I'll try to explain it a bit better.

Right now, there's this terrible tendency to fork, fork, fork - and every fork is competing for eyeballs, mindshare in the noosphere, or whatevr you call it. And they're all mostly starving for revenue, because there are just too many choices, and the quality is pretty much the same among all of them.

So, you created a game as open surce, someone else forks it, now you're both competing for code contributions (after all, there's no guarantee the fork will stay code-compatible as time goes on), so the fork eventually results in the pool of contribs you can use going down, nt up.

Also, your user base goes down, since it's now split with the fork(s).

So, you take and make a closed version, fix all the bugs in the closed version while improving the code, and release it as closed-source. You weren't getting the relevant code contributions anyway, so you don't really care. You'll continue to benefit from artwork and plugins (you've maintained binary compatibility), so now you can compete again.

More importantly, you can now sell the program on a per-copy basis, generating the revenues to continue development if the game is any good.

Both your old code base and the open forks can continue to exist, and you can even maintain the open version of your code if you so choose - that's your choice.

The problem is that open source isn't competitive for most projects when it comes to the financial side. Which is why there are so many bugs out there - nobody is being paid to do the dirty work of fixing them. In terms of percentages, open source is actually losing ground - compare the explosive growth in paid closed-source apps in the mobile field. Why? Follow the money ...

It's either adapt or die. I don't see any other way if improving the quality of the stuff out there, or of reducing the insane number of forks (how many linux distros are there out there now? Over 1,000?)

I'm hoping it does too ... but it's still a pain in the eye ... which might or might not be part of the frustration. I have a few ideas I'm going to test, see if it makes a diff.

That many bookmarks? That's a LOT. How do you find time to do anything else?

No, the list of all side effects is not generally available, and certainly not in the product monograph made available to physicians (I checked). Others have complained about similar side effects, but the doctors tend to not be very receptive because ... wait for it ... the side effects aren't listed in the physician's product monograph.

And they're certainly not listed in the drug insert that accompanies the medication.

No - this is a 2 billion a year drug that has now had two studies that, for example, show a 3x to 5x higher incidence of stroke leading to death than a placebo ... and yet that's brushed off as "random chance." Once might be random, two out of two is a warning flag.

You don't have to claim it when in many cases it's not all that hard to do. One of the side benefits is that you can clean it up, make it run faster, and have fewer bugs - all selling points.

I think it's time for projects that are GPL to consider doing this themselves - create a for-profit derivative (not all derivative works infringe copyright) and use that to subsidize the open version.

It would reduce the insane number of forks we have, as well as improve quality overall.

Look at the current situation - how many forks of forks of forks are there out there? Nobody has a financial incentive to actually come to a concensus and fix the problems - they just make a fork and "scratch their own itch." Over the long haul, this is simply unsustainable from a financial point of view.

Under this scenario, who cares about the 95% that won't pay - they get the buggy original that is too busy adding new features to fix the existing bugs, because they're competing for "mind share" and not revenue. The 5% that would pay get the stability they want. It's what RedHat does, and it works. How much is CentoOS pulling in, by comparison?

Also, when you can offer a 30% speedup, there are lots of scenarios where this would be incentive enough, just in hardware and energy savings when it's time to scale up.

Now let's take another scenario - a simple game. The open version is dependent on charityware ... the closed version can actually devote time to making add-ons and bug fixes (which they don't have to give back - but they might as wel, at least until the two fork too far apart to be compatible). Eventually, the original will look like a cheap knock-off ...

If the only way to advance a product is to close it off, it is what it is. This provides a way for developers to take their own product closed as a "pre-emptive strike", so that they can maintain both a closed and an open version. If they'd rather wait until someone else eats their lunch, that's their decision.

First, no, it would not be a complete rewrite. Pretty much just the function bodies.
Second, you get the advantages of compatibility with add-ons, plugins, etc., for free.
Third, you get binary and user compatibility, so you can get access to current users.
Fourth, unlike the open version, which even the original devs would have a hard time making money selling the code, you're free to optimize and sell the resultant binary code - "100% compatible but 30% faster!" Or "we've removed over 400 bugs compared to the original."

There are plenty of scenarios where a decent improvement in performance or a reduction in bugs would justify purchasing a closed-source version over an open one.

No - they use a wireless pen with a pressure sensor probe to determine intra-ocular pressure. This is different.

The lens on the eyeball is a contact lens, along with a cap so that it keeps the eye fully open, and it presses up against the receiver in the slit lamp. This way they get a really magnified, detailed view of the retina - it's pretty much the same setup as when they want to laser the retina, lubricating goop and all, just not as long or occasionally painful, and with a different lens and holder to accommodate the .laser beam.

Kind of gross, but you get used to anything after a few dozen times, I guess.

I was thinking of making another run at politics, but it really IS messy, dirty, sleazy (it's been noted that it's the most corrupt jurisdiction in the western world - beats anything in the US, and we have several ongoing corruption probes), so that's not exactly my cup of tea.

I really, really hate giving up. I'm thinking that maybe some of the funk I'm in is a side effect of the blood pressure medication I was taking. I'm going to try something a bit different on the coding side and see what comes of it over the next 4-5 days. And I'm going to get back into writing stuff (that I can do with my eyes closed :-)

If I *had* a garden, the dogs would have made a mess of it by now ... of course, considering that one of them was easily jumping 8' fences as a puppy (and he's a lot bigger now) and the other one can dig under anything ...

Well, you're working on something.

Not really - it's one thing to write a quick post, another to stare at code for hours on end. My stupid eyes won't let me do the latter any more because of retinopathy, so I've been taxing my brain trying to figure out if there's life after coding, and if so, what it looks like.

Kiwistan - nice!

Still, I wouldn't want to go through what happened to you. My sympathies.

Ouch! I guess I should count myself lucky.

Straight to the hospital (thank goodness for socialised medicine) ... it happens just after a 36 hour flight from Europe

So, which hospital, since we're both talking about Kanuckistan? I was seen at the Lakeshore, then the specialist clinic, then referred to the Jewish General.

We've had large multi-user operating systems for decades now and people still don't seem to understand this basic principle -- if an interface is available to a regular user, it has to be vetted to ensure that it does not allow the user to do any more than what it advertises and that the effects of that are limited to things that the user is supposed to be able to accomplish.

What a load of horse puckey. This is a kid's computer for school use. Not a system to control an aircraft or nuclear power plant. "As much security as necessary, and no more". Besides, you should always leave some low-level fruit hanging out there as a "canary in a mineshaft" warning mechanism, otherwise you are forcing attackers to put on their best game face.