#1 fave game for pandy?

[skeezix]

Wow


*rant on*


Ground rules -- you have to respect onpon's position; theres nothing wrong with it. I think when we first all get into open source, OSS, GPL, various licenses (I'm more a fan of BSD license myself), you get swept away; I made a lot of open source Free (capital F) software; my wife used ot get on my case, that I coudl be selling it, actually making a buck, putting clothes on my back; after awhile, I realized.. she was right.


You can go all the way (and onpon is not fanatical, he is just making a statement), but few people can go all the way; most of the Great Free Software people still sell something or work for something closed, because it works; in the back of your heart you still hope to open it up, or share some of it, or at least have open APIs, or other such things, but usually you cannot go all the way.


Take BattleJewels, for instance. I wrote all of the code, 100% (well, actually, about 98% .. a friend of mine wrote some music interpolation software that is excellent, but for sake of argument, call it 100%); as you al know, I still write more open source and Free than most other people dream about, so no one can claim higher ground really .. and most peopel who criticize the few things I've sold have never produced anythign of value in their life, so they've never been in this positiuon; and again, onpon is _not_ criticising, he's making a choice; other people are thinking he is making a criticism and he si not..


Anyway, for those people who are in that argument in their mimnd, suffice to say this -- BJ was given awya free on many platforms (Pandora, Gp2x, etc); I did sell it on one platformn that immediatley died (Palm OS, Palm had its day); I did _license out_ some of those bits to other applications (the AI for instance), to both freeware (non-capital-F) and commercial ware; I am not at liverty to open source all of BJ due to those obligations. I did not sell out, I put a term on it (5 years, nearly up), and got some cash; why? Well for one, I'd just had a baby and you can use some $$ when you've just had a baby, trust me I did not do _Wrong_ to anyone, we are all perfectly at our right; did I do _Ideal_ in an altruistic sense? no .. but we do not live in black or white days, its a gradient; one other of my applications I charged for and made a living at -- and during that time I produced somethign like 30 open source GPL and BSD applications, totally funded by the main application; which in turn had an open API, open document formats, distirbited .o files os peopel could relink it with other stuff, a large community I supported, events I paid for to give peopel a good time, prizes for thigns I gave away.. a good time was had by all. Funded by a filthy little private project, that I then open sourced later.


So onpon is not wrong, nor is he criticising; he is respectfully declining to go into _that_ restaurant, when he can go to _another_, for a reason. Good for him, standing up to the man.


We've all been there; I'm a huge Free Software not, a big Open Source guy, bigger by far than most. But hey, I don't mind selling something here or there, gotta make a buck, right?


And regardless of what Stallman (who is a Great Man) thinks, it _is_ hard to sell open source/Free stuff. You _can_, and you know what? It makes you _REALLY_ unhappy when some asshole somewhere else immediately starts selling _your stuff_;


i) it really burns my ass when I open sourcething as pure Free/freeware, and then some ass starts selling it, making a profit, and publicizes the hell out of it so gets a lot of notice; this happens a lot in App Stores, for instance.. even if it gets pulled 6 weeks later, the guy will have raked in possible thousands of dollars, on my our a teams hard work.


ii) it burns my ass (not as much as (i) when you sell something that you also sell for $$, but open sourced for fun, when some prick sells it too. Thats not in the spirit; if someone _forks_ and makes free upgrades, fine, you're making your buck on _support_ say. But that rarely happens; instead, you get 10 guys day one trying to sell your work, compete with you, because of your generousity.


_that_ is the problem.


The _spirit_ is right, but _people are assholes_; not most, not many.. just a few; but the internet is big, and there are assholes, and poor clever people, who will turn on you in a second.


So, thats wat I ask.. how many Free apps have you made, that someone else sold and made $$ on your hard work on? (for me, a few; I made some fucker about $50,000 once, and I got nothing.)


How many Commercial apps of yours have been pirated? Mimne have been. How many of your commercial apps have been sold for $$? Sucks


I don't hold it against anyone, shit happens, but it does annoy me sometimes.


