Argument with Mom: Open Source & Free / Private Servers

[Evlesoa]

Ok...

my mom says: How is this game free? Someone is obviously making money off of it. We are being used as testers for the game... so who benefits from this, and makes the money off of it? Whats the point of making an open source game if you dont make any money off of it?


I say: Its free because... I actually have no idea why it is

[Matt2k10]

:-?
So you can have a great game that everyone can enjoy for free? You don't need to make money if you don't want to.

[Seffylight]

It's "free" in two senses of the word.

It's free in that it requires no money from the end-user to download and play, and the developers don't make any money off of the game (aside from whatever donations they may get).

It is also free as in "freedom". Liberty.

Free software is a term coined by Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation[1] to refer to software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with certain restrictions to ensure that end users have the same freedoms as the original authors.

To make software available as free software, the software has to be accompanied by a software licence saying that the copyright holder allows these acts (a free software licence), or be in the public domain, and the human readable form of the program (the source code) must be made available.

Yes, someone may be making money off of providing servers for the game to run on, and yes, the developers might be getting a few donations here and there, but the bottom line is that no one is directly making money off of Tremulous. It's also free. Open-source. It got it's start with the main developers, but it has been worked on by other people as well. Someone could take Tremulous, modify it with whatever they wanted, and then distribute it as a new binary package (and source code). It belongs to the main developers, but it also belongs to anyone else that wants to do work on it. It belongs to everyone, and no one, you see? It's both free (monetarily) and free (philosophically).

As to why someone would do this, I imagine it started as a group of coders, modlers, texturers, mappers, and sound-effects makers that wanted to both test their skills and give something back to a community they were a part of (the Gloom community, iirc). It was never something they expected to profit from, obviously, because they couldn't make money off of it directly due to the GPL (I believe, not sure). They wanted to make a mod for Quake 3 that was Gloom-esque, they had the ability to do so, and eventually it evolved into it's own standalone game based on the Q3 engine.

Hope that kinda clears things up. Someone can correct me if I said something incorrect.

[Repentance]

Ok...

my mom says: How is this game free? Someone is obviously making money off of it. We are being used as testers for the game... so who benefits from this, and makes the money off of it? Whats the point of making an open source game if you dont make any money off of it?


I say: Its free because... I actually have no idea why it is

why should all actions be done purely for self-gain?
but even so, i think the staff gets recognizability, loyal fans, coding experience, a fun game, etc. out of creating tremulous.
not all things of value in this world are monetary.

[Evlesoa]

yea... i know, but its all for the benefit of making better code and stuff... means breakthrus in technology, and coding languages right?

Im trying to explain it to her... she doesnt seem to want to understand it rofl

[Plague Bringer]

to continue on Repentance's post...

nice shit to put on their resume...

Hey, the rate the changes are coming, it seems more like a hobby to me. They don't need money from this. It's not like they're working on this 24/7.

[David]

Under the GPL, they can sell it if they want, but they still have to give up the source, so there's no way to force us to pay them.  (Although they could go the quake route and charge for the models etc)
Most company's that make a business out of free software sell support, and add-on software.

[Odin]

For example Canonical Ltd. makes a ton off of support contracts for Ubuntu(which is free[as in Freedom] to download/use/modify[it's Linux, duh])..

[sleekslacker]

Tell your mom the game is free, both as in beer and speech. Oops you are not allowed to get a beer yet are you ?

[Taiyo.uk]

No, tell your mother that she's a n00b and that if she doesn't listen you'll nade her base and pwn her with your blaster.

[Steely Ann]

5:30 in the morning and I read Taiyo's "blaster" as a euphemism.  Man, I'm gonna sleep soo well now with that image in my head.  Yikes.

// Crappy bedtimes and un-vaporized marijuana aren't cool, kids.
// Now get off my lawn!

[Henners]

donations and an alienware pc


nuff said

[Survivor]

And the fact that having >1000 gamers on a game you built looks very good on a resumé. A lot of current day mappers and game developers started as modders. Even now there are still regularly job offers that request them in gaming forums.
Although their main thought behind it was indeed to make something gloomesque i believe their biggest benefit is what I mentioned here.

[gareth]

its free because the people making it enjoyed that enough that they didnt need paying for it. Either that or they were just bloody minded enough to finish it.

[Evlesoa]

bloody minded? uhh >.> *looks other way* <.< riiight...

[next_ghost]

Here's some reading for your mom: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/

[A_Total_noob]

why should all actions be done purely for self-gain?
but even so, i think the staff gets recognizability, loyal fans, coding experience, a fun game, etc. out of creating tremulous.
not all things of value in this world are monetary.

...and this is precisely the reason our world is going to hell in a hambasket.
Everyone does something to get something back. Particularly for money.
Infact, those that break the trend are viewed as unreasonable (Eg: The developers of Trem)

Grrr.

I wish I could do something about this, but the fact is, our society(ies) are rotting. Sigh - we live in depressing times...



