankly, open source hasn't done a very good job of that: all the "big names" are derivatives of the originally closed-source Quake. If you want to see what you get for an open source engine, check out Sauerbraten. Try not to laugh.)

I don't disagree with a lot of what you say. I've donated to open source projects, both using my time and my money.

Regarding the entertainment industry, though? The money made is made because it's easier to just pay. (There's also the fact that most people can't have a movie theater in their house--similar stuff can't really be done with a video game.)

And I can think of plenty of open-source projects with a lot of users who don't get donations for their time and effort. Again, Warsow comes to mind.

Red Hat makes money off their services, not their product. If you think about it a bit, that's going to screw, say, game developers, unless you want everything to be MMOs (and even then, private servers will pop up, and then you're fucked).

I don't agree with your assertion at all, and I will accuse you of spreading self-righteous bullshit designed to minimize your own actions within your own head. But in any case, I wasn't talking about piracy to begin with. I was talking about the non-suitably to RMS's sick little pretend-free software to certain industries, such as video games. I dislike piracy, but I don't think it's an industry-killer unless, as your sibling poster rambled on about, it is taken to the extreme where they kill the goose laying the golden eggs. I think it's distasteful, wrong, and more than a little socially irresponsible, but I don't think it'll kill PC gaming. But, no, most people will not "happily" pay for something good. They begrudgingly pay, when they pay at all. Why else would piracy exist if not to avoid paying for that from which you derive benefit? Some people have an evolved moral conscience to consider it to be a like-trade-for-like, money for the utility (enjoyment) derived from the product. Those people I applaud. But do you know how I know it's utter horseshit? Because the overwhelming majority of open-source projects, even very good ones like Warsow, don't net donations enough to buy a steak dinner.

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And on your little pro-piracy bit: I dislike piracy from a moral reason far more than a financial one. It is wrong to wrong me by not compensating me for the utility you receive from my work. The money isn't as important as the moral wrong being committed.

You can choose not to like copyright all you want. But it'll be here after we're both dead. The difference is that copyright affords me the chance to profit off my own creative ability and, in doing so, perhaps create something that will outlast me. Could I do so if it wasn't a method of making money? Sure. But the economic incentive encourages specialization of labor: if I can make money off creative work, I can specialize in it and get better at it, rather than splitting my work effort between survival work and creative work. Copyright turns both into the same thing. It improves society's creative arts, and piracy is a negative force on this.

Well, there's two ways to answer that.

The first, a moral argument that at the moment I don't have the patience to flesh out: Why do you _have_ to live from your job? Why is your probably-not-all-that-useful sort-of-contribution to society rewarded while theirs should not be?

The second, a practical one: many forms of modern art are simply too labor- and time-intensive to be done for free. Do you really think Half-Life 2 will be made "as a hobby in [somebody's] free time"? While some programming works can be done for free to the end user, they aren't free to the people making it. Linux would not exist as is if there weren't millions of dollars being funneled into it, and the methods of recouping that investment exist that don't involve direct sales of a product. Such doesn't exist for a lot of other methods that people find very valuable. Without copyright, we'll be introducing you to our old friend, the tragedy of the commons.

So, yes, I have no problem with criminalizing your fellow copyright infringers to protect my livelihood, and, quite frankly, I doubt even your fellow copyright infringers will have a problem with it when they realize that that's where the stuff they're passing around comes from. Taken to the extreme that you and your ilk think they would like, you would kill the goose laying the golden egg.

No shit. I didn't say they weren't false.

I doubt it. It's much, much more likely that people just ignore your site.

It says that you can charge for it, but that doesn't make it at all effective.

RMS charged for tapes when it was impractical to toss around the programs in no time flat via the Internet. Now, unless you charge a million bucks for that first copy, you're going to lose your shirt if just one client decides to pass it around.

The problem with his worldview is that it ignores one very important thing: artists have to eat, too. Take computer games, for example (and as a game developer who wants to bring more than bland oatmeal to the table, I very much do consider it art, but if you don't, entertainment works too). The GPL causes a cost-zero situation because anyone can, and if your product is good enough will, undercut anything you can do to generate revenue.

Sell copies of the game? Well, "personal use" includes giving copies away to everyone, so unless you're selling that first copy for a million bucks, you're going to lose your shirt. (Please don't give me that tired fucking bullshit about "well don't release it until people donate the amount you want," it sounds great if you discount that nobody will actually donate in significant numbers.)

Advertisements in the game to recoup your investment? Well, they have the code, so bye-bye ads and bye-bye revenue.

MMO? All your code's out there, enjoy those free-to-play ad-free private servers killing what little market share you can scrape up.

I can buy the argument, though I disagree heartily with it, that the GPL is useful for low-level tools--operating systems, userlands, etcetera. "Information freedom" is the fastest way to killing the software industries that many people derive a lot of enjoyment from, though, and it's not like you'll be getting Half-Life 2 out of an open source project any time soon.

Flash is installed on 95% of computers.

Not-IE is installed on less than 50%.

I don't think you quite grasp the difference.