But I playu the upper hand -- I'm always decent to people, my users, be there customers or not; I've built communities, I've supported products I've written 20 years earlier, I still support thousands of people for ancient dead apps; I've given away the code to commercial apps when peopel asked.


And I've made more open source and Free than most.


So.. what can you do? Am I doing wrong?


BattleJewels is free for _every platform_ right now, I just don't give away that code (can't.)


I _will_, since I'd like it to have a life of its own; its not the prettiest code (hey, I did just have a baby and had no sleep , so one day I'll open it up, and people can mod it or make it live more (its got a hardcoded resolution, so sort of sucks to change to portrait mode or higher res, but I'd like to work on that.. make it all SVG based or something..)


Anyway, thats my position; I _do my best_, but its _not a perfect world_; as a _producer_, I like to think once in awhile I can make a buck, but still be ethical and morally correct, and any profits I do make, I use to make Free; you know the Pandora firmware was how many hundreds/thousands of horus of work and support, and that was paid for by stuff like BattleJewels.


Your welcome


jeff


edit: I'm sick, my babies are sick, I've been up 3 days nearly straight; permit my rant to not be coherent or spelt right


tl;dr -- onpon is totally cool, I respect it; we've all been there, and he's right. But I just hope he also respects the positions of people who dont' always walk the perfect altruistic line.. I'm not sure if he is a producer or purely a consumer or what, but I don't always feel I can be in a position to give everything away for Free/free/open-source; I have tried, and been burnt, and I still do way more than most to make up for it Many judge, many are pricks who say 'commercial is all evil', and it is not. (perhaps a 'sometimes necessary evil') It is perhaps suboptimal, but such is life. I can't change the world today .. maybe later

 

[WizardStan]

You're acting like I have to either accept any and all losses to freedom or be a flat-out anarchist.

Wow, no idea at all how you came to that conclusion. I'm in fact arguing the opposite. You were the one who said

but those are all nonfree, so I don't play them anymore

That's a blatant statement that you rejected something for the single solitary reason that they don't mesh 100% with your ideologies. You are the one that made the statement implying you have to either be strictly one way or the other, not me. I am saying that that seems very silly to me. They cost you nothing and if they suddenly stop working you have lost nothing so rejecting them with the arguments about what to do if they no longer work seem very counter-intuitive.

That's ludicrous, and by that logic, you ought to move to North Korea because, hey, they give you free stuff, and who cares about freedom, right?

Ok, how the hell does moving to North Korea fit into what I was saying at all? There's a huge cost in moving anywhere, especially to North Korea which, as you say, comes at a huge cost of freedom in addition to the monetary losses. Further, if it doesn't work out, I will have lost a significant amount, possibly beyond recovery. The situation is so far on the opposite side of what I was saying it makes me wonder if you were paying attention at all.

Come on, you can't see why the government telling you you can't put a fence in your yard is completely different than the writer of software telling you you can't study, modify, or redistribute your copy of the software, or the builder of a house telling you you can't add a new window?

1) I never mentioned government at all. I have no idea what you are talking about.


2) Of course I see a specific difference between the writer of software telling you you can't modify or distribute the code and a builder (or in my analogy the housing committee) telling you you can't modify your house, but for the purposes of the analogy they are effectively the same thing in the general sense: they are both telling you that in order to use their services you must abide by their rules, or their EULA as it were. Rejecting an otherwise perfect house as a place to live because they tell you you can't build a deck without special permission (and risk being rejected even if you seek that permission) is as silly a notion to me as rejecting entirely free (gratis) software because the developer doesn't want you messing about with it. It is in fact even sillier to me that you reject free (gratis) software than that otherwise perfect house because the house does actually have cost and loss associated with it. That's why I switched to the perfect chair, it fits the software situation even better. A chair that suits all your present needs perfectly provided to you absolutely free of charge, but the designer of the chair makes you sign an agreement saying you will not loan, sell, or modify the chair. You are free to destroy it and get rid of it at any time. In my mind you are a fool if you don't take and enjoy this chair for as long as it is viable. If your needs eventually change and the chair is no longer useful, you get rid of it and have lost nothing that you wouldn't have if you hadn't simply outright rejected the chair. You are rejecting a very nice chair being given to you entirely free of charge because the person who built that chair has told you you can't make any changes to their chair. I do not understand why you are doing this.