Oh, and Evelosae, surely your mother has heard of doing something for other than a reward (eg: Helping the old lady across the road, opening fire using live rounds from a 5.56 at any thugs hanging at your street corner (Strangely, no matter how many you kill, they still come back (DO they WANT to die ?)), and passing your newspaper to the person next to you on the bus/train/tube when you have finished reading it).

[next_ghost]

Infact, those that break the trend are viewed as unreasonable (Eg: The developers of Trem)

Actually, they don't break anything.

[A_Total_noob]

Infact, those that break the trend are viewed as unreasonable (Eg: The developers of Trem)

Actually, they don't break anything.

No, what I mean is...ach, are you pulling my leg ?  :roll:

[Steely Ann]

Helping the old lady across the road

How naive of you to think they do that without reward!  As I understood it, guys do that to get in her hambasket.  I mean, duh.

// Criminy, I hate Mondays.

[next_ghost]

No, what I mean is...ach, are you pulling my leg ?  :roll:

No, I'm not, read the article a few posts above.

[Lava Croft]

I think it's fairly safe to say that Tremulous has cost everybody (developers, people that host servers) more money that they will ever gain from it.

[DASPRiD]

For my part, Tremulous is just a great hobby for me. And so, when did you ever gain money for your hobby? You put in much effort, time and money, just to have some fun.

But it's not just the fun of development, it's also always great, when you get positive feedback about the work you've done. And as Survivor stated, developing free games was always a good springboard into the game business.

[beerbitch]

Here is my opinion as a software developer for the last 15 years, keep in mind its only my opinion.

Software is basically becoming a commodity. Most of what you paid money for in the past you can now find something of equivalent functionality or value for free now. Installed a major linux distro lately ? A free one ? What is really missing in order for you to be productive, software wise ? Not a lot.

So what has happened ? Why all this free software everywhere from people who are not getting paid to make it ?

1) Some of it is from big companies like IBM who contribute billions of dollars to opensource projects so they can take the work and slap their proprietary crap on it and resell it ie: Rational Studio (built on Eclipse).

2) Some people like the idea of freedom and no restriction, and enjoy being a part of this kind of community.

3) Some people have that itch in their brains they have to scratch, and doing an opensource project in their spare time is how they deal with this. Could be boredom too.

and finally

4) Software technology has evolved to the point where we are no longer reinventing the wheel, and can take pieces from here and there and make a turbo charged super wheel much faster and easier then ever before.

I think companies like Google do well in the future as opposed to proprietary software vendors like Microsoft because they have the business model of leveraging the commodity software as a service. You will make money on the servicing of said software, like the previous example of providing a dedicated game server with high bandwidth for players to play on. I pay for the OPP game server. My buddy runs it, so I get a discount, but he still gets some cash to help pay his cell phone bill each month.

[/dev/humancontroller]

Open source contributors work totally voluntarily, and expect nothing else, but the sigh of relief and feeling the satisfaction of a job well done.

[stalefries]

Open source contributors work totally voluntarily, and expect nothing else, but the sigh of relief and feeling the satisfaction of a job well done.

Perfect summary. Tell that to your mom, OP.

[A_Total_noob]

Oh, and tell her to confiscate your PC.
It would be a blessing to us all  :wink:

[Warrior]

Open-Source games/programs make money from publicity (marketing). Also, their authors are recognized by other programmers/employers for doing a good/bad job and they may or may not be hired by some profitable company.

Again: open-source or free programs can be used to spread someone's programming ability which can help him in earning direct money in the future.

Where Id Software coders come from? Direct from universities to the IdSoft? Or from other projects? (Sorry, but I'm only supposing it here)

Firefox and Mozilla... initially non-profitable project (Mozilla.ORG - Mozilla Foundation)... later a profitable one (Mozilla.COM - Mozilla Corporation).

[Yarou]

Is your mom hot?

[/dev/humancontroller]

Open-Source games/programs make money from publicity (marketing). Also, their authors are recognized by other programmers/employers for doing a good/bad job and they may or may not be hired by some profitable company.

Yeah some of them do. But it's still much easier to get cash via proprietary development. We should thank open source contributors for their selfless work.

For example, BSDs were developed over tens of years, and are totally free. However, proprietary companies still encourage people to work on FreeBSD in some of their work time, because they benefint from that, as well as everyone else.

Again: open-source or free programs can be used to spread someone's programming ability which can help him in earning direct money in the future.

Where Id Software coders come from? Direct from universities to the IdSoft? Or from other projects? (Sorry, but I'm only supposing it here)

Maybe, but I don't suppose someone working on Tremulous for years is trying to spead his programming knowledge. OK, wether true or not, I don't care.

Firefox and Mozilla... initially non-profitable project (Mozilla.ORG - Mozilla Foundation)... later a profitable one (Mozilla.COM - Mozilla Corporation).

But we still have our excellent browser do we?