*closed :P

I also would like to note. I'm not against open source in any way. In fact, I'm a regular contributor of a major open source framework. What I'm saying is that this attitude of denial is ridicule. Can't we accept that Open Source isn't the ultimate answer to everything? That maybe its strength at empowering people to modify, turns against you when you are trying to stop cheating? Maybe your answer is "then don't play with people on the internet". But there are people that prefers to play and take the risk, and whenever possible they would like to minimize the occurrence of that, and closed source is undeniably the first step you want to take. No other form of counter-measure is so easy yet so effective at reducing cheating. Because you actually have to work more to make something open source than to keep it open!

But about old the double standard of "they'll modify the game anyway" astounds me. Why do we need the source for Linux then?

Please answer these series of questions:

Is it easier making changes to open source software than proprietary software?

What's easier for one to modify and add functionality to, Linux or Windows? Firefox or Explorer?

Yeah, I thought so. One of the good things about Open Source software if that you can modify it, right? That's the point of the movement.

Now why isn't the same true of wallhacks and aimbots?

Logic doesn't cut it for you? Do you prefer proof? Go play Warsow, an open source shooter. Or read about the glorious days where Quake 1 was open sourced and cheating increased tenfold.

The other reason Quake 3 didn't have much cheating was that the mods that people played (nobody played baseq3) remained closed source.

s/They will/They won't/g
s/Quake 1 it was/Quake 1 after it was/g

I'm used to posting stuff without previewing and then reading it and clicking the edit button if I find a mistake... Still not used to the fact that the damn slashdot doesn't have an editing function. They could give you 5 minutes or something...

You miss the point entirely. I'm a developer, so I know that you can change how an assembled piece of machine code works, thanks, captain obvious. Parent was implying that quake has a bad design, but I say that what he calls a good design is actually a worse design, because it leads to a more boring game. How can you call something a bad design when it's a necessity? So the alternative proposed is not playing aim games, *at all*. You criticize an unsurmountable difficulty without ever providing a solution. Don't you see the problem? The open source solution involves removing features, ergo, there's no open source answer to this problem. Which leads me to my original point: that a GPL engine for a shooter is useless, because it promotes cheating. Can we agree on that? And don't tell me that people will cheat the game the same. They will. If you are a hardcore gamer you'll know that the shooters with more cheating of the history have been: Quake 1 it was open sourced and Warsow which always was open source. Quake 3 was also open sourced, but there wasn't such a rampant cheat problem because the servers required punkbuster in the client (a closed source cheat detection component). Warsow is about to implement something similar soon, in response to the cheating problem. Funny how everybody agrees that open source and available documentation and a helping community help people make software projects, but magically that doesn't apply when your software project consists of a wallhack of an aimbot. Yay double standard.

The same thing was said by open source supporters when Quake 1 source code was released and cheating went rampant. It's, of course, absolutely true, if you desing so that automating your input doesn't give you an advantage, and so that having the information that your RAM hides doesn't give you an advantage, then there's no cheating problem! The catch? This involves adding auto aim into a FPS game and not hiding players behind walls, which would make them flicker on sight, degrading severely the gaming experience. And yes, open source supporters said this. I'm quoting from here, for example: http://catb.org/esr/writings/quake-cheats.html

Yeah, that would be really fun. Carmack himself, the guy that gave you the GPL'd quake code said that the only solution to the cheating problem is a little closed source program that verifies the binaries, i.e: closed source.

GPL is a terrible license for a game engine if you plan to have a multi-player mode, because releasing the code to your game makes it really easy to make cheats. LGPL isn't adequate either, because anybody can replace the engine library with a cheating version.

The DirectX SDK comes with an EULA, among other things it lets me build Microsoft's code into my binary without publishing the source code to my binary, seems to me I'm being "licensed" to use the software in ways that would normally not be permitted. Also note that with this particular EULA I'm getting more (important) rights than with any GPL licensed library, since the GPL doesn't let me do neat stuff like using the code in a XBox or PS3 commercial title. So you see, you lose some rights, but gain others. Really, if you want the GPL to be valid, you have to accept EULAs. This whole argument that it's somehow different makes no sense. Both are licenses, both give you some rights and place some restrictions...

That's just silly. If I sold software I'd like to be able to sell updates to my software in a simple way, I wouldn't want to make the life of my clients hard. And it would suck if I couldn't make the updates cheap to these people just because the law forces me to allow people to install my updates over say, pirated software. I'd still like to be able to sell a complete product, so that they can install it on a blank hard drive, but have some assurance that only my previous clients can use it. A legal assurance is better than a technical assurance because a legal assurance doesn't cause installation problems for "legit" users! That's what's going on here, you people should direct that indignation towards more important things, really.

Formulating a broken analogy and then proceeding to say that something else is retarded based on it, that's what I call retarded. You aren't "stealing" (notice that I always say "stealing" cause it's not like you are *directly* depriving somebody of something) if you just buy a disc and don't install it on a PC. But if you install it on a PC, it means that you didn't pay Apple for an Apple computer, yet you are using their software, and Apple depends on this income to finance part of the Operating System, that would undoubtedly cost something more like 200 bucks rather than 30 if they intended to sell it for any computer. What part of this do people not understand?

Nobody said that. It's just that the Snow Leopard disc is so cheap because they assume that you have bought an Apple computer already. If they couldn't make this assumption, the disc would be much more expensive. So yeah, you are "stealing", (if you can call that kind of infringement stealing). It's like going to the restaurant of an hotel where guests have to pay less and telling them that you are a guess to get a discount, when in fact you aren't. How do you call that?