 

[skeezix]

And if we're talking housing..


.. they tell you where on your land you can put the house, and how big it can be


.. and its not really your land; you buy a title to it, and the land remains the property of the crown or government body .. that annoys me to no end


.. you want to remove a tree? you'd better pay $3-$15000 for the privelege


.. you want to add new windows? legally _NO_, until you get a contractor to sign off on the plan, the city to clear it, and authorized construction folks to do the work


.. you want to install a new breaker into your fusebox? legally.. NO, you cannot do work yourself, unless you are an authorized electrician.. you want to add a breaker, legally, you have to pay $100 for some bastard to come sign off you did it right (took you 30 seconds)


.... etc.


I agree, people should have the right to go nuts on their house, safety be damned (bubble society can go to hell in my books .. people are 'too safe' now, it diminishes creativity!)


This argument is more..


- sure, we'd all love if we could have the 'source'/schematics/plans/etc for everything .. car, computers, dishwashers, house, you name it


- but would you rather have nothing?


... the producers feel they can't make a living selling support for some types of products, so they sell the software and hope they make the customer happy (enough to pay)


.. of course, we have companies who..


.. go out of business, and customer is fooked


.. are evil, chargingg update fees for bug fixes every few months


... and really, being closed source means 'refusing to let them tinker'


Our society would be at the stone age if Og didn't teach Ug how to use fire, let him tinker around, but instead licensed it out..


.. but nothign is black or white; we live in an environment, we can try to change the game, but thats gradual; you always have to play the game, to change the game.


jeff

 

[Link]

Forget Me Not


Super Geometry Dust


Garden of Colored Lights


White Butterfly


Spheres of Chaos


PewPew 2


Wars: Commando

 

[diligentcircle]

but those are all nonfree, so I don't play them anymore

That's a blatant statement that you rejected something for the single solitary reason that they don't mesh 100% with your ideologies. You are the one that made the statement implying you have to either be strictly one way or the other, not me. I am saying that that seems very silly to me. They cost you nothing and if they suddenly stop working you have lost nothing so rejecting them with the arguments about what to do if they no longer work seem very counter-intuitive.

No, my statement there just implied that I go strictly one way (who the heck is enough of a Microsoft-brainwashed zombie that they would refuse to use free software?).

1) I never mentioned government at all. I have no idea what you are talking about.


2) Of course I see a specific difference between the writer of software telling you you can't modify or distribute the code and a builder (or in my analogy the housing committee) telling you you can't modify your house, but for the purposes of the analogy they are effectively the same thing in the general sense: they are both telling you that in order to use their services you must abide by their rules, or their EULA as it were. Rejecting an otherwise perfect house as a place to live because they tell you you can't build a deck without special permission (and risk being rejected even if you seek that permission) is as silly a notion to me as rejecting entirely free (gratis) software because the developer doesn't want you messing about with it. It is in fact even sillier to me that you reject free (gratis) software than that otherwise perfect house because the house does actually have cost and loss associated with it. That's why I switched to the perfect™ chair, it fits the software situation even better. A chair that suits all your present needs perfectly provided to you absolutely free of charge, but the designer of the chair makes you sign an agreement saying you will not loan, sell, or modify the chair. You are free to destroy it and get rid of it at any time. In my mind you are a fool if you don't take and enjoy this chair for as long as it is viable. If your needs eventually change and the chair is no longer useful, you get rid of it and have lost nothing that you wouldn't have if you hadn't simply outright rejected the chair. You are rejecting a very nice chair being given to you entirely free of charge because the person who built that chair has told you you can't make any changes to their chair. I do not understand why you are doing this.

I need to learn to stop using analogies. There's always something I don't think about and no one ever gets the point. And I always waste effort trying to save the analogy.


The house analogy is bullshit, OK? Software doesn't legitimately have landlords and there are no government regulations surrounding it. It's just copyright and a legal monopoly.

