Russ Karlberg wrote: >> That's why most people who develop free (as in freedom) >> software commercially usually primarily use other methods of making money >> from it, such as selling support services and making paid-for >> customisations. > Well, OK, I can see that business model working for some types of software. > But for things like games and packaged software, I'm not sure most people > really care about support or customizations.
Maybe "software as a product" (packaged software) is a business model of the past. (Just like packaged music isn't as profitable for the music industry anymore as they wish it was.) Is the software part of games really so much different from other types of software? I could imagine that if game engines are a commodity and are available as free software, that there's a lot of money to save during development. Even fewer units sold, or sold at lower prizes, would turn this into a profitable business. Or think about online games: Again, there's a lot of money to save by using free software on the server side. What the company that hosts the game has to offer are services that cannot be easily duplicated, like storage space, bandwith, regular updates, a community, etc. And then, who says that the artwork in a game must be under the same license terms as the software? What if you are free to copy the code, but you still cannot copy the graphics and music *for commercial purposes*? Before anyone jumps at me, let me quote Richard Stallman (again, from "Misinterpreting Copyright--A Series of Errors"): "So perhaps novels, dictionaries, computer programs, songs, symphonies, and movies should have different durations of copyright, so that we can reduce the duration for each kind of work to what is necessary for many such works to be published. Perhaps movies over one hour long could have a twenty-year copyright, because of the expense of producing them. [...]" "For novels, and in general for works that are used for entertainment, noncommer- cial verbatim redistribution may be sufficient freedom for the readers." I don't think that games would need a twenty-year copyright (or how many games from 1987 do you know that still make a profit for their publishers?); maybe 5, 6, 7 years is enough. If this incentive is needed for games to be produced, so be it. That's what copyright was meant for, in the first place. If you don't allow commercial distribution of the artwork, this would prevent competitors from turning your work into a profit, before you had a chance to recoup your expenses. I'd assume that ad-sponsored "warez" sites would qualify as commercial as well, even though they don't charge for the downloads. What is important is that non-commercial distribution would be allowed. First of all, it seems it can't be stopped anyway, so why bother. Secondly, there's not need to criminalize kids who swap games on the schoolyard. (Is it controversial on this list to suggest that artwork should be treated differently than software? I'd really like to hear other people's thoughts on this.) >> you can modify it if you wish, resell it or give it away for free, you can >> contract other people to modify it if you don't have the time or the >> experience.. [...] > To me this seems to contradict the previous business model, if you can > modify that software, give it away, hire someone else to maintain it, then > you don't need a support contract and the company that spent years > developing the software does not get compensated for their efforts. That's the usual thing to do, even without free software! If a company outsources software development to another company, the *customer* usually wants to keep the copyrights. Then they're free to hire a *different* company than the one that did the original development for support and maintenance work. What the free software mode changes is that the initial development becomes less expensive, as it probably builds on existing free software. Kind Regards, M.F. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for earth-friendly autos? Browse Top Cars by "Green Rating" at Yahoo! Autos' Green Center. http://autos.yahoo.com/green_center/ _______________________________________________ Advocate mailing list [email protected] http://badvista.fsf.org/mailman/listinfo/advocate
