To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
You've said it yourself:
"Open-source games couldn't generate the money (in my opinion) to pay for the amount of developers, artists, musicians needed to make modern games."
There's no arguing about that, a multi-million-dollar game released as Free Software and making money probably won't happen
The thing with proprietary binaries is that they usually do what people need them to do, without waiting for someone to write an open clone, which will take a long time to get near the original in many aspects.
So while it may go against the Free Software as a foundation for Linux license wise (or is it?), they'll probably have to switch to a license that allows it without just being tolerated, but accepted.
I couldn't care less if e.g. Fifa 2004, of which I own an original CD, would run on Linux and be just a bunch of binaries if it ran. Frankly, most people don't use open source apps because they are open source, but because they get them for free (and pre-compiled).
Besides, Free Software doesn't necessarily have to be in conflict with non-free software.
Free software philosophy has nothing to do with it, there are companies making millions upon millions selling closed software that runs on linux. Problem is with the market; the companies making money selling linux software are generally targeting the datacenter, where linux is a proven commodity and market.
Gaming though, implies home/consumer use, and that's a much more difficult market to measure in terms of viability, particularly considering the vast majority of gamers using linux already have Windows for gaming anyways. Linux needs market viability with numbers to back it up in order to encourage developers to target it as a platform, until then it's a case of falling back to Windows or using wine-esque workarounds.
You could make a deal like the gpl does where everybody wins. You keep the game closed source for an amount of time(to make money) where people both pay for the game but also for the fact that it will be opensourced after 2 to 3 years.




Member since:
2005-07-06
The problem is that Closed-source games go against the very foundation on which the OS resides - Free Software. This will never go away unless Linux goes away. Mac was able to absorb some of the BSD "love" because of the BSD license. You cannot do that with GPL code. Thus, binary-only drivers and binary-only software will always be second class - an evil that is [sometimes] endured until Free replacements are available.
My dream is for there to someday be a way to create a multi-million-dollar game and release it as Free Software, and still make money - and not because you charge for "services" or "servers". I believe the reimbursement element needs to be built into the system, but I don't see how.