 

[_wb_]

I happen to be a vegetarian because I really don't like the taste of meat - I don't know what's wrong with me but I really don't like how it tastes. But there are also lots of vegetarians who do like the taste of meat, but they still don't eat it because it is against their principles (e.g. because you have to kill animals to make meat).


ZXDunny's reasoning would be: those vegetarians are silly spoiled brats, because they're refusing to eat something they would actually enjoy eating. He probably wouldn't object to my kind of vegetarianism, though.


Is this an analogy that works better than the house thing?

 

[ZXDunny]

I too am a vegetarian, who supplements his intake of veggies with large amounts of bacon. I still class myself as a veggie though, despite the pork chops or steaks on a sunday.


FWIW. I use random licenses on my software - PandaBAS is currently GPL (though might change in the future if the pRNG says so) but FMN and SoC are both closed and will stay that way.


D.

 

[WizardStan]

No, my statement there just implied that I go strictly one way

Which is almost word for word what I said and what you, not one post ago, said was stupid: I find your stance that it must be black or white a very silly thing.

(who the heck is enough of a Microsoft-brainwashed zombie that they would refuse to use free software?).

YOU! You're the "Microsoft-brainwashed zombie" (whatever that means). You are the one refusing to use free software. You said you enjoyed the software but are rejecting it for no reason other than they don't give you the source code.

The house analogy is bullshit, OK? Software doesn't legitimately have landlords and there are no government regulations surrounding it. It's just copyright and a legal monopoly.

Again with the government regulations. Stop that, no one is talking about that. A housing committee is not the government, the agreement you enter into when you move into a community is not a law, it is a contract, exactly the same as the contract you might agree to when starting software.


But regardless, I agree the house analogy is bullshit, there were a lot of things wrong with it which I laid out, that's why I switched to the perfect chair analogy. Would you reject a chair being provided entirely free of charge if the creator of said chair told you that you weren't allowed to open it up to make any modifications to the padding or whatever, but the chair was otherwise perfectly suited to your needs?

I happen to be a vegetarian because I really don't like the taste of meat - I don't know what's wrong with me but I really don't like how it tastes. But there are also lots of vegetarians who do like the taste of meat, but they still don't eat it because it is against their principles (e.g. because you have to kill animals to make meat).


ZXDunny's reasoning would be: those vegetarians are silly spoiled brats, because they're refusing to eat something they would actually enjoy eating. He probably wouldn't object to my kind of vegetarianism, though.


Is this an analogy that works better than the house thing?

No they aren't, they've stated their case, they don't like the idea of killing animals. I recognize how someone could find loss in that: animal goes in, meat comes out, but you no longer have the original animal. Some people value that loss as greater than the gain of meat; I disagree, but at least there is something there to balance it.


When it comes to software, however, it is entirely unbalanced: on one side you have enjoyment, on the other there is no downside, nothing to outweigh the enjoyment. Onpon has made no motion to attempt to explain how he loses anything by enjoying something free but not "free". If it stops working, he has lost nothing because the alternative was never having it in the first place.


If a vegetarian who enjoyed meat but didn't want animals to suffer then went on to reject vat grown meat with no apparent losses, that would make them very silly indeed.

 

[diligentcircle]

YOU! You're the "Microsoft-brainwashed zombie" (whatever that means). You are the one refusing to use free software. You said you enjoyed the software but are rejecting it for no reason other than they don't give you the source code.

No, I'm not rejecting free software. I'm rejecting nonfree software. Did you forget what the definition of free software is?


I also never said that it was because I wasn't given the source code. That was ZXDunny. It's true that source code is a precondition to two major freedoms and thus necessary, but it is not a primary reason.

Would you reject a chair being provided entirely free of charge if the creator of said chair told you that you weren't allowed to open it up to make any modifications to the padding or whatever, but the chair was otherwise perfectly suited to your needs?

First of all, "perfectly suited to [my] needs" is not a condition that ANY nonfree software that I have used has ever fulfilled. It's extremely biased for you to assume that they have.


Now, as to your question: yes, I would reject a chair if I was told I could not modify it. Modifying a chair would include removing something you don't like about it, or fixing a problem that could cause it to randomly break while you're sitting on it.


But chairs are a worthless analogy, too. They're much too simple.

Onpon has made no motion to attempt to explain how he loses anything by enjoying something free but not "free". If it stops working, he has lost nothing because the alternative was never having it in the first place.

First off: there's no reason to assume that all nonfree software distributed gratis lacks malicious features. Such nonfree software from corporations often does.


Second: If I use nonfree software, that encourages the development of more nonfree software by giving it my seal of approval. I do not approve of nonfree software, and therefore I do not use it.


But third: I never wanted to talk about this here in the first place. I mentioned my ethics as a side comment. There is no reason I should be required to explain why I reject nonfree software every time I say that I mention this rejection as a personal ethic any more than a vegetarian should be required to explain their eating choice when they mention it at a restaurant.

 

[Binky]

But chairs are a worthless analogy, too. They're much too simple.

Bring on the car analogies!


Anyone else want popcorn? - This argument is getting silly :rolleyes:


Some people like to make use of the good features found in some closed-source software


Some people don't.


Some devs want control and/or profit from their software.


Some don't.

 

[ryan27968]

wow. this thread has really gone off topic.

 

[Binky]

#1 fave game for pandy: derailing threads with arguments over personal ethics!

 

[WizardStan]

No, I'm not rejecting free software. I'm rejecting nonfree software. Did you forget what the definition of free software is?

Ok, from now on to avoid confusion I will use the words gratis and "free" to denote free of charge and free of restriction. You are rejecting gratis software because it is not "free": I think it is silly because in this case I can find no loss in using it.

I also never said that it was because I wasn't given the source code. That was ZXDunny. It's true that source code is a precondition to two major freedoms and thus necessary, but it is not a primary reason.

Ok, regardless of whether "free" means source available or not the point still stands: you rejected something gratis because it wasn't "free": you rejected something which you enjoyed because it doesn't match your idea of "free" but does not actually have any measurable downside.

First of all, "perfectly suited to [my] needs" is not a condition that ANY nonfree software that I have used has ever fulfilled. It's extremely biased for you to assume that they have.

It's a hypothetical. We have this chair that is currently suited to your needs: it is comfortable, you can sit in it, it does all the things you expect a chair to do, but the builder has simply requested that you not go digging through it. Maybe there are very good reasons for this, maybe it's too dangerous, maybe it's a prototype and he doesn't want the tech to leak too early, maybe it's a petty request, who knows? Doesn't matter, in order to gain use of this gratis chair you must accept that the builder doesn't want you messing about with the insides. You currently have no reason to want to modify anything, the chair is a chair and does what it needs to do.

Now, as to your question: yes, I would reject a chair if I was told I could not modify it. Modifying a chair would include removing something you don't like about it, or fixing a problem that could cause it to randomly break while you're sitting on it.

At least you're consistent, even if it doesn't make any sense. What have you lost by accepting the chair? You can't modify it, fine, but the instant it no longer suits your needs GET RID OF IT! You can still enjoy it while it does what you need it to do, and the instant it doesn't you are not obligated to keep it. You are then back to the exact same point you were before you took the chair. You have lost nothing, but you have gained a period of gratis chair use.

But chairs are a worthless analogy, too. They're much too simple.

Simple always makes a better analogy. If you can't explain why your position makes sense in the simple case then how can you expect it to make any sense in the complex case? Explain how you universally lose something by accepting a gratis chair that you aren't allowed to sell or modify and I will understand how you universally lose something by accepting gratis software that you aren't allowed to redistribute or modify.

First off: there's no reason to assume that all nonfree software distributed gratis lacks malicious features. Such nonfree software from corporations often does.

Now we're getting somewhere. So it isn't just that it is non-"free", it is an unsaid fear from not being able to look at the source? You believe there is a chance that Skeezix has put malicious code in BattleJewels so you choose not to use it? Healthy paranoia, I suppose I can understand that. I disagree, but I can understand.

Second: If I use nonfree software, that encourages the development of more nonfree software by giving it my seal of approval. I do not approve of nonfree software, and therefore I do not use it.

Boycott. Interesting. So you believe that if enough people reject BattleJewels that Skeezix will never release another non-"free" game again? That's probably true, but I suspect, given the problems he's mentioned having with "free" software that it would actually result in just never releasing anything ever again. There's something to your argument, at least now that you've actually said what it is. I disagree and believe I could prove you wrong but at least now I understand why you think there's a balance, and that's good enough. I never set out to change your mind, just to understand it.

But third: I never wanted to talk about this here in the first place. I mentioned my ethics as a side comment. There is no reason I should be required to explain why I reject nonfree software every time I say that I mention this rejection as a personal ethic any more than a vegetarian should be required to explain their eating choice when they mention it at a restaurant.

Everyone should be ready at any time to justify their beliefs. That is my belief. You are going to encounter people that think differently from you and some of those people are going to want to know why you think the way you do, especially when you feel strongly enough about your belief to mention it in a situation where it is mostly irrelevant. If a vegetarian simply orders a vegetarian meal then no one questions it. I'm not a vegetarian and I order vegetarian (and sometimes vegan) meals all the time, no one has ever asked me what I have against meat. If a vegetarian orders a vegetarian meal and makes a point of saying they're ordering the vegetarian meal because they don't eat meat, then there's a good chance that someone is going to be curious about that.


You could have just mentioned the games you do play but you went out of your way to specifically mention games you don't play and the reason for that: you obviously feel strongly enough in your belief to tell others about it. If you didn't want to share your beliefs why did you bring them up at all? You are the vegetarian who felt the need to tell the waiter that they aren't ordering the meat dish because they're vegetarian and then complaining when someone is curious about why you feel strongly enough to mention your vegetarianism all the time. If you parade your beliefs around sometimes people are going to ask you about them: fact of life, some people like to learn about other people, especially when they think differently.

 

[_wb_]

I agree that a vegetarian who is a vegetarian on principle and declares that he is a vegetarian to other people should be prepared to explain his principles.


I don't agree with the argument that "you lose nothing" by using gratis non-free software, and that it is thus silly to refuse to use such gratis non-free software. That would be like saying to a vegetarian: "look, this animal is already dead anyway, so you can just as well eat it, no additional animal deaths required". While that is true in a sense, it kind of misses the point.

 

[diligentcircle]

Simple always makes a better analogy. If you can't explain why your position makes sense in the simple case then how can you expect it to make any sense in the complex case?

What you can say about a chair does not necessarily apply to software because software is a lot more complex both in its design and in its use. You sit on chairs. If you want, you can just sit on a large rock. This is not true of software.

Now we're getting somewhere. So it isn't just that it is non-"free", it is an unsaid fear from not being able to look at the source? You believe there is a chance that Skeezix has put malicious code in BattleJewels so you choose not to use it? Healthy paranoia, I suppose I can understand that. I disagree, but I can understand.

No, I am not afraid of some little indie game developer putting malware in his game. But it is a possibility. If you were paying attention, you would see that I mentioned this on-the-side, and that it is only gratis programs from corporations where this is something to be worried about (it exists, in e.g. Google Chrome).

Boycott. Interesting.

Again, if you were paying attention I already said that it's a boycott, when ZXDunny called it a "holy war".

Everyone should be ready at any time to justify their beliefs. That is my belief. You are going to encounter people that think differently from you and some of those people are going to want to know why you think the way you do [blah, blah, blah, rant...]

For your information, I have things I could and should be doing other than justifying my ethics to everyone around me. Sometimes I'm going to explain my positions, when I have time, but it is not my obligation to do so just because I mentioned it briefly in a casual manner.

 

[WizardStan]

I don't agree with the argument that "you lose nothing" by using gratis non-free software, and that it is thus silly to refuse to use such gratis non-free software. That would be like saying to a vegetarian: "look, this animal is already dead anyway, so you can just as well eat it, no additional animal deaths required". While that is true in a sense, it kind of misses the point.

Perhaps, but I am not that vegetarian. If the vegetarian says they would enjoy meat but are against the unecessary suffering of animals, and I present them with a steak made from a wild buffalo which lived a full life of whatever wild buffalo do out in the wild and died of entirely natural causes, and they still reject it, then there is a flaw in their argument: no suffering has occurred and they still won't eat the steak. Why not? It must be for some reason other than unnecessary suffering. I honestly want to know what that reason is!

 

[WizardStan]

What you can say about a chair does not necessarily apply to software because software is a lot more complex both in its design and in its use. You sit on chairs. If you want, you can just sit on a large rock. This is not true of software.

Yup, and if the rock suits your needs, is comfortable, and is provided absolutely gratis, then it is a chair and I still say you are silly for rejecting it. Try as you might the logic is sound.

No, I am not afraid of some little indie game developer putting malware in his game. But it is a possibility. If you were paying attention, you would see that I mentioned this on-the-side, and that it is only gratis programs from corporations where this is something to be worried about (it exists, in e.g. Google Chrome).

If you aren't afraid of it then why make use it as a point for rejecting BattleJewels? Like I said, I am not questioning why you would reject some gratis software, I am trying to understand why you are universally rejecting all gratis software, notably in the case of the few games you mentioned.

Again, if you were paying attention I already said that it's a boycott, when ZXDunny called it a "holy war".

A boycott that made no sense until you explained your reasoning for it. A vegetarian is on a boycott of meat but that doesn't explain why that particular vegetarian is against it.

For your information, I have things I could and should be doing other than justifying my ethics to everyone around me. Sometimes I'm going to explain my positions, when I have time, but it is not my obligation to do so just because I mentioned it briefly in a casual manner.

You didn't mention it briefly or casually, it was a key point of your post: "I used to play these games but now I don't because I disagree with their philosophy". You obviously feel strongly enough about your opinion to bring it up in a conversation that had nothing to do with it. I feel that such a strong opinion should be properly understood. If you don't want to risk someone asking about why you have an opinion don't mention that opinion.

 

[ryan27968]

ladies, ladies... youre both pretty. now could we just get on with the initial q? the fact is... some people like gratis commercial softwear, some like open software, some like paid for softwear. but wtf difference does it make? i personally prefer any free software, commercial or open. just GET OVER IT for hecks sake.

 

[F_Slim]

It is a matter of principle. You will thus always find an example (like the dead buffalo) where this looks pretty stupid. This misses the point though.


It's more a "lead by example" approach. You only use stuff which meet your criteria, to show the world that it can be done, to maybe inspire other people to follow your example, which may lead more people to think about that matter (which in the veggy-example could mean that people who don't want to miss out on meat at least take care that the animal did not suffer, which is one step closer to a better world).


It takes people with extreme positions to balance the average a bit.


On topic:


Amiga: Lotus 2&3


PSX: Colin McRae Rally 2.0


ports: DOOM

 

[_wb_]

I don't agree with the argument that "you lose nothing" by using gratis non-free software, and that it is thus silly to refuse to use such gratis non-free software. That would be like saying to a vegetarian: "look, this animal is already dead anyway, so you can just as well eat it, no additional animal deaths required". While that is true in a sense, it kind of misses the point.

Perhaps, but I am not that vegetarian. If the vegetarian says they would enjoy meat but are against the unecessary suffering of animals, and I present them with a steak made from a wild buffalo which lived a full life of whatever wild buffalo do out in the wild and died of entirely natural causes, and they still reject it, then there is a flaw in their argument: no suffering has occurred and they still won't eat the steak. Why not? It must be for some reason other than unnecessary suffering. I honestly want to know what that reason is!

I think onpon4 made it clear enough what his reason is: he only wants to use software that gives him certain freedoms beyond just the freedom to run the binaries. If he would reject some piece of software that e.g. has the GPL license (like your wild buffalo), then their would indeed be a flaw in his argument. But that's not the case here. Refusing to use gratis but non-free software would be like refusing to eat animals with a small brain (e.g. fish) that perhaps don't suffer as much as other animals like cows or horses when killed. I guess it is a matter of how far you go in applying your